I am a trauma survivor. I’m not sure when I accepted that, but I have.
Trauma isn’t something that just your brain survives, but something which imprints on your body.
But your brain tricks you into thinking that everything is OK, until one day, your brain and your body stop. They stop blocking the pain, they stop blocking the memories, and then your body is flooded with the agony you’ve been hiding in the crevices of your skin.
My brain stopped tricking me into believing that I was OK a few weeks ago. The memories have begun to seep into my body like ink spilled on a pad of paper – the color soaking up all of the light. I’m doing alright, even though I feel like my memories are flooding out of me faster than I know how to think about them.
The stabbing pain in my lower back is coming from somewhere, the tightness in my shoulders and neck is a reaction to a memory.
There was a time when these memories would have pushed me over the edge. There was a time when I would have taken these feelings out on myself. I would have isolated. I would not have been able to cope. Today I feel like I am handling myself better than I knew that I could.
But I fear my body these days. I fear the new pains are associated with something I can’t remember. I fear that every time I feel the drumbeats of anxiety, I will remember a piece of the horrifying puzzle that is my trauma.
Not everyone recovers their memories, and at least a part of me is jealous of those who do not. Things I didn’t understand suddenly make sense, and I can’t help but hate that the pandora’s box of my trauma has opened, leaving me to sort my own history.
Linear timelines have been shattered. Voices distorted. My timestream has met with a trauma paradox, and that paradox refuses to give me the tools to understand what happened when. Some thing I know concretely to be true. Some things I find out I have been making up to make the gaps seem impossible. Knowledge of myself has become treacherous.
But I am not panicking. I am not hurting myself. I am taking deep breaths and swimming to the surface. I am talking about my fears, and I am letting them work through my body.
I will not be owned by my pain, I will fight until it is mine to control.
I loved this post. I shared it with a family member of mine who is dealing with similar challenges. Thanks for writing this Elsa.
I feel I was very fortunate with PTSD because although it’s not over, forever, but it was a period of 18 months when it was bad, and now it’s like scar tissue – it will ache a bit, but it cannot cause me dramatic symptoms (although I’m also aware, it might if it were tested in a more dramatic fashion than it has been).
You say, “The memories have begun to seep into my body like ink spilled on a pad of paper – the color soaking up all of the light. I’m doing alright, even though I feel like my memories are flooding out of me faster than I know how to think about them.”
This is an experience I remember well. I’m a survivor of domestic violence, so these memories came from over ten years and came out as an utter mess. I thought I was feeling much better before the wave carrying the very worst of it hit the shore.
The two things I found most difficult – intellectually – about these memories were the detail, which seemed too real to be true – there was part of me thinking, “Can it really be that I have buried this for years yet now I really remember the exact words, or the exact sequence of events?” – and then there was the level of trauma. I think there can be almost a lid on fear when a frightening thing is happening, but the memory – especially in the form of a flashback – can actually be more frightening. Also, of course, with abuse, one hopefully comes to value oneself, one’s physical safety and one’s life a lot more after the fact and thus threats to those things gain meaning.
Good luck working through all this. I hope you at least get periods of respite and calm amid the flood. Take care of yourself.