PTSD

Post traumatic stress disorder.

This is the definition of what PTSD is.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that’s triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.

Some of the symptoms of PTSD is.

Nightmares

Flashbacks

Memory problems

Always on alert (Defense Mode)

Sleep disturbance

Difficulty concentrating

Overwhelming guilt and shame

Jumpiness

Aches and pains that has no apparent causes

This is some of the key words I get when I google PTSD.

Having lived with PTSD in my past it’s still a weird thing to see on paper.

Ill go into that now…

When I was 18 years old, I was in a relationship with a guy, I was in college, and life was great.

I had been raised in the weekdays by a foster family and gone home to see my gypsy mom in weekends, since I was 5.

So I lived with 2 families.

I thought life was great.

It had just been my birthday, and it was the first day of school after it, I was going to meet my boyfriend after the class had ended and I was excited.

We had had a small fight about my foster parents, and I wanted to make sure he was alright now.

My plans that day was to meet up with him and then buy some gifts from the birthday money I’ve gotten and then go home and study a little.

But I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined, that, that day would change my life and at the end of it I would be getting PTSD.

I meet my boyfriend, and we had a huge fight, in the middle of the fight I blurted out something I had kept silent, even from myself, pushed it aside it in the corner of my mind, to never think off or be spoken out loud, but suddenly the words was out there in the open.

My foster father is abusing me sexually.

The look of terror in my boyfriend’s eyes, pure shock, I stumble back after having said it, trying to take it back but its too late, and fear strikes me.

My boyfriend tells me while he is crying, that I have to leave that place and if I don’t he will come and drag me out of there, because its very wrong, I try to tell him its not so bad, its only been a few times, and it’s just normal father love, a lie I’ve told myself for years to try and rationalize what was happening to me, when it happened.

By boyfriend didn’t get the lie, and seeing this with my own eyes made it harder for me to keep on to the lie I told myself, and I finally cave in, I started crying and I don’t remember I stopped until I suddenly sat in front of his friends mom, who was a psychotherapist, I talked to her a few hours and with her, finally got to understand what I’ve been living with for years and been holding a secret from everyone.

That day I got PTSD.

The days and year after wards, I lived at my boyfriend’s house, sometimes going back to my mom to live in the weekends still. I finished college and went to trial with my Foster Father, but lost because of lack of evidence.

The following year I had nightmares every day. The nightmare started with me running away, my foster father trying to get me back to live with them so he could continue what he did to me, I see a bus and try to get on it, behind me is his car, and I just keep running. Sometimes he caught me and I’m right back there at the house. Sometimes the dream would be me fearing for my life, and I keep running trying to save my life, to get to the bus or where I can feel a little safe.

I always just run, the same dream I had every day for a year.

I still remember the first night where I had a dream about something completely different, a good dream and it was such a relief, I got hope that I wouldn’t just be stuck with the nightmare for the rest of my life. Several years later I managed to control my nightmare into a confrontation with him instead where I tell him no, and start yelling at him at what he did to me, and since that experience I don’t have the same nightmare anymore.

I still dream from time to time about the house but a lot less now.

Nightmares is the biggest thing I remember of my year with PTSD, but I also had flashbacks.

For me it was vivid pictures, or hallucinations where I suddenly see him in front of me.

I had an episode as I call it, where I was running with my boyfriend, and suddenly out of no where I see my foster Father and not my boyfriend running after me, and I start crying and running as fast as I can, my nightmare suddenly turned real, after a while, I hear my boyfriend calling out to me, and I snap back to reality.

I had a few of those episodes. Sometimes I had them while I was sitting in the classroom, and he is right behind me, sometimes it would be in traffic. Every time I react by crying hysterically or running away before I realize it’s just an awake dream or flashback and I snap out of it.

