A day in the life of PTSD.
Trigger warning for all the beautiful PTSD warriors and sexual assault survivors. Nothing in depth about the events themselves, but an honest discussion of the effects ❤️
It's Not Your Fault.
For years I have carried a huge source of pain,
One riddled with guilt that runs deep through each vein.
I blame myself for what happened, I didn't say no.
But I was a young girl, and I didn't know.
I didn't know that fear could paralyse your voice,
With my naive view, I thought I didn't have a choice.
All I knew was it hurt; I felt scared, and alone.
I hadn't yet learned the value of picking up my phone.
Calling for help could have ended it all,
But instead it became months of an internal brawl.
I was already hurting before he entered my life,
He just added to the pain, as a new form of knife.
I couldn't accept what had happened, so I tried to make it right,
I internalised the torment, and hid the truth from the light.
I thought I deserved it, I thought maybe it was normal.
So the only reaction I could think of, was to make the relationship 'formal'.
Now it still haunts me, both when asleep and awake,
But there isn't much more secrecy I can bare to take.
The shame has stopped me talking, as I find excuses for what he did,
But I know I need the healing that comes from opening that lid.
All the burning questions why, all the pain within my secret vault.
Started to lift the night I spoke up and heard; 'It's truly, not your fault'.
Simone Brick, 2019.
May 20, 2019. Age 24.
For the sixth day in a row, I wake up curled into the foetal position. My nails have dug ridges into my legs, and I have the all too familiar feeling that my muscles have been tensing to their maximum capacity for hours. Sleep is exhausting. It is easier to be awake at the moment, able to at least somewhat distract from the vivid images flowing through my mind.
Trying to shake out my aching arms and legs, the knot in my stomach overwhelms me again and I begin panic. Uncurling my body evokes a sense of vulnerability I am not able to cope with at the moment. My dog Maya senses my distress and curls up next to me, leaning into me heavily. We lie there for a while as I try to wrap my head around the day ahead of me. It is exam time, so study is a must, but I can't get my mind to stop for long enough to even contemplate that.
With my heart pumping hard and muscles unable to let go, I am incapable of doing anything yet. I know this will pass if I let myself feel it, but the act of lying here, in such pain, stuck in my mind with no one able to help; it's torture. I have spent all night reliving the memories I have been trying to push back into the dark recesses of my mind for years. After a trigger, night time is where they come back out. When my conscious guard is down and my subconscious reminds me just how much trauma I still have to work through. In the early hours of this morning, my mind brought forth another new one. Another memory from my past that up until now had been locked away and forgotten. A memory that had me waking up with a scream in my throat; but these screams are almost always stifled by the dry heaving they provoke.
The next 30 minutes passes as if it was a whole day. My body is stuck in the feelings of the past while my mind tries to recentre in the moment and think of the future. Eventually, I find enough of a middle ground to drag myself up and out of bed. I stand in a scorching hot shower trying to clean the feelings out from within me. As my body warms and muscles relax, waves of emotion well up in me and I sit down in the shower, tears starting to fall as I try to feel the pain and release it.
By 10:30 I make it to my desk to try to study. I have an exam tomorrow, but after 90 minutes of trying to focus only to find myself rereading lines over and over, getting simple practice questions wrong, or spacing out completely for chunks of time, I give up. Instead, I head to the gym. I put headphones in with a mind numbing podcast, music must be avoided as it can become painful to listen to, and try to drown out both the world and my thoughts through the combination of movement and external noise. I spend 60 minutes on the spin bike staring into space, as always comforted by the fact that my heart should be pumping hard and my muscles should be tired doing this. Any tense feelings or internal signs of panic are masked by my body keeping me moving and working hard. I follow that up with 90 minutes of lifting weights and injury rehab, trying to get the most out of each movement and focus on the feeling in each muscle. This grounds me in my body in a more comfortable way and distracts me from the weight within my chest that it feels like nothing could ever lift.
Exhausted, I head home to try to study again. The weight follows me, as does the feeling of impending panic. Although now I'm not so sure if the panic is more because of the fear of another flashback taking over my mind and putting me vividly back in the past, or because I'm scared I may fail tomorrows exam.
