The Harsh Reality of Living With Trauma
As the years have passed and diagnoses have come and gone, I have long accepted most of them. I have adjusted myself and my life to help live and better cope with them. Throughout the years, I have taken advantage of the time I have had to get to know myself. Mental illness has changed everything about me; some of those things are good, and some are bad. I like to think that I'm relatively in-tune with myself, my emotions, and the illnesses I live with so that I can continue to better myself and work my way towards no longer living with them.
Yet, here I am; struggling, hurting, and quite frankly, getting worse; or so it seems. I have made so much progress within the last four years. I don't feel suicidal, but I think about death. I don't want to relapse, but that seems like the only option in order to cope, because that's all I ever knew. I know I'm better, because I used to think about suicide daily, and I used to want to relapse, and that's no longer the case. I ask myself what my problem is at least 12 times a day. Although, I'm not really sure why, because I already know the answer. There is one little word that is constantly lingering over my head and eats me alive.
Trauma.
I haven't dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder for as long as I've dealt with my depression, insomnia, or anxiety. But I feel like it's been long enough that I should at least be a little more in-tune with it; I should at least have more of a hold on it so that it doesn't have such a hold on me. PTSD is a disorder that some - not all - people develop following a traumatic event or witnessing a traumatic event (i.e. combat, rape, death of a loved one by suicide, a car accident, emotional or physical abuse, etc). Individuals that develop PTSD do not recover from the experience properly. The trauma can actually cause their brain to malfunction, and they fail to recover like most individuals are able to do. The amygdala, hippocampus, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are all affected following the traumatic experience, which impacts the stress mechanism we all have. Thus, the survivor continues to discern and respond to stressors differently than someone who recovered normally from a similar experience. If you would like to read more about how the 3 areas of the brain are affected, click here.
PTSD is the most painful, frightening, and debilitating thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. With it come panic attacks, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and dreadful memories I never asked to happen, let alone asked to remember.
I am not going to go in-depth about my experiences, as I am not currently in a place where I can openly talk about them with just anyone without feeling shame and humiliation. But I will say that as of right now, there are 3 specific experiences that rule my life; they vary from mental and physical abuse, sexual assault, and an indirect situation I experienced in the church. They all date back only within the last 4 years. They are still fresh and new, and I have not yet fully accepted them.
I live in a small town where you can't really escape anyone or anything. This town is also where 2 of the experiences occurred, so daily life is exhausting. One of the most common symptoms of PTSD is the avoidance of people or places that can trigger a past event. Living in this town makes this nearly impossible to do, as much as I would love to do it. If I am driving by myself, it's easier to avoid the places that I want. But sometimes when I'm with friends, it's inevitable. At this point, I don't even say anything anymore, because it's almost as if every single place I go in this town somehow reminds me of what I don't want to remember. So instead of making things extremely difficult, I just shut up about it and internalize how it makes me feel until the feelings, emotions, or flashbacks pass. I don't want to burden the people I love who want to do things with me just because of an experience that occurred that I should have reacted to normally in the first place. The exact places where the 2 experiences happened in this town are places I will not go. But even places I went with these people - traumatic experiences completely unrelated - are triggering (one of these days, I will talk about why I was going places with these people, and living a normal life with them and yet still experiencing the unthinkable). Walmart, grocery stores, rivers, lakes, certain roads; just about anywhere. There are places in this town that I absolutely love, which are now permanently scarred. Just remembering that I was in a specific place with the person sets me into a frenzy of emotions that I do not want to feel. The amount of stress the avoidance of things puts on me is incredible. Sometimes, a lot of it is subconscious; in my subconscious mind, I know I have to leave my house and that I’ll most likely come across a person, place, or thing that will trigger me. Each day is exhausting knowing that no matter where I go, and no matter what I do in this town, my experiences will always be with me. And I hate that.
The traumatic experience that occurred outside of this town is somehow still triggered almost daily. Although, it's usually triggered as a result of a word, phrase, smell, or someone coming up behind me and scaring me, whether it's intentionally or unintentionally. It has completely warped my perception of what healthy relationships and friendships are supposed to be. I don't want to remember certain smells, and yet, it seems like everywhere I go, I keep smelling something that reminds me of what used to be.
