happiness

My Internal Hurricane.

 

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{Via pinterest / secretsofagoodgirl.com}

For the past couple of years, I’ve had PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder).

To be honest, I believe what was going on before that was PTSD, too, but two years ago I began to develop, and experience, clear-cut PTSD symptoms.

It’s shit. They’re shit. The symptoms are shit. But they used to be so much more shit than they are now. I’ve learnt to make friends with them, slowly. For a while it was like making friends with a hurricane, so I didn’t.

Hurricanes destroy you or anything else in their path, and that’s what the symptoms were seemingly doing, so why on earth would I sit with them and breathe with them? Why would I notice them? You don’t notice a hurricane, you run in the other-fucking-direction.

The symptoms were causing chaos with everything and anything I knew before. They tore down bridges between my openness and my ability to trust the world. They introduced wide-open wounds — big gaping holes — where these bridges of interaction and trust once were.

They cut off the contact I had with the world around me in the way I had always known, and left me needing to build new bridges between me and myself, before then beginning to build bridges between me and the world around me, and me and people. Bridges I’m still learning how to build.

The symptoms tore up my Ability to Cope roadways, leaving messy and terrifying paths that I couldn’t see, only step down one foot at a time, instead.

They haunted, and seemingly stripped me of, my sanity. The ground beneath my feet became quicksand. I forgot what it was like to be stood on bricks or concrete, or grass.

Even though the ground I stood on before PTSD wandered into my life, was painful and full of inner turmoil, it was still more solid than the quicksand I began to stand on and get to know.

I spent a good year and a half running as fast away from my hurricane — the symptoms — as I could. Trying to hold on to what I’d known before, or resisting what I was learning as new truth.

At the beginning of my running, I was trying to cling on to at least one or two bricks from the foundations I used to live on, no matter how rocky they once were. And now, when I run, it’s because the new ground I was see in front of me feels too simple, too without-trauma, too easy…

My Ability to Cope roadways are new, and increasingly healthy. The roadways — my roadway — is still messy, but the difference is that this mess is a mess that I’m becoming familiar with. A mess I’m not so afraid of.

A mess I’m beginning to trust, understand and truly know — that makes me healthy and human. A mess that unites me with the rest of the world, not a mess that leaves me needing to hide away from it.

My bridges are building again, but they’re being built slowly and with wisdom. I’m learning to honor my defenses, and to protect myself. I’m learning that my wounding is here and I can’t escape it anymore, but the wounding can come with me and no longer be abandoned.

The bridges I’m building are ones of mutual respect and understanding, and love without conditions.

One of the things I still struggle with the most from my symptoms, my hurricane, that is still here by the bucketloads, is the survival. The way my body is prepped for danger, for attack, for protection, for threat, almost constantly.

A threat that professionals would say is perceived, but a threat that, to the part of me on guard and alert, isn’t perceived — it’s fucking real.

She knows this threat, this danger, is coming, and she needs to keep my body ready and alert for this. Sort of like waiting for a hurricane to come that you’ve heard about on the news. Because if it came and I wasn’t ready, I’d be fucked.

If the threat came — the one that is seemingly going to hit any second — and I wasn’t prepared to deal with it or to attack back or to hold on to my protective armor that this part holds up for me, then I’d be screwed. I’d be wide open, raw, and irreparably wounded.

And she wouldn’t have done her job. This part of me who protected me so, so, well during my childhood and early adult years, would have failed, according to my critic, and according to her.

Her lifelong duty is to protect me and so protect me she does… but the thing is, it’s painful and it’s not applicable to my life now.

She’s hurting and she’s exhausted, but she doesn’t know how to stop and let things be different, because to her, life was the same way for so long, why on earth would it be any different now?

She doesn’t understand that things can be simple, that I can feel safe and relaxed, and it’s okay — it doesn’t mean that something is going to happen any second or that I’m giving up or opening myself up for wounding.

She needs to be alert and on guard, on top of things, because — to her — the idea or feeling of simplicity and calm is when the shit happens. Growing up, when things were calm, things were the scariest because she knew a storm — a hurricane — was going to hit any second, any moment, any hour.

So now, to have calm and stillness, peace and stability, feels just like the calm before the storm.

She needs to witness that things can be different before she can begin to soften and mingle, to integrate, with other parts of me who are here to protect me. She needs to know it’s safe. She knows only time will show her this.

The parts of me that guide me and tell me I’m safe, it’s safe for things to be simple, are parts that are blossoming lately. Even though I’ve never experienced it, their innate wisdom shines through and ripples through me.

They know that this way of living on alert, of having my body in constant survival, isn’t the only way of living and doesn’t need to be the only way for me. And they know it won’t be.

They know that I’m figuring things out and that this figuring takes time — the time the part of me watching out for danger, looking out for a hurricane, needs.

I’m walking the line between the old and the new — between what I grew up with and what I’m growing into, between health and stability, and trauma and turmoil — and I’m beginning to watch myself build bridges between them.

I hope this hyper-vigilance softens. I hope that these parts of me who knows things can be different, and knows that what happened then won’t ever happen now, will continue to bloom into a stronger presence.

Because they know this time is only a chapter in my lifelong story.

A chapter that will bring me strength and wisdom that I wouldn’t get in any other way.

 

*****

{Let things be different}

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Amani Omejer

Amani Omejer

Amani lives in Bristol, UK. She can be found enjoying herbalism, swimming in rivers, surfing, laughing, and talking about life with friends or anyone who will listen. She is a firm believer in telling your story in order to heal. She is currently writing a book. Connect with her on Facebook or take a look at her website.
Amani Omejer
Amani Omejer