PTSD
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Silver Lining… or Gold?
“Ten spears go to battle … and nine shatter. Did the war forge the one that remained? No… All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.” – Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer
Trauma didn’t make me stronger. It revealed my strength.Trauma didn’t make me better. It proved I am good.
Trauma didn’t teach me anything – I sifted through the sand looking for diamonds and gleaned goodness where I could find it, rare as it was in that hell.
My abusers gave me nothing of value – in my own wisdom I recognized a kernel of truth amid their array of lies and took it with me, leaving behind the rest. I get the credit for lessons learned and growth gained in the chaos, not the havoc wreckers.
Abuse has no silver lining – the hidden treasure was always my ability to emerge from the deadly storm alive, never the merciless wind or harrowing waves.
Trauma has no upside – it held me back, knocked me down, inflicted serious injuries. Yes, I got up time and time again. Yes, I nursed my wounds and healed them as much as they could be healed. But without the setback, who knows how much farther I could have gotten? What more could I have accomplished without years of my energy going toward surviving something so unnecessary and harmful?
Trauma is fundamentally and irredeemably bad – always. The urge to find a bright side is a coping mechanism for avoiding the unpleasantness of sitting with the finality of an immutable and irreparable event – a moment passed, frozen in time; once birthed, eternally existent. Looking for a reason or projecting meaning is a surface level distraction from the pain and unfairness of it all, a wrestling with our own powerlessness against the past.
The blessing isn’t the unthinkable survived but always the survivor. Trauma reveals those who are made of gold so when passed through the fire they emerge changed, but not destroyed. Trauma reveals the extraordinary person otherwise overlooked in an ordinary life.
Trauma is never good – the person who weathers it without becoming a monster is good. The person who can escape a changing maze, who can set their broken bones despite the agony, who doesn’t give up after being pushed down again and again – that person is good. The person who is clever enough and creative enough to invent new ways of escaping, resilient enough to keep inventing when they are exhausted, and shrewd enough to seek help – that person is good. The person who can experience injustice without repeating it, the person who can look outside of themselves while carrying something so consuming – they are good. Trauma never is. If the bleakness of it all is too much and you need to find the light in the darkness – look to the survivor, the hero of the story, whether it is yourself or a person you love. The survivor is hope in a depressing narrative. Don’t give credit to abusers or the trauma they inflict by looking for the silver lining – instead celebrate the person who is gold. -
What Happens to you Creates You… And then Owning Yourself again
Having PTSD is a lonely experience, but at least you have the community of others who suffer from it. However, finding healing on the other side can be even more isolating; you’re not a victim anymore, but not really a “normal” person either.
Battling through a blinding wall of trauma where your own brain fights against you, losing track of the truth and then finding it again, coming out the other side, there’s nothing else like it. And there’s nobody else who knows exactly what that’s like. Your journey is uniquely yours. And then coming far enough along in that journey where you’re not even sure if you identify with the term PTSD anymore, you’re a misfit, stuck between two worlds.
They say what happens to you creates you. If something monstrous is done to you, you become a monster; and in a sense that’s true, that’s PTSD. Someone does something unspeakable to you and through that, they get to decide who you are and how you interact with the world. You’ve been designed by someone else’s hand, against your will. Every startle response, every tense muscle, every panic attack, implanted in you by someone who took power that you never gave them.
But in finding healing you destroy that which they made you to be. You tear that person down, bit by bit, as you learn which parts of you were created by trauma and which parts are really your own. You recreate yourself. You get to decide who you are.
And through the whole process you have to fight against something that’s nearly impossible to win. You have to fight your own mind. You have to fight deeply embedded lies when you’re not even sure what the truth is anymore and you’ve been made to not trust yourself. You’re grappling for what is real and good when you don’t even know what that looks like anymore. You have to use memories from the foggy distant past of what was good and true then. You learn lessons along the way of what works and what explodes in your face. Trial and error.
Eventually things become a little more clear and a little less foggy. You take the lessons you learn and build upon them and build upon them, over and over, like constructing a tower. That tower becomes your compass rose. And once you break free from what they made you to be, bursting out of the cocoon into who you have chosen to be, on your own, rebirthed. that is complete freedom. That is healing; when you own yourself again.
And then you join the ranks of all the world changers that went through something that almost broke them. You stand with those who were baptized with fire and came out the other side a powerful teacher, healer, shaman, prophet. You are a chosen one. You chose yourself.
I’m not saying I’m “cured”. PTSD is never cured. It’s not a disease. It’s a lens you view the world through; robbed naivety, a bestowment of wisdom, even. No, not cured, but healed. I own myself again. Yes there are bad days, and I’ll write about those days, too. But something is different now. The bad days don’t own me. They are fewer and much farther between. I’m not being swept along in a raging, flooded river anymore. The water is still there, but now I’m building canals and dams. I get to decide what to do with it. Healing is possible. It’s damn hard work but you can get there.