If I must, then I shall not do… anything.

Emily said 

“If I can stop one heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one waiting robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain”

Yes, I’m allowed to call her Emily because she’s been my friend since I was 9. And to the crabby old lady who said I’d outgrow her words, I did not. I’m really sorry you did.

Something happened to me. Actually, a lot of somethings happened to me. A lot of somethings happen to all of us and we rarely have anything to do with it.

But after we survive those somethings most of us find ourselves wondering how we could have been different, better, even.  We go over and over the memories, like a tape recorder stuck on replay. Somewhere along the way, we might even find ourselves considering how pieces of the story are our fault. A punishing self harm I wouldn’t wish on anyone because in that moment of blame we forget the first part of the equation. 

We have no control. We have no control over what happens to us or how people treat us.

“The only thing we can control is ourselves”, yep that’s how the hallmark card goes. I’ve read it, I’ve heard it and I am amazed by the people who feel in control. I wish them well. I believe in dreams, I’ve made five-step plans, but they can take all their mindset bullshit and go live happily ever after because the hallmark card sucks when you are suffering from PTSD. I don’t feel in control of anything. When you have PTSD, having no control isn’t a fear like it is for most people, it’s a fact.

You open your eyes, you close them, you don’t know what’s coming and yes that is the human experience, but people who suffer from PTSD don’t get to feel safe in between the happenings.

The happenings are still happening and happening and happening.

Most mornings I don’t feel safe enough to brush my teeth. It’s something I have to force. 

I am rarely at ease. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being rarely at ease? I don’t mean fulfilled. I don’t mean peace. I mean the simple gift of feeling ok or relaxed and sometimes I have reasons like I’m young or work or my family or another bad something but most days I’m just here. 
Here in this pretty room, I made with all my favorite colors. There’s no war. I have all the regular worries of people in their 20s; paying rent, building a career, finding time to see friends/family, falling in and out of love with the same annoying people. Nothing is wrong anymore, but it takes hours and hours in the morning for my nerves to settle.

And if I listened to them, (which I’ve been trying to since today marks a week and a day after that most recent something happened to me) I wouldn’t get anything done. I force myself through the bare minimum of functioning, before last week most people would classify me as high functioning, but functioning forced or unforced isn’t living.

And this feeling that I’m not living terrifies me and frustrates me, and it makes me angry when people talk about control, about routines, when my therapist asks me what I can do to nurture myself. 

It’s a nightmare, not knowing how to make yourself feel better. It’s a nightmare when there’s nothing to be upset about in the present and an equal nightmare to have another true something happen on top of all the other somethings swirling around in our heads.

Having PTSD is kind of a constant nightmare. 

And I’m lucky, because I’m naturally creative or I was taught creating was square one, so when I am re-broken like I was last week I turn to square one….drawing. I turn to writing, singing, dancing. I have a therapist, I do yoga, I’ve meditated for most of my life and I’m still uncomfortable. I’m still living in a nightmare.

There’s no magic fix.

Drawing a flower lets me fight off the pain for ten minutes, but it doesn’t take it away. It gives me temporary peace. I write about it. I process it. It helps some, but not all the way.

I am still at the mercy of neural pathways, my parasympathetic nervous system, some conditioning, and the memories.

And from one pal to another, I’m not choosing this.  I don’t have the option of “just surrendering” like he said or “choosing joy” as she said. I didn’t think it was fun to have a six-hour panic attack that melted my brain and given the choice neither would you.

I can’t make myself happy, I’ve tried all the things you’re supposed to try save intense medication or some kind of retreat, which I’m currently looking into.

But to tell you the truth, I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why my brain is having such a hard time existing. Something natural, something normal should fix it. It shouldn’t require a number of fancy treatments or obscure hobbies. I want it to be easier to live with pain. I want it last shorter.

And I want someone to give me the answer. I want my quotes to make more sense. I am sick of being the smartest person in the room.

I don’t want to be 80 and be waking up scared. I don’t want my trauma to look like hurting the next generation. I want to do better and I’d like my life to not be lived sitting in a corner. Leaving a diner, leaving anywhere because the adrenaline is flooding my system.

My friend saw something that basically said surviving is passive and fighting is active. My survival hasn’t felt super passive, but if the dictionary says.

Also, who has the energy to do something active like fighting, when over and over again we’ve learned we have no control?

“Hope is defiant” I read today

“Perhaps we’re in the business of better endings” I read again.

It’s not my responsibility to make other people happy, they tell me.

It was never your responsibility. You need to find Victoria now. You need to find Victoria.

But I hear Victoria, in what Emily said. I hear Victoria in the moments I protect people. I hear her when I write when I ease other people’s aching. When I say something clever that makes people laugh and when I believe despite literally everything in love. I hear her most, then

The really special thing about energy is that it’s conserved. We take it, we use it, we give it back. There’s been a lot of times I thought they got all my light. But they can’t, whatever they take isn’t stolen forever. It’s saved. enfolded somewhere. 

Maybe someone’s borrowing it. Someone who needs it more today.

If that’s how the world works I’ll gladly give it again and again, and control my mind just a little so that I don’t fall towards giving up on it.

We don’t know what we mean to other people. We don’t know who we’ll become. It requires a disgusting amount of courage and patience to wait and between you, me, and my good pal/true love, I don’t blame the ones who don’t. I can’t. I know how bad it can get. I’ve never been to the bottom but the depths I’ve reached have made me desperate to end the aching. I think there’s a tragedy in letting go, I think there is an opportunity to sit still until you float or swim upwards again, but I think there’s a certain peace in it too. And I don’t like the stigma around it, because I really believe if they got there, they really tried everything they could think of first. And I can see how some pain, some pain might warrant release and it’s no one’s business to say what kind of pain is too much for the person living it.

I have faith that all pain passes. I really do. I really believe in light, it’s the only reason I’m alive I think, that and my belief in purpose.  I just don’t think it’s fair that we praise resilience and blame the ones that can’t seem to find it. I just don’t think it’s kind.

I will never like the idea that some peace might be found on a road through hopelessness, maybe in five lives I’ll see it differently, but I don’t see it now and I hope you don’t either.

“If I can stop one heart from breaking”, is the only thing I want to fight for. The only thing I dream to control. And you know if I’m 80 and I still have to spend four hours calming down so that I can spend one hour helping someone find a way to smile again, that sure sounds like fighting. 

Maybe it’s still my “lack of self” talking, but maybe I lost it so that I’d have space for you.

The east says that to live is to suffer.  An old man in a movie I like said “life is pain” and the plants tell me where there is light there is life. Plus a glass of water or two. 

And if I never get it back, I’m glad all the somethings were worth one little star, one minute of light in this overwhelming night.

“Hope is defiant.” I’m defiant. 

My parents threw that in my face like a slur. Putting it in next to hope makes me feel proud. Thank god. Thank god, I’m defiant. I can’t imagine who I’d be, where I’d be if I wasn’t. If I didn’t have such a powerful imagination. My defiance made me the kind of person who can see another way. It also makes me wonder if all this means I have a stronger sense of self than anyone or I have given myself credit for.

It reminds me that despite all the somethings I am still fighting. I still have some light to give and  “If I can ease one life the aching, I shall not live in vain”