It’s been a month!
Hey folks, I hope you are sailing through life just fine. This time the frequency of my writing a blog has increased due to various fights my life throws at me. It’s been exactly a month since I am writing again and this time I would like to share a story of how my new friend, PTSD is playing along with me. PTSD and I have been friends for more than a month now. Still, there are times I am completely unknown of the fact that a trigger/flashback might ruin my day. Still getting used to fighting such demons, slowly and gradually. The recent event in my life not only has broken me mentally and emotionally but it has shattered my belief system as a human being of trusting someone or loving to be precise.
There is n number of questions I need answers to, but I know I won’t find one. There are times when I doubt myself too much that I question my existence, my worth, my self-respect, my integrity and whatnot. Trauma has been such that it makes sure it sneaks you where you expect the least. PTSD is weird literally, it shows you such deep trauma in the form of flashbacks that my chest gets so heavy I feel like I might have a heart attack but it is heartache. The broken soul within me who has been traumatized to the core craves for help, craves for that one hug and that sentence,” everything will be fine, you got this.” Little did my heart knows when reality hits that I am the only one who will hug it out and say those lines because it’s my fight and I gotta fight on my own though with all the support I have been getting some things are done alone; harsh reality. There are days when I am too numb to think about what just happened, there are days when I cry because of this heartache and PTSD gets too much to take in. It’s not easy to fight every day, it’s not but it isn’t impossible either.
I have fought some really big demons in my past, which are very well documented but this one I am failing and getting up, again and again, to tell myself that I can’t give up. The worst part is it hits when I try to be at peace. On one of these days, I went for a short drive to calm my nerves down but little did I know that calmness would be taken away from me the moment the day came to an end because voila, PTSD hit me and it made sure I question my consciousness to be this calm and the whole idea of how can I be like this? How can I be happy? But the truth is I can have carefree days because you know what I deserve them. PTSD wasn’t what I expected when this year started but life has thrown me into such shit holes to make me realise who I am and I will again emerge out of this dark. The journey has already started but the road to recovery this time is tricky. Still getting used to the whole concept of this new friend, PTSD.
It took me a long time to realise that not everything in life is meant to be a beautiful story. Not every person we feel something deep and moving with is meant to make a home within us, sometimes people come into our lives to teach us some lessons. I am slowly learning how to forgive the past. How to accept the end of that beautiful thing, that sometimes the timing isn’t right, that sometimes the messiness of life gets in the way. But most of all I am slowly learning how to just be in the moment, how to exist. And as Pema Chodron says in one of her books,” the only way to go further is to open these doors and windows and not protect yourself anymore but work whatever arrives. That’s the only way to wake up further. The motivation for making friends with yourself becomes wanting to help others; these two work together. You know you can’t help others if you’re not making friends with yourself.” I am being my friend here and telling myself daily that healing from this trauma is not a journey, it’s a fight. Carrying a broken heart that aches isn’t some ordinary day to day affair. It’s something I have to fight daily with endless unanswered questions. As my mother says, pain makes you stronger, fear makes you braver but heartbreak makes you wiser. So thank the past for a better future; learning this.
Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can’t process it because it doesn’t fit with what came before or what comes afterwards. It’s a war within yourself that never goes away. But I will keep fighting and won’t give up because I am not alone.
Ending my blog by sharing this quote I love-
“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”
-Hermann Hesse
Keep going, no matter what. Sending you lots of hope, strength and courage. See you next time.
