Coping With PTSD

Sometimes our inner animal shows.
Obviously I'm more prey than predator. I'd definitely eat berries and grass and be very fast and gentle.

Other people are vicious, meaning deliberately cruel or violent. The kind that would play with their food before they killed it, enjoying their fear.

Someone gestured at me like they were going to strangle me. They weren't actually going to, they may not have even been physically capable of it, but they reminded me vaguely of my abuser and the violence is what put me past the point of control.

I traded places with someone else, or as the person phrased it "I ran away."
That is the eyes of a predator searching for their pray.

Some people going through this world tackling and conquering to get their ways; not realizing that kindness will take them as far if not rather, not to mention it feels better emotionally and physically as well.

But what irks me is when they see self preservation as fleeting. In animal terms, I was protecting myself from a creature that wanted to eat me.  And they saw it as feeing shamefully. They did not say this, but that is the connotation associated with running away.

Personally I hate when people view the world as theirs to control. Who stomp on everyone and consider those they hurt to be weak.
I do not know if this person had such a view, for I am triggered currently, causing the preciously associated the flavors of my trauma to mix with this reminiscent being.  Like how Earl Grey smells like fruit loops so it reminds you of their taste as well.

So here I am, in a dark corner shaking. Listening to music and hiding. Like I had to do for most of my adolescence if I wanted to escape and feel safe. Hidden. Protected by the object forest surrounding me.
I haven't been in danger for almost seven years now, and yet one angered gesture brings me back to this place.

It's like an emotional Tardis, bringing me right back to where I was so many moons ago.

Two years ago, I would've gone home. Today I'll be fine. I have learned the tricks to teach my brain that I am safe. I have a cup of water. An ice pack. Stones and music. I'm not near anyone else, because even a hand on my shoulder would make me jump.
I am grateful to be able to find a spot in this busy city where I'm not surrounded by hundreds of others.
I am writing. I am breathing.

I am terrified, though I know I am in no real danger. It's only my demons haunting me now.
I am safe.

This just needs to get out of my system, like the flu.
I just wish people understood mental health they way they do physical.
That said I will get through this. I'll count to ten like Kimmie Schmidt (who very notably also has PTSD) and eventually feel like me again.

I see where I am, I am aware of the stress, and I will not let it keep me here.

The Most Important Post I'll Write for Awhile

I feel alone in this city, which is ironic as this is the most received I’ve ever felt.  People here don’t compare my passions to their own, feeling as if me loving something unusual to them somehow threatens their own passions.  Instead they very easily accept that what matters to me….matters to me, and more than that, they’re happy someone’s loving it. 

For instance, although hermit crabs are more common as pets on the east coast, fewer people here question how I could love Spencer as much as I do.  

In turn, this also makes change less terrifying.   Last week, for example, I started drawing with our store's iPad Pro, and suddenly coworkers and strangers asked if I was a visual artist; quickly I realized I was the only one laughing at the idea of that being true.

I had changed myself overnight and it was accepted effortlessly.  Back in college, you couldn't change your hair color without worrying about how it would be seen.  So it's odd to me, how in an environment so willing to see you as anything you so choose, that I still feel unhappy.

Perhaps it signals the end of me discovering myself: I found what I wanted and that’s who I am. And if having those choices validated doesn’t satisfy my craving for more, then I’m already onto the next item on the agenda.

When I was a kid I knew the type of person I wanted to be, and it seems I’ve finally grown into the shoes.

So that just leaves walking somewhere.

When  I visited Philly in April, almost a year after being away, I started crying when one of my friends/mentors noted how much I had grown; as much as I wanted that to be true, it was hard to believe. 

Life is monotonous here.  Every day looks the same, feels the same, so it’s only logical to feel like you’re the same, too.

But consider a rock at the edge of the sea, longing to be pulled into the magnificent chaos.  Every waves makes a promise as they come towards it, and every wave breaks its heart when they leave it behind.  It’s tortured in the monotony, with each little splash teasing it with the salty taste of adventure. 

And yet.

Each wave that brushes against it helps it glisten in the sun, tugging away at its imperfections, subtly chiseling it towards is truest form, where it’ll only bear the weight of what defines it the most.  And eventually the day will come when the final wave convinces the rock to let go of the final burden rooting it, and the rock will be carried back with the wave, towards adventure it longs for no longer.

So that’s my final business here.  I have to let go of the final piece keeping me here, so that I can move on to greater things.

And I know what it is, too.

I met a dog in our store the other day, and when I kneeled to pet him, he climbed onto my knees, lifted his front legs and hugged  me.  His owner commented that he likes me and that he’s such a loving dog; and how shocking it is that when she found him, he had been stabbed.

The pup had been recently groomed and when he walked away I could see the scars from his wounds.  And yet if his owner hadn’t told me, I never would’ve known.  That dog was more loving and more forgiving than most people.

A few days ago I tried to find a book I hadn’t finished.  My room is still in the pandemonium of moving five times in a year and no longer owning a bookcase, and so I couldn’t find the book.  But I found another I hadn’t finished and I tossed it into my bag instead.  I take so long to read that I continued where I had left off rather than restarting the book.  The book as a whole takes common children’s stories and breaks down what the symbolism means in adult psycology.  This particular chapter was about “the mistaken zygote,” a.k.a. The Ugly Duckling a.k.a. the trauma we face when we are abused as children and have to grow up too fast in the face of not receiving the unconditional love and care that we need in our developmental years.

I also have been watching The West Wing, and there was an episode where a character works with a psychologist who diagnoses him with PTSD.  The worst the doctor says to him are such: “What we need to get you to do is be able to remember the [traumatic event] without reliving it, and you have been reliving it.”

The book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, phrases it incredibly as well: 

“There is another issue to be dealt with.  Mistaken Zygotes learn to be survivors.  It is touch to spend years among those who cannot help you flourish.  Being able to say one is a survivor is an accomplishment…And yet there comes a time in the individuation process where the threat or trauma has significantly past.  Then is the time to go onto the next stage of survivorship, to healing and thriving.”

Now I’d be too nervous to say the threat has past, but I met a customer who understood quite a lot of this and confidently told me  I didn’t need a restraining order.      I’ve been here for a year and was only stalked once.  It triggers me, I’m still coping with the trauma, but I am safe.  Definitely safer than I was then.

The book continues: “One can take so much pride in being a survivor that it becomes a hazard to further creative development.”  For me, I think it’s that I went so many years on my own, people not knowing how hard my life was, before and after the abuse, that saying I survived validated the struggle I still felt I needed to prove.  

But,  “at some point, allying with it exclusively begins to inhibit new development…Liken it to a tough little plant that managed — without water, sunlight, nutrients — to sen out a brave and ornery leave anyway.  In spite of it all.  But thriving means, now that the bad times are behind, to put ourselves into occasions of the lush, the nutritive, the light, and there to flourish.”

That’s greater than “making survivorship the centerpiece of one’s life.”

That dog did it.  He is a creature made entirely of love, and still he was betrayed and almost killed by those he had chosen.  Miraculously he survived, but he didn’t remain in his abused state, bowing his head to those he feared would hurt him again.  He forgave and trusted and let go of the burdens rooting him to the shore — and now is as happy as he could be.

That’s my next step.  I didn’t just accidentally bump into all of these themes in the span of a week.  They’re the waves that have chosen to come towards me, highlighting that which I’m gripping to tightly, which in turn is gripping tightly onto me.  They splash me with the importance and safety of letting it go.  Ultimately, I’d rather say I’m happy than say I’m a survivor.  So if I can change myself overnight, tomorrow I will wake up in the direction of health, moving  a step closer towards being a thriving individual.