I sit at my desk and try again, but the words continue to swim on the page and not make any sense. Trying to gain more control over my body and mind, I lie on my yoga mat and try a breathing meditation. Bad idea. The act of lying down in an open position evokes a flashback strong enough to have me curled up and crying in seconds. I don't know how to feel this, but my body won't let me not feel it. I pant and panic and cry, unable to escape. I can no longer see the desk next to me or the window in front of me, but am back in the past, only able to see the places I never want to go near again.
Resigning to the fact that the exam is tomorrow's problem and I'm not going to get anything done today, I decide to take Maya for a walk for the first time in 45 days. I am injured at the moment, and would give anything to be able to run right now to help me cope with these feelings. Truth be told if I was following doctors orders completely I would still be on crutches right now, having fractured my sacrum a little less than 6 weeks ago. But at the moment, every time I go to pick up the crutches I am overwhelmed by further feelings of vulnerability and helplessness that I cannot cope with. I want to be able to do what is best for my body, but as a dear mentor said I am more than a bag of bones and muscle and what is currently best for my body destroys my mental state in ways that are hard to describe. Even though I can't run, I need the feeling that at any moment I could if I had to get away. I need to feel like I am powerful and strong enough to escape, even though I know I have nothing external to escape from.
So, in the interest of trying to get back in touch with a healthy state of mind, I walk. It is just me and my pup, side by side on the local trails as the sun sets and moon rises. I breathe fresh ocean air, feel the trail beneath my feet, and the fact that I haven't been able to do this for a month and a half now makes it feel so incredible and new again. For the next hour I am able to just be grateful. Here, I am whole again, and for the first time in almost a week my muscles do relax and the weight lifts.
Arriving home I am alone. Mum and dad are away at the moment, and I am thankful to have the space and time to process everything that is happening in my own way and not have to talk to anyone, but it does add to the feeling of being helpless. It has come to the toughest part of the day. I am exhausted. I desperately want and need sleep. But just looking at my bed makes me want to cry. The place that is where my body and mind are meant to be rejuvenated and prepared for a new day has become a prison. I contemplate sleeping elsewhere, but I know running from the pain and fear doesn't work. I know that no matter how hard it is, I need to face it and feel it.
Lying down. the weight that finally lifted during my walk returns, only heavier, and more overwhelming. It will be hours before I can bring myself to actually shut my eyes, and trying to be with myself through this discomfort is too much tonight so I call a friend. As I speak out loud to another human for the first time today, my voice shakes. 'I am scared' I hear myself say, 'I can't breathe'. My dear friend knows this pain all too well, and it is through her understanding and care that she is able to reach me and truly comfort me. With the knowledge that I am not alone, I hang up the phone and try to gather the courage to shut my eyes. Curled up so tight in an attempt to hold myself together, I still feel like I am about to explode at any moment. Surrounded by soft toys, heat packs and Maya, I close my eyes and start to face the pain. Blocking it out won't work, it is through the pain that relief will come. With hope that someday soon this all will pass, I settle in for another night of feeling everything I wish I could never feel again
NIGHTMARES
Night time descends with a crushing darkness.
Into the abyss my mind travels.
Great desire for rest, great fear of the fall.
Hoping this time it won't hurt so much.
To allow sleep allows the subconscious to take over.
My heart thumping, lungs squeezing, legs shaking.
All I want is some peace, from the past and present.
Reruns of my worst hours is what I am offered.
Each time I awake with a jolt and swallow a scream.
Shake it off, try again, a new day will dawn.
So today ends the push-up challenge, and I am ending the daily blogs with my current struggle. This is a big part of my life at the moment, and although the darkest days come and go, I do live in fear of when the next trigger will come and derail me for another week or two. As a result of speaking up when this trigger happened back in May, I was able to gather the support I needed to start a new therapy process with a new psychologist. Previously, I had managed to hide most of my episodes, and therefore deny they happened and move on once they passed without addressing them. It is never easy to go back and start that process again, as every part of me wanted to continue to try and deny the thoughts and feelings . Living in denial is never going to end well though, so I know that in order to move beyond the triggers and pain, I must first learn to feel and experience them all. Turning to face them rather than do what I have been doing for years and finding an escape.
