wisdom

For Those Who Feel Things Intensely: We Deserve Love.

I hate trauma. It sucks. It feels different and scary each time I feel triggered — that overwhelming, groundless-leaving, kind of triggered.

The times when my feet get lifted up from underneath me and I feel shaken deep to the core with a memory or experience of I am not sure what… sometimes it feels clear what is surfacing, but then other times, it doesn’t.

It feels messy and confusing as hell.

There isn’t a foundation on which I can step on to make sense of anything. My mind so desperately needs to, longs to, but I can’t. There is an eclectic collection of stuff I am wanting, needing, to process, share, figure out.

I feel helpless, lost, and scared beneath it… I so desperately want it all to make sense, I want to articulate it with someone who gets it, who understands the making of trauma in the system.

A softer, gentler, part of me steps in here and wraps me in a warm embrace. The last few days I have been trying to process like a motherfucker and I feel drained. I so desperately want to understand and figure it all out and not leave any stone unturned because I want to heal, I want to thrive, but I feel exhausted.

I need to heal, but I need to sleep too.

And we heal in our sleep, it just feels hard to trust that sometimes — that it is safe to stop, to rest, to let my body do the healing. The part of me who needs to know what is happening constantly, the part of me who needs to be awake, alert, struggles to know it is safe to let go and wait.

The need for productivity, the need to feel and be busy, is what comes up when I think of sleep. The need to be with it blinds me. I feel scared of letting go. Trauma paralyzes me. My body feels numb and distant from me, a line cuts between my head and my body.

I feel confused how I can feel things so differently: sometimes a whirlwind of busy lives inside of me — anxiety, stress, a whirlwind of memories, adrenaline floods me, unable to be still without feeling overwhelmed with trauma hitting me, so I move… I’m not still in these moments, these hours or days.

And other times I feel stuck, frozen, lost inside the grief and fear in me, unable to move or sleep or do anything except be exactly with what I’m experiencing. Not mindfully — I literally feel/am frozen in it.

Stuck inside a loop of incessant critical self-talk, harshly encouraging myself to do more — even if that more is to give myself an act of self-care, to stop, to sleep, to reach out, to eat — but I feel unable to meet these demands, unable to even move.

So I stay, and bash myself over the head — and the heart — with stories of how I am not enough, not doing these things I need or want… and feel fear and worry because also, part of me doesn’t want.

Part of me doesn’t want to do anything at all. The voice of should is there, over my shoulder, telling me I should be wanting to move, I should be wanting to do… but I can’t.

I feel confused at the tug, the pull, my mind and physical experience has on my desire to do anything loving or productive in these moments. Or any other when I feel, or am, lost in overwhelm, confusion, sadness, anger, or fear.

I feel deep in concern and worry that I’m not doing more, not reaching out, getting the support I need — from anyone or myself — but I feel helpless.

I don’t really know how to because I seemingly (in these moments) can’t — how do I explain my experience? What do I say? I feel shitty… I feel grief… I feel angry… I feel sad… those words somehow don’t really cut it when I feel so incredibly lost, helpless or scared. They don’t meet the intensity of my experience.

Sometimes I feel scared of the grip that trauma has on me, the label of PTSD, the desperate need to understand and articulate my experience but not feeling able to. But other times I see the beauty in it, the fragility of it.

The way it opens me up to others’ experiences, the way it teaches me the way that being a human is so multi-faceted and always so fucking different, moment to moment. The way I get to know, see, and meet myself in all these different places, in all these different feelings.

I hope that one day I know a slightly less intense experience, but I laugh writing that because what if life is intense? What if things are just intense? What if I am intense and I feel things intensely, and that’s okay? Because it is. It sure doesn’t fucking feel like it, but ultimately I know it is.

I do hope — and have faith that — I will continue to heal and know things to be different, to not feel such a tight grip of my psyche or the fear and grief I feel in my body, but for now, may I — and everybody else — know forgiveness and gentleness in moments of fear and judgment.

Because we deserve love, whatever our experience.

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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