When you think of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a white girl from Olathe, Kansas who has never fought in a war and has had a very privileged life is probably the last person you think of. If you think of me at all. And I get that. I didn’t want to believe the diagnosis at first either. My anxiety and depression have probably been around since birth due to chemical imbalances in my brain. But together due to life experience they morphed into PTSD. My many therapists believe my PTSD began to spiral out of control when I lost three horses in the span of three years. The train wreck of my mental state culminated with my abusive relationship. So, now here I am trying to pick up the pieces that are my psyche.

When you’ve hit, rock bottom the last place you want to go is up. You’ve made a home out of your darkness. The comfort and false warmth calls to you, like a siren calls sailors to their death. You begin to push those around you out of your life for fear that they will see you the way you see you. You “fix” problems before they even start by ceasing to connect with the world around you. This is how I let my mental illness take control.

My PTSD is like a dark figure looming in my mind, whispering falsehoods in my ears and corrupting my thoughts. With his wicked, twisted fingers, he makes me a lifeless puppet of broken will. He convinces me with a comforting smile that my dreams and aspirations are ridiculous and unattainable. That I am stupid for trying to be anything. He makes leaving the house impossible sometimes. Among the constant doubt and dread and fear of not knowing, it becomes hard to try anything at all. And before I know it the cloak of darkness becomes my all to familiar home once again.

The harsh reality of it all is that my illness is my own mind. It isn’t another person. It is me. And how do you retrain your own brain into seeing its worth? How do you remind your mind to love itself like it did when you were a child? Change is difficult. A change of mental state is harder.

I’ve wrestled with this internal conundrum for a while now. And the only conclusion I can come to is to try. It won’t happen overnight or even within a month but given time and help I can climb out of rock bottom. And even though I’ve climbed and fallen and climbed and fallen, I will always try, because rock bottom is not a home.

I do not remember a time before my PTSD. It is all a jumble of fuzzy and hazy memories. But sometime recently a feeling returned like an old friend. It is small but familiar. I can feel it growing and blooming. I could not put a finger on what it was until recently when it hit me all at once. That feeling is the old me. The take on the world and be the change girl. She is coming back. Slowly but surely, she will rise but this time she will be better than before. So, to my new-found phoenix, I raise a glass to you, and to the woman I will be.