21. Pushing A Boulder Up The Mountains
Updated: Oct 18, 2023
**Please note: In this post, I do not write about specific traumas. I never write any explicit details.**
Is This Eternity?
I have now lived two lifetimes. The first existed prior to sexual trauma. This second one, in its aftermath, may have spanned roughly the same amount of years as that first, but it has felt immeasurably longer. How can the same amount of months feel so drastically different in duration? It is not just the difference between child and adult impressions of time, though this does play some role. It's also, and more recognizably, related to how painful it is to live with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that it can severely alter perception of time in negative ways.
As a result of how my body, brain, and nervous system responded to my trauma, plus additional negative influences, I developed unmistakable PTSD. Plus, my brain did not erase any of my memories from the sexual assault, which meant that I remembered everything fully and carried the burden of re-living those memories. Over the course of far more time than has felt fair, I have struggled with PTSD and the ways it has emerged in my life. It has included pronounced waves of intensity for several years in a row, with low tides in between, also lasting a few years each. It hasn't been a constant deluge, but it has been grueling. The typhoons were brutal, but even when the shores seemed gentle, it was nerve-wracking to wonder when the giant surf would return.
The process of dealing with trauma has added tremendous suffering to my life. During the more severe periods, I have experienced time as endless, lasting into what feels like eternity. It often looked like there would never be any escape. For nearly two decades, I haven't fully lived in peace.
Contributions To Pain
That I developed PTSD in response to my trauma exacerbated what might have been a more efficient healing process. I don't know if it would have been possible to prevent this from occurring, but my understanding is that you really can't predict who will or won't develop the disorder. Part of me thinks that no matter what sort of resources I could have accessed early on, I may have just been pre-determined to develop an awful case of PTSD, but because I was not surrounded by such an extremely supportive network initially, related to my fear of disclosure, part of me wonders what could have happened for my healing, and if there might have been a way to prevent my body from generating the type of fear responses that emotionally sabotaged me for so long.
My open wounds made me more susceptible to future suffering by removing my ability to discern between safety and threat. This additionally contributed to increasing my heightened distress responses to the point where moments that other people might consider seemingly benign actually registered to my body as additional traumatic moments. I could sit in a classroom and hear the mention of a word, and be the only person in the room who burst into tears and ran out of the room. No one else's nervous system jolted them into this type of response. One of the worst aspects of PTSD is that it adds to the misery every chance it gets, by roping in more and more moments of time that feel like the original event all over again, thus creating a larger web of trauma.
A Whole Lot Of PTSD
Spending recurrent multiple years on end in a highly reactive state, with intense sorrow, anger, and distress has been exhausting. I can't fully describe how destructive it is to live with invasive memories, feel extra-jumpy, and get triggered by the actions of others that cued my brain and body to recall and relive the horrible actions of one person. I can't adequately portray how miserable it is to feel so exceedingly vulnerable, with countless flashbacks, and tons of panic attacks. I can't realistically represent how disempowering it is to live in such an extremely fearful state, with pronounced feelings of paranoia about my safety, and extreme terror about feeling unable to protect myself.
It has been all the more challenging to heal from trauma when my brain, body, and nervous system seemed to basically self-sabotage me. This will seem wrong to suggest, but the PTSD has tortured me almost more than the actual trauma. Obviously all these problems only developed in my life in response to abuse, and I recognize the traumatic event as the catalyst that created such a destructive wake, and the devastation that ensued. Also, I know that the person who enacted the trauma against me is responsible for that event in my life, and I do view that person's choice as the origin of this pain. Yet, for such an extensive period, it actually felt like the PTSD itself was my enemy, and because it was such a huge nemesis, it made the person who abused me seem tiny by comparison.