Flashbacks are probably what I would categorize as the worst symptom of PTSD. This is where the trauma really takes hold of me. Flashbacks debilitate me, and I completely disassociate from myself and everyone around me during one. I do not know how long my flashbacks actually last. I never know when they're going to happen. I never know exactly what is going to trigger them. It's almost like the onset of a panic attack, minus the panicking and physical symptoms of one. The best way I have ever been able to explain a flashback, is that my mind and eyes are a projector. Picture yourself sitting in a classroom looking at whatever is on the projector screen that the teacher has up. That's literally what it looks like in front of me, because I am the projector. I completely freeze, my body doesn't move, and I'm pretty sure I don't even blink. Whatever I was doing or whoever I was with before it started, does not exist any longer. I watch myself enduring the traumatic experience across the room, right in front of me. I know I'm sitting there watching. The part of me that is enduring the experience keeps wondering why in the world the part of me who is watching isn't doing anything. Why does she keep watching this happen and keep allowing it to happen? WHY ISN'T SHE DOING SOMETHING TO HELP ME? Sometimes I feel like my flashbacks are some twisted way for me to try to change the past. I never did anything right away to get myself out of the 3 traumatic experiences. Heck, I didn't even know one of them was even traumatic until at least a year after. I am angry at myself for not doing anything about them. I am angry at myself for continuing to put myself in the position of it happening. I am angry at myself for not stopping it. If I could have just stopped it, my life wouldn't be a living hell. Maybe my flashbacks are a way for me to change that; to go back and do what I should have done. But I can't, and I don't. I watch myself scream at the part of me who is watching. She's screaming at me to do something, anything. But the part of me who is watching does nothing, she doesn't even move. There is no emotion on her face, almost as if she just doesn’t care. She sits there and watches until it's over. Just like the shaking of the head and excessive blinking Raven Simone did on That's So Raven after she'd have a vision (my favorite show as a kid, by the way), I come back to reality. I can find myself anywhere from pulled over on the side of the road not knowing how I got there, in the store staring at the package of chicken I had in my hand, in the car with friends, in my room, in the shower, or at work. Following a flashback, I am usually exhausted for the rest of day. I need to lie down and cry it out. Most of the time, I'm not able to. I internalize what I just experienced in the flashback, and that probably begins a vicious cycle since I never deal with any of it.
Nightmares are a weekly thing. Thankfully, not every single night, but they're enough to interrupt my sleep when I seem to need it the most. Intrusive and frightening thoughts are a daily thing the second I step out my front door. What if I see them today? What if I see someone else that reminds me of them? What if another traumatic experience happens to me today? What if I get raped or abducted? What if I get into a car accident on my way to work? It's almost as if the traumatic experiences caused some kind of paranoia. I am constantly preparing myself for the worst. If I prepare myself for the worst, maybe it won't affect me so badly, because I was already ready for it.
Trauma can cause memory loss. I used to think this was great. All 3 of my experiences were ongoing for an extended period of time. So I know that there were a lot of things that happened throughout each of them that I just don't remember. I used to think, sweet; that's one less thing I have to remember or try to deal with. Boy was I wrong. Each day, randomly, a new memory will pop into my head. A memory I had never thought about until that moment. A memory I never consciously knew happened until that moment. The brain blocks out a lot of things as way to cope. Instead of dealing with stressors like it should, it tries to block things out and it can actually cause that memory to no longer consciously exist. My psychiatrist explained it to me like a filing system. Your brain takes memories and thoughts and files them away in certain places. The brain will put some away in a file that it will always go back to; aka its conscious memory file. Other memories will be put into a file that the brain doesn't bring out as often; aka its subconscious file. Quite often, the brain will file those memories away the second they happen. This explains why I never consciously think about them. Every now and then, that file gets opened and a memory is brought out, causing me to suddenly, consciously, remember something that I, all along, subconsciously knew happened. I hate when a new memory comes about. It seems like there's already so much I don't want to think about, that there couldn't possibly be anymore out there.
Trauma has completely convinced me that I am not worthy of love. It has bound me to itself; sometimes it feels like I'm bound to it for an eternity. But then I remember that's not rational. It has convinced me that what happened to me is my fault and that I deserved every bit of it. Trauma has warped my perception of what love is supposed to be, and convinced me that what happened to me, was love. It has convinced me that I am a victim, not a survivor. Trauma has robbed me of life. It has robbed me of the zest I used to have for life. It has robbed me of enjoyment, love, peace, joy, trust, and happiness. It has robbed me of a healthy way of dealing with things, and a normal life. It robs me of every ounce of hope I am ever able to muster up. Trauma has made me its own personal prisoner. It makes my own skin feel like my own personal prison cell; a prison cell crawling with bugs and all I want to do is claw my way out of it; except I can't.
I hate everything about trauma. I hate everything about PTSD and all of the things that come with it. I hate all of the memories I am stuck with. Despite my faith and what I know is right, some days, I even hate the people who have traumatized me. I am slowly learning that being able to admit that is healthy, but feeling that hate is not. So as long as I work every single day towards love and forgiveness for those who have hurt me, I shouldn't feel guilt for admitting that.
The last 14 months have been nearly unbearable, but therapy has been my saving grace. I have learned so much about PTSD, my trauma, and how to conquer my demons. All of the things that trauma has convinced me of are not true, and my counselor is the one who taught me that.
I am worthy. I am SO worthy of love and gentleness. What happened to me is not my fault, and I did not deserve any of it. I am not a victim. I am a survivor. I am not what happened to me. I am not defined by the actions of those who have hurt me. I am not a reflection of the actions from others. Love is not supposed to hurt, whether it’s a relationship or a friendship. Love is not supposed to leave you traumatized. Trauma has kept me silent for so long. But it will no longer keep me down and keep me quiet.
Someday I will know why all of this had to hurt so much. Someday there will be a purpose to all of this, and I will be able to use it for good. I am not brave yet, but I'm going to be.
If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741
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