Everyone worries and everyone has fears but what happens when your thoughts overtake your life? What happens when you have tailored your daily activities around your fears? Living with PTSD is paralyzing. You forget to live with a purpose and cannot find enjoyment in the simplest things. It’s never feeling safe even around the people you love and trust. There is no real comfort zone. It’s living in a constant hell of wondering who’s going to hurt you, and avoiding places where danger might be. The emotional scars stay with you for the rest of your life, and the physical scars are constant reminders. At some points, you distance yourself from everyone. You are an emotional time bomb. Not everyone understands you, and those who don’t you crave the most affection from. Explaining what you feel is troubling. You sound “crazy” and people tell you to move on, and that you’re safe now. But you don’t know what safe feels like because you haven’t felt it before. Your house is not safe, your car is not safe, your friends are not safe, and you are not safe.
You can’t look at someone without thinking “Are they going to attack me?” Your gut tells you to run even when you are in a safe place. You convince yourself they are going to hurt you, or they are going to do something dangerous. You start to panic and sweat. Everything around you feels like It’s about to end. You feel like you’re having a heart attack. You cry and no one understands. But, to you, that is considered an “everyday” feeling. Avoiding eye contact or glancing at people is an everyday reminder. “Do not look,” you tell yourself, but you always do.
You avoid public places, and transportation in fear of something happening to you. It’s avoiding a small space with a man you do not know. It’s avoiding looking nice in public in fear of someone looking at you with bad intentions. Trains to visit your boyfriend or friends are terrifying. You are constantly thinking if the man next to you is going to hurt you. You don’t see the nice people out there. Instead, you see the stalkers, the rapist, and the killers. Every time you are in a public place such as downtown, or a concert you have this gut feeling someone is watching you. It makes you physically ill, and your heart races.
It’s afraid to close your eyes and sleep. You sit there in bed, heart racing, and mind wandering. You can’t sleep and the insomnia takes over your life. Thoughts of people breaking in and hurting you consume your mind. You recheck the locks, but that’s still not enough. You barricade yourself in your room just to get some peace of mind. You cannot close your eyes. Sleeping pills have no affect on your body. You lay there crying praying for sleep and praying for silence of your thoughts. Images consume your mind. You cannot watch the news because then you will have nightmares, and nightmares mean no sleep.
You have absolutely zero control. Control over your body is no longer a thing. We get violent when we are angry. We constantly are on alert for things happening around us. Trapped inside your own mind it’s almost like you are on auto pilot. Panic attacks come on suddenly. You’ll be in class one day and your mind will be set on “Where will I hide if something happens”, “Why is that man in the hallway looking around like that,” “The door should be locked.” A panic attack will hit you in the middle of class, at a family dinner, or lying on the couch. Your body takes control and you have no say in what it does.
Pushing the people you love away you suffer in silence. It’s a daily battle to get through the day and you are fighting it alone. You can choose to let people in, and better yourself or you can choose to continue your life in the dark. But, for many people exiting their mental entrapment is not possible. So you deal with it, and you allow this terrible monster to consume you and eat away at you until you are nothing.
Treatment is out there.
