Roller coasters—unless they’re on the kid’s side of the amusement park I’m not riding them. The click of the metal as the cars make that slow steep crawl toward the first rapid drop, the nauseating sensation in your stomach as it tries to dislodge from its home, working its way up your guts into your throat—not so thrilling for me. I like the secure feeling of my feet on the ground. So much so, I’m what I’d call a holder, the one person in the family who’ll wait two hours with armloads of purses and water bottles while everyone else rides their back bruising, hair raising favorite.
But there are roller coasters you can’t see and thus can’t avoid, like losing a job or hitting a wall in a relationship. Or in my case, something, an experience, that reached into a place I once felt safe and pulled me inside out. It was like being strapped in on a ride I did not want to be on. And since I don’t want this to be the world’s longest blog post I’ll focus this piece on the beginning—fear.
After reading Donald Miller’s post
Who Taught You to Fear, something churned in me. I wrestled with Miller’s closing thoughts. My stomach twisted at the remembrance of a lifetime of negative experiences that culminated last year with one final blow to my sense of security. TKO. Down for the count. One final shred of peace, the thing I’d tried so hard to hold on to, sailed overhead, landing who knows where.
My answer to Miller’s core topic was, and is, a hard one for me because it involves looking into the face of something that crippled me emotionally for a long time—PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve known for some time I needed to write about it. But that is easier said than done. Thousands of thoughts jumped to mind, pulling me away from it.
Am I ready for this? How much should I disclose? Will I regret putting it out there for the world to read? Okay, that’s a stretch considering this blog is mostly a family and friends thing. But my life will be out there, exposed to whomever drops in for a read.
Those questions, and tons more, have kept me away from my blog too many times over the past year. This is, after all, the place I share bits about my life. And if I’m going to be transparent about the good then I want to try and do the same with the bad. So here goes . . .
Last year I was sitting on my sofa when someone broke into my home. For safety reasons, I won’t include too many details, but I can say I remember the sound of wood breaking. It was like lighting cracking in my ears. I briefly blacked-out and didn’t see the intruder’s face when they entered. Then fight or flight kicked in, and I ran. I ran until I couldn’t breathe.
That one moment changed my life for the worse for a long time. I would stare for hours in terror at the robber’s point of entry. I developed hypersensitivity to sound and was constantly getting up to look out the window. For months I was afraid to leave the house for fear I’d see the person who’d broken into my home, my mind, my heart.
Words like intruder, thief, and invasion came up in conversations multiple times, each hitting me in the gut as I relived and retold the story to police, advisors, family and friends. But how could I explain what I didn’t understand? And would it do any good? (Well, yes, but not until much later.)
I had flashbacks and nightmares and was waking up in a sweat, screaming (still do sometimes). It was something I couldn’t face on my own. So I got help, and that’s when the healing began.
With PTSD, everyone’s journey is different. In mine, I’ve realized that one threat can lead to lots of irrational fears, but I’ll save that for another time along with:
- The anxiety
- Being angry at everyone and everything
- Feeling the three V’s: vehement, violated and vulnerable
- Pat answers to questions that have none
- The isolation one feels when people try to fix you or tell you how to feel
- And how sometimes it’s lonely and other times you find a safe place to talk and a listening ear, one that doesn’t pass judgment or give advice
- The therapeutic side: sharing, journaling, and other positive hobbies
So here it is, the first post, with all its tense changes. But I don’t care about that. All I want is for anyone reading this to know they’re not alone, and it’s okay to grieve a loss and to have real feelings about difficult situations. How long will it take to get over this hump? As long as it takes.
For me, this is just another roller coaster, another step in a long process of walking through something so I can grow up from it, hopefully stronger. But this time I’m strapping myself in because even though I can’t change the fact that I’m on the ride doesn’t mean I have to let a bad situation take something from me or jerk me around.
You don’t have to answer out loud, but who’s with me?
So . . . apparently April 29 is International Dance Day, a very cool fact I did not know until today. I find myself thinking back to all the hours I spent in the dance studio, including the first years of my college life—something I wouldn’t trade, no matter how many pairs of jazz and ballet shoes I went through.
When the week ended we kept rehearsing as a group, getting better, encouraging each other. And when I got on that stage for the performance, I didn’t even have to think about the steps. They just came.
