Day after day

Do you understand PTSD? 

I live with it every day, yet I don’t understand it.  I don’t understand why my mind has chosen to now remember every single day a hugely traumatic event I told it to forget 40 years ago.  I don’t know why my brain is triggered by certain words, sights, pictures, smells.  I can never predict when it will happen, so I have absolutely no control over it.

So who the hell are you to tell me to “get over it”?  I have to behave better?  Oh yes, I wish I could.  I wish I could just be “normal” and not have immediate reactions to things I don’t even know will trigger me.  I wish I could understand my own body and why it reacts the way it does.  I wish I could control my breathing, my pulse, the sudden rise in temperature, the tears that come absolutely unbidden and unstoppable.

I feel betrayed by people I thought I could trust, who weren’t and aren’t there for me when I need them.  I feel betrayed by my own body which lets me down at the most inconvenient times. I feel betrayed by my mind which has the dramas on constant replay when all I want to do is forget them. I feel betrayed by a system that will only allow me 10 visits to someone who could help me, because the system doesn’t understand that 40 years can’t be repaired in 10 visits.

And I feel hugely hurt by people who, despite knowing my story, do not recognise my problem as a depressive illness and think I can fix myself. Oh how I wish it was that easy.

I don’t know who I am any more.  I’m starting to forget “happiness”, if I ever really felt it.  It’s like every episode of my life has been a one-act tragi-comedy.  Except I’m not laughing.  I’m not a drama queen.  I didn’t choose where I am, I don’t want to be in this mind or in this body, but I can’t get out of it.

I feel so vulnerable, like I trust so deeply because I so much want to believe in the good in people, yet every time I get hurt.  I am so scared of rejection.  Why?  Am I always trusting the wrong people?  Who are the right ones? I don’t know any more, I lost the ability to tell that a long, long time ago.

I can’t see any light at the end of my tunnel, just walls all around, closing in. I wonder what happens when they finally reach me?

Day After Day

© Alan Parsons Project

Gaze at the sky
And picture a memory
Of days in your life
You knew what it meant to be happy and free
With time on your side

Remember your daddy
When no one was wiser
Your ma used to say
That you would go further than he ever could
With time on your side

Think of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you’d say, someday, someday

But day after day
The show must go on
And time slipped away
Before you could build any castles in Spain
The chance had gone by

With nothing to say
And no one to say it to
Nothing has changed
You’ve still got it all to do, surely you know
The chance has gone by

Think of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you’d say, someday, someday

But, day after day
The show must go on
And you gaze at the sky
And picture a memory of days in your life
With time on your side