My fight against PTSD has been such a substantially prominent feature of much of my life. I've hated to loose considerable time and energy to a conflict I never should have needed to battle in the first place. It has tried to tell me who I'm not: helpless, guilty, and responsible for the injury done to me. It has tried to show me what I shouldn't expect: an eternity of pain and suffering. It has tried to convince me what is untrue: that I will never find my way out of my nightmare. Those are the lies PTSD often attempts to convince survivors of, but they are pure bull sh*t. Defending myself and my sanity from so many attacks on my perception of safety has caused me to only find more and more reasons for believing that I am worthy of protection.
Crashing Waves
There have been three periods of severe PTSD that each lasted multiple years. Those torrents were treacherous. After the first sequence of tidal waves receded, I recognized how they had wounded me. I made a commitment to myself that I would find a way to take myself out of danger's path, and I even thought I had succeeded. When the second set of rolling squalls crashed ashore, I had my back to them because I didn't expect they could reach me, and without warning, I was deluged by an angry sea, swept up in the current, and had to swim with all my might to make it back to land.
After that second period of struggling, I decided that I was done simply waiting out what seemed like an inevitable recurrence of high tide. At that point, when the waters abated, I began gathering my supplies for the third sequence of wretched breakers which did inevitably smash upon the coastline like a hurricane. When they showed up, I won't say I was ready for them, because I wasn't, but by then, I was no longer facing the storm unshielded. I had amassed extensive resources that helped me to combat the onslaught with more awareness and diligence than the previous two rounds. Supplied with the variety and strength of such amazing assets, there was no other resolution possible but victory. I would be staying on land, and I was about to calm the tempest once and for all.
Reaching The End of PTSD
In the past few years, something has finally been shifting in a positive direction, and not just in a way that makes me hope I'm in a longer remission after round three. I mean, I think I'm finally about to end PTSD's hold over my life. I continue to do extensive work with amazing, wise, and ethical mental health practitioners who are trauma-trained and deeply invested in the support and wellbeing of their clients. I am generally on a healing trajectory in the direction of "better," and I'm determined to soon reach a place where I have effectively dismantled all of the triggers that have remained either active or able to be activated for so long. These days, the volume of the alarm bells is drastically reduced, and continues to quiet with each old association that looses its power over my body.
I've decided to intentionally disprove everything PTSD has tried to teach me. I'm not interested in allowing trauma to rule my life, so despite not being assured of the certainty of ultimate victory over it, I am committed to fighting its effects on me through finding my strength, regaining my power, and reclaiming my life. My nervous system is untangling the giant mess of build up that accrued over the years, my body is perceiving a difference between memories and the present, my brain is registering the absurdity of those wrong messages that got built into my self-perception, and my soul is seeing the future and innumerable possibilities.
A Look Back
One of the unforeseen results of continuing to work toward my healing is that the closer I get to reaching my new destination, the less I am affected by the past feelings of heaviness, and the more I can taste the feeling of freedom. Looking forward to finally stepping out of reach from the water's edge has now slowed down time in a different way for me. I can feel into the approaching relief, and notice each moment that passes as I get closer and closer to fully enjoying peace. Knowing these are my last few moments here, causes me to look back on the battles I've faced, to see and remember all the efforts along the way. As I assess my endeavors, although I recall how they often seemed endless at the time, now it seems that ultimately, they were working toward an actual ending point to bring forth my intention.
Now that I am looking forward to what happens after, I see that the volume of my future experiences will only increase after this, and the more time I spend away from that treacherous water, the smaller and smaller a percentage of my life that beach time becomes. This chaos will take up far less time in comparison to the rest of my life moving forward. Phase One of pre-trauma will soon be joined by Phase Three of post-traumatic growth, and together, they will make Phase Two of post-trauma look insignificant by comparison. Once I succeed, each millisecond after shifts the weight of time away from trauma in favor of vibrance.
In some ways, maybe this journey past my sexual trauma is giving me some more perspective about how truly amazing it will feel when I triumphantly vanquish it. I've loved feeling at peace before, but now, I revere and respect it all the more. Being without it in so many ways for so long showed me that any time spent within its glow is heavenly.
Visual Inspiration
Cats & Yarn
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Please see my next post about the need to break silence.
Go to: 22. No More Silence
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