The Dreamer's Pen

I don’t really understand what’s happening, but it feels like my symptoms are coming back. My neck and shoulders are so tense it feels like I’m carrying the weight of everything I’ve ever survived. It’s the same tension I had before I was medicated, the kind that never really leaves. I am also so incredibly exhausted and sleep isn’t replenishing me.

I don’t know if it’s because I donated a bunch of clothes or if it’s this season that always presses on me or both. But I can feel something breaking open again, and it hurts everywhere, in my body, in my chest, and in my head.

I’m startling more easily and not the normal kind of startled. My body locks up. My heart races. I can’t calm down. I’ve been getting migraines with horrible pain in my neck and shoulders and I feel like crying – which for me is always a warning sign. This is what my PTSD looks like when it sneaks back in.

I treated myself today. Got my favorite Mexican food, tried to breathe and I am trying to rest.

I’m trying not to think about my car, which is in the shop. But it’s hard. That car means so much to me. My mom and I picked it out together. We drove it, talked in it and made memories. The thought of losing it feels like losing her all over again.

Maybe that’s why this hurts so much? The losses never really stop.

What makes it worse is how people respond when your symptoms appear. Most of the time, they leave. They don’t understand. They go quiet, stop calling and stop asking. And that silence hurts more than the symptoms sometimes. Because when you need grace the most, that’s when people disappear. Maybe they don’t realize that leaving doesn’t make the weight go away. It just adds another kind of ache.

I hate it. I hate the pain, the fear, and the way my body remembers what my mind wants to forget.

I just don’t want another holiday season stuck like I’ve been in the past: anxious, depressed, scared, and trapped in my own head. I want to feel alive again. I want to feel free.

People who joke about PTSD have no idea. They don’t know what it’s like when your body won’t calm down, when your mind keeps replaying things and when the pain is all consuming. It’s not funny. It’s relentless.

I’m trying. I’m holding on. I’m giving myself the grace that others don’t always give. I am hoping and praying that this is just a set of random breakthrough symptoms that will go away ASAP.

Because maybe that’s all I can do. Keep showing up for myself, even when it hurts.