All to often I hear people say to 'move on' and to 'leave the past in the past'. But when you have PTSD, it is not your conscious mind stuck in the past, but your subconscious. The buried traumas will come out to affect you in some way whether you choose to face and accept them or not; so really there is no way to move on without first going back and moving through. I have complex PTSD, because I have many different traumas spanning years of my life, resulting in many different triggers that all affect each other. Some of these traumas are a result of my treatments, particularly when I was sectioned and restrained. Others are form during my illnesses, losing time and 'coming to' having self harmed without even knowing I was doing it. It was like waking up into a nightmare rather than falling asleep into one, and the fear that came afterwards I always tried to escape from, so it just grew in me and comes back out at random times now.
Then there is what the poem at the start of this entry is about. Yes, I was raped back when I was 18. It was not before I became ill and did not cause me to become ill, as I was already severely into my eating disorder, self harming, and had been suffering depression, anxiety and panic attacks for years. Because of these though, I was young and vulnerable, which made me an easy target. Since opening up to a few people around me, I am beginning to realise just how scarily common this is. For me, because I was so confused at the time and didn't know what to do, I had a reaction that is only just starting to make sense to me. I had never had a boyfriend before, never had sex before, and had no idea how relationships worked. All I knew of relationships was that of those around me, and therefore in my mind the only person you ever had sex with was someone who was your partner in life at that time. I was petrified, and looking for any way to make what had transpired not my reality, so instead of speaking up or turning away from the man that took advantage of me in the worst way possible, I kept going back and entered into a 'relationship' of sorts with him for over 8 months. Because like many I had been conditioned to have the view that if he was my boyfriend, surely anything that happened behind closed doors, before or during the relationship, couldn't actually be classed as 'rape'.
So, I relived that first night and worse over and over and over again for months on end as my life fell apart around me and my weight plummeted. It was the same year and time I halved my weight, had my first suicide attempt, and nearly died of starvation. I did not start to gain weight until he was finally out of the picture.
All the while it was happening I had myself convinced it was normal, despite the fact he was 12 years older than me, dealt openly with drugs and many other alarming things happened that would have alerted almost anyone to the contrary. I was trying to convince everyone around me it was all fine too while living a secret life that I was too ashamed to let anyone see. I'm not sure how good of a job I did of hiding it all, but it was such a rough time all around that not many people questioned me about him much. I was showing externally that he was making me 'happy' and that's all anyone wanted. In reality, he was making me sicker and feeding into the part of my mind that thought I deserved pain and torture. I have blamed myself for everything that happened for years, and I still do to a point because I can't seem to stop my mind coming up with reasons I was in the wrong. Knowing what I know now though, I am starting to see all the things that were so very wrong on his part. I'm not ready to go into much more detail than that until I do my own internal work with my psych, but those months of pain and at times fearing for my life, I now relive all too often in flashbacks and dreams. There is so much pent up emotion and fear that it bubbles over uncontrollably and leaves me incapacitated and unable to cope well with life for a while.
This is the fear and reality of PTSD that many people live with each day, and is all too often associated with all types of mental illness as the treatments, behaviours and illnesses all have a way of making sufferers vulnerable to traumatic events.
Why I am ending on this rather than a happy story is to show that mental health and recovery truly is a journey, and I'm not sure it has an end point. I know more high points will come after I will learn and grow through this pain too. But so will more low points that will again have me reaching out for people and services. That is why this push up challenge means so much, because we all have things to push through and when it gets really hard is when it counts the most. Today, after three weeks of daily push ups, I am tired but also stronger for having done it.
The money we are raising will go straight to Headspace, to keep the necessary and life saving services that millions of Australians will need for years to come available and affordable. If you can afford to donate, please do. Consider it an investment in your future, for if you or those you love ever need access to the services Headspace and organisations like them offer. We are all touched by mental illness in some way, and Headspace are there when people need it most. They were therefore for me throughout this whole journey and became one of the puzzle pieces along the way to finding myself again. To donate go to https://www.thepushupchallenge.com.au/team/the-power-to-push-on.
The blogs will continue - not daily but more likely twice a week, and topics will now broaden to encompass, running, nutrition, overall health and lifestyle as well as upcoming travel and adventures. I have so many more lessons of the journey to explore, as well as other incredible human beings stories to share. It means the world to have people follow along but I would be doing this whether there is one reader or thousands. Power builds when knowledge is shared. Always feel free to reach out to me if there is a particular topic of interest or if you yourself have a story you want to share to help others learn. As always, the mission is to turn the lessons and rising of any one human into the subsequent rising of many. Thank You for being part of the journey.
Still We Rise.