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It happened eight days before my final year of college began- so instead of attending any of my classes or doing even a little bit of research for my thesis, I spent every evening of first semester scouring the internet (and my trusty PDF copy of the DSM-5) in a desperate attempt to make sense of what was happening to my neurons. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is tricky. Everybody experiences a traumatic or deeply frightening incident at some point in their lives, and most of us are able to process the unsettling memories that follow in a manner that’s healthy. We simply move on, and those upsetting events retreat into the backgrounds of our minds, and in a years time, we don’t even think about them anymore. At least not on the daily. And that’s what I thought would happen with me. I thought I’d be sad and maybe a little on-edge for a week or two, a month max- and then I’d move on, and life would go back to normal. But then it didn’t.
The most traumatic experience of my life occurred a little over one year ago, and the anniversary of it was quite difficult because it forced me to reflect on all the progress I hadn’t made. I left an extremely abusive relationship one year ago, but I still cry whenever I hear a man raise his voice. My heart beats so fast when I see my abuser on campus that I’m afraid it’s going to burst (is that even possible?). It’s second nature for me to receive a text from a friend, and immediately begin to analyze and scrutinize it, turn it over and inspect it, search for that hidden meaning or piece of passive-aggressive subtext - something I became quite proficient at when I was dating an uncommunicative, abusive manipulator with a very short temper.
I once attempted to end one of my most cherished friendships because my mate did something that reminded me of my abuser, and it was so innocuous and inconsequential that I don’t even quite remember what it was. I think he didn’t reply to one of my texts quickly enough, and I found myself spiraling into an absolute panic because I felt like I was back there again, on the receiving end of the silent treatment that my abuser was so fond of. I felt like I was watching my abusive relationship play out like a low-budget horror film that still somehow managed to be quite scary, and I couldn’t turn it off. I was utterly convinced that my friendship was going to devolve into the same type of abuse that I had experienced the year previously, and looking back, the mental gymnastics that I had to do to reach that conclusion could earn me an olympic gold medal. I tried to end the friendship, knowing that I couldn’t survive being abused again- but fortunately I am very loved, so my friend didn’t allow my self-destructive tendencies to ruin us. I’m so glad he didn’t, but I still wrestle with those panicked thoughts every day.
And that’s the nature of PTSD. It feels like there’s an alarm bell ringing in my mind at all times, but it’s just a false alarm that I can’t figure out how to shut off yet.
I’ve spoken to other people who’ve been at the receiving end of trauma and abuse, and a lot of them don’t have many memories of the incident because their brain blocks it out. It’s a coping mechanism, albeit not a positive one, and one that I also do not experience. I remember every single excruciating aspect of what happened to me in vivid, technicolor detail. And for a while, it was the only thing I ever wanted to talk about. It occupied every corner of my mind. The depression and anxiety it caused left no room for anything else. None at all. I felt like a ghost.
Late February and early March of 2020 were particularly difficult months for me, because in hindsight, I think it was a dissociative episode. All of the emotions that I had been attempting to suppress all throughout first semester finally bubbled to the surface, and I was left floundering. I was deeply depressed, I was incredibly paranoid, and I went days at a time without eating. I was too afraid to leave the house, because I was convinced that something terrible was going to happen, and that I was going to die. I felt like I was watching myself go through the motions of each day from the third person, as if I was watching yet another low-budget film, and in the back of my mind the narrator was saying: “It’s coming. Something bad is going to happen,” but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It’s like the Jaws theme was playing on repeat, but it never reached that climax at the end where it goes DUH DUUUUH. So that was annoying, but apparently not unusual for people who suffer from anxiety or trauma based disorders. In the end, nothing bad or apocalyptic really happened, oh wait nevermind, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, sorry, my bad.
To a certain extent, I still am a little afraid to leave the house. But that’s mainly just because I know I’ll always be safe within the four walls of my bedroom. I can control the type of experience I have when I spend an entire day at home. But it’s odd to think of how the Molly from over one year ago hated spending a day indoors. It used to drive her mad.
A lot of things changed. Everything felt tinted, and I felt as if I was looking at the world through completely different eyes. I had been living in Cork for two years at that point, and prior to developing PTSD, I adored Cork. I loved everything about it, and it was the most beautiful place in the world to me. But after the trauma, it became grotesque and dirty and ugly. I didn’t like my friends anymore, I didn’t enjoy my course anymore, I didn’t read or write anymore. Anything related to Cork or college brought back memories and reminded me of how everything was different now. I didn’t want to stay in Cork, but I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I felt ugly and unconfident and worst of all, I felt repulsive. I felt as if everybody could pick up on my negativity, as if everybody looked down upon me and pitied the poor, weak, pathetic girl I had become and avoided me as a result- in reality, I think all of that was in my head. But trauma distorts your perceptions- perceptions of the people and the things around you, and your perception of yourself. I’m not entirely sure why this is- I became very obsessed with the whys and hows of trauma, and I spent most evenings ignoring my coursework and scouring the internet for answers, because I knew that not all trauma led to the development of PTSD and I wanted to know why my trauma did. Turns out there are a lot of factors - like genetic predispositions and pre-existing mental health difficulties. But it all boils down to some people just being worse at coping with trauma than others, and that made me feel weak.
Trauma derailed my life. It felt as if my house had burned to the ground, and I had to clear away the ashes and rebuild it all by myself. I felt like my life was a ceramic pot that had been shattered, and when I started to pick up the pieces and glue them back together, I realized one of the bigger pieces was missing- and to this day I still don’t know where it is, and that pot just has this huge, ugly, gaping hole in it. But I try to take a few minutes each day to focus on what I’ve accomplished in the months following my traumatic experience- I finished college, received a 1:1 on my thesis, successfully chaired a society, completed an internship- all things I never thought would be possible as a traumatized person. But what I’m most proud of is just surviving, because there were so many times when I didn’t want to anymore. Fixing up that house that had burned down felt too hard, and the new house wasn’t going to be as beautiful or as nice as the original house anyways, so why even bother rebuilding it?
But I had a lot of help. The one silver lining of this whole experience is that it proved to me how loved I am. My friends have gone above and beyond, and sometimes I even feel a little guilty, because there have been several occasions where they’ve had to essentially babysit me because my emotions became too difficult to manage on my own. But they’ve done it all without complaint, and for that I’ll be like, eternally grateful. But don’t tell them I said that. Seriously though, it’s important to talk about your emotions- I spent so long trying to spare my friends the inconvenience of having to listen to me talk about mine that it almost cost me my life. But your friends will always prefer that you reach out to them for support rather than take your own life, even if it means calling them late at night or having uncomfortable yet necessary conversations with them. Always.
Another symptom of PTSD is intense feelings of shame and guilt, as if the trauma was your fault. I feel that way all the time, way more often than I’d like to admit. It’s what prevented me from seeking professional help for so long- I literally didn’t feel as if I deserved it. These feelings of guilt and shame affect your interactions with friends and family following the traumatic experience, and I felt this overwhelmingly suffocating feeling of: “Stop talking. Shut up. Nobody wants to hear you talk about your trauma again. This is why you got abused in the first place. Shut up.” It took a long time for me to realize that the anxious little voice in my head was spitting straight up lies (I named it Brenda, so now whenever I have intrusive, anxious thoughts I just think to myself: “Shut up Brenda, that’s not even true. Fuck off Brenda, nobody likes you,” and it actually helps tremendously).
I wouldn’t say that I’m entirely healed yet, but I’m partly healed. And Molly from one year ago didn’t think any amount of healing would be possible at all- so I think that’s cause for celebration, don’t you?
