Those beautiful moments of clarity.
This morning I came downstairs at the ungodly hour of 05:30, which, to my husband, is normal waking time. Once upon a time, pre-therapy, I was an Olympic sleeper, often getting an impressive 12 hours of sleep. I might have to dress the grade three pressure sores the following day, but generally speaking, I was sleep-satisfied. Sadly, as I have reflected upon the last four years of therapy and on my healing journey, I realise that I was asleep to more than just the day. My nervous system had put decades of pain and trauma into a coma, and now my body was throwing off the covers and tearing open the curtains.
The word healing brings to my mind many associations of calm, serenity, recovery, peace, and resolution. But the reality is that the process is not linear and most certainly not pretty. When I came down this morning, half an hour before I went to bed, after twenty-three seconds of sleep (or so my body felt), I described to my husband what the last two hours in bed had felt like for me. No visualizations of a Meg Ryan performance, I’m not referring to that kind of “feeling”.
I compared my struggle with sleep and surrendering to its loving arms to that of a firefighter. Lying in bed, I imagined using a fire hose to extinguish all the fires erupting around me. Every time I managed to put one fire out and tried to breathe through my thoughts and focus on my breath, another fire would ignite. The fire is my anxiety, and the thoughts are the fuel. The triggers are the deep scars that shape my complex PTSD.
I stood in the kitchen and cried to my husband. This is a rare occasion for me to be able to surrender my feelings and to be vulnerable. But I needed to let him in. I tried to use words to describe how I was feeling, but I felt like I was the static between radio stations. But in this moment of emotional intimacy, as I stood in the shadow of insomnia, I experienced a breakthrough. This inspired this particular blog.
In my experience, these mental awakenings are very unpredictable, and without reflection and mindfulness, their fleeting presence can be lost to another day of treading water. These moments are the very reason that I write and create. As I told my husband, for years, if not decades, I have been highly strung, irritable, on edge, quick to temper. These are not character traits, as my therapist and many years of research have now shown me. These are manifestations of survival mode.
The more I have dived into my healing journey, the worse these have become, and this morning, as I cried into my husband’s shoulders, I suddenly found myself describing sounds, movements, smells, and images that set my nerves on edge. As the words came out, in between gulps of tears, I realised that underneath all of these behaviours was my absolute love for him. He hugged me tighter, and I felt a shift.
He needed to hear this. He has shared his life with me, and the shadow that my complex PTSD has cast, and neither of us ever had a manual. I have lived life through a lens that has been so acutely in focus that every minuscule change in my environment has triggered an internal alarm. I should have been the lead in Trigger Point instead of actress “ “. Repetitive sounds tend to set me on edge, as well as movements, and for so long, I assumed that it was actually the stimulus that was the problem. For example, I struggle to listen to my husband eating or breathing loudly. I’ve mentioned this so many times to my therapist and she always helps me to understand the link with my nervous system.
In the rare moment of clarity this morning, I was able to explain to my husband that he has never been the source of the problem. I cried my sorry into his embrace, and told him that somewhere in amongst these reactions, is Grace. The person who loves him with all her heart. The person who just wants to be filled with peace so that she is free to love with wild abandon. The person who arrived in a reality filled with pain, with no map or escape route.
I have been buried underneath these reactions and emotional responses. I have been judged by them, experienced loss and abandonment as a result of them, and I have allowed them to feed into a deep-seated shame, the centre of which is gradually being unpicked in therapy. I am going to dedicate another blog to the idea of the authentic self, because this lends itself to the possibility that I have been blind to my authentic self since I had a memory.
The healing experience for me has thrown the biggest question of all in my path. Who am I? This then snowballs into a cascade of uncertainties about what version of me others have lived with, grown to love, or loathe, befriend, or ostracize. Am I the people pleaser, surrendering boundaries in search of approval to fill an eternal void? I am the nuclear reactor who had to fight for her place in every room, to heal the wound of an absent mother. Or am I the chaos of fifty years, where numbness was the tonic for all the pain, and the chase for its oblivion took me through fire and carnage?
Stay tuned. The radio that has been static for so long, tunes in now and again, and when it does, a beautiful song often plays. All the words are familiar, and in the silent calm, I sing the chorus with wild abandon. I hope that some of the words I’ve written have resonated with you, and I always extend safety net advice. Please reach out to either family, friends, or your NHS GP. If you have immediate concerns, you can ring 111 and ask for your local crisis team, or you could go online and look for resources there. Thank you for reading.
