PTSD

PTSD can be quite overwhelming at times. It’s as if there’s a whole other world living inside your head, replaying events over and over. Clouding your mind with lost touches and drastic events. Some days are easy. Some days you get through the 24 hour period without thinking of what caused you harm, and everything is okay. Some days it’s harder. Some days you feel it all. You feel the hands on your body, the car hitting someone else’s, the force of a fist… Some days you just can’t get through — but the kicker is that you DO.

One thing I’ve come to realize when it relates to my PTSD is that I’ve always gotten through it. In the moment it feels like forever. In the moment it feels real. Like I’m inside that car all over again, accidentally running that red light, hitting that car at full force, blacking out and waking up wondering if I just killed someone or not. Like I’m in my bed, and he’s there too. Like I’m 9 and my step dad’s best friend has his hands in my underwear all over again. I got through that. I had the strength to get through that. And I still have the strength to get through the flashbacks that my PTSD supplies me with.

Post traumatic stress disorder is a condition that supplies persistent mental and emotional stress on a person based off of either psychological or physical pain. Symptoms can include nightmares, the inability to sleep, and constant and vivid recollection of what caused the harm to begin with. There is medication to help with the nightmares and flashbacks, I’m on it. It helps me, more so with nightmares than with flashbacks, but it helps.

When I was in third grade I was molested, which I previously mentioned above. I didn’t admit to it at first, cause I wasn’t sure what had happened. So I tucked that memory away until about 10th grade when it hit me in the passenger seat of my sisters car, and I just said “[insert name here] touched me when I was younger.” And I remember her just laughing. Not putting her under a bad light, but she wasn’t sure how to feel about it either. From this event stemmed a fear of being touched, primarily by men. So when I got my first boyfriend, who was young and wanted only to touch, I was scared. I was scared to lose my virginity. I was scared to be intimate. My first time I wasn’t exactly ready. But it happened, and I got through it.

Moral of the story is that no matter how real it feels in the moment, and no matter how debilitating it may feel, it’s not real. Remind yourself in that moment that it is not real. It’s just a memory, a vivid memory, that will pass, and you will survive it. I know it’s easy to say, and easy to read coming from a 24 year old girl on the internet, but I live it too. I’ve felt it too. And I’m still here.

love always,
Bailey