It was extremely embarrassing to react this strongly in public and have no control over it. I told my class mates and my teachers what was going on with me and there where all very understanding and supportive, but it still made me feel shameful to be going through this. I felt I had to be stronger, and keep my emotions in, but I just had no control over it. I tried so hard to get my control back.

I used to be seen as this cheerful, always happy girl, who never cried in public or seemed to have a bad day, it was all a facade but I was proud to be seen as a person who got it all together even if it wasn’t true, and now the wall I had built was crumbling and everyone could see the naked core of the emotional mess I was inside.

With my nightmares and flashbacks I also was super jumpy, everything could make me jump, I was always on edge, on alert. And the stress of it all, made me forgetful, and I found it very hard to concentrate, I have no idea today how I got through the homework and school back then. How I could finish my college degree and to my surprise pass. With the trial and PTSD going on at the same time.

But I did it, even though I would forget things on a constant basis, I remember going to class suddenly realizing I had forgotten my bag at home, or my pencils, Every day I had forgotten something important, and I had a mental check list I tried to go through every day of things I had to remember, I even started making a list of the things I had to do, so I wouldn’t forget.

Being on alert constantly was draining, I always felt really tired, but I had trouble sleeping and only remember sleeping a few hours at night and even in my dreams I wouldn’t get the rest I felt I needed.

I started developing physical pains and aches, and had a lot more, sick days then I ever had had in my lifetime.

I remember my toe was hurting so badly I could hardly walk, I didn’t understand why it was hurting so much so I went to see my doctor, he took blood tests and everything but said there was no reason why my toe would hurt.

I just thought I was loosing it, going crazy and I had pains in my toe for months.

My friends had gifted me for my birthday a massage, and the therapist asked me when I went if I had any pains in my toe, and I said yes, I do. She asked me if I had any other illnesses, and I told her I had PTSD, she then said, oh that makes sense now.  She then told me I had been tensing so much in my back because of stress that it went down as pain in my toe, and she managed to massage it away.

I asked my doctor about some of these ailments I’ve been dealing with, stomach pains, headaches and other weird random things I sometimes get out of the blue when I feel stressed, and he tells me its psychosomatic symptoms. Its my stress that causes it, a way for my body to tell my mind to relax a little.

Its still something I struggle with.

Living with PTSD is still something I’m surprised happened to me, I always thought it was only people at war who got diagnosed with PTSD or people having survived something horrible, I never thought my past would cause PTSD.

To this day my past is my past, and it just something that I had to live with growing up.

I think the reason why I had PTSD is because of the lie I told myself and never aloud myself to face what was going on in my past. I had to just put the bad experiences in a box and close the lid on it, until that one day where that box burst open, and it taught me, a secret shouldn’t stay secret for that long.

My body won’t allow myself to keep secrets anymore, I have to address how I feel and get it out in the open now.  If I don’t, my body will punish me for it later, and its where I get sick.

And even though it was the hardest thing I ever did, telling my secret, it’s also the most freeing thing I ever did.

Living my life with PTSD, getting over PTSD, and learning to talk about my past, has given me the strength I have today.

I still struggle with some things from my past, but the worst storm is over, and I have faith in that it’s the lowest I will ever have lived through. I’ve been at my lowest and there is only one way out now, and it’s up. Yeah it can feel like a slow climb sometimes, but I’m still climbing and I see a little more light at the end of the pit I’ve been stuck in for years.

We live in a world now where its easier to come forth with these things and talk about mental issues, where secrets come out in the open, and we face it head on.

If not for my friends, family and my psychotherapist it would have been a lot harder to deal with for me, so I thank them all for the massive amount of support they gave me in my early adult life. It made me who I am today, and I’m free. The box that was hidden for years in the back of my mind, opened and if anyone has a box like that, open it, talk about it, talking about my past was the only thing that could heal my PTSD, and give my fragile mind some resistance.

If I couldn’t talk about It. I would write, and writing it on paper was just as healing for me as talking about it.

This is my story having lived with PTSD.

What’s your story?