On Doubt, On Trauma

It feels weird writing this down but here it goes… A rant. Straight from my anxious brain.

Sometimes I feel like the trauma I’m most effected by is trauma I don’t know anything about. Like something that happened to me, but it was so bad that my mind completely blocked it out.

I thought I was over the traumas I experienced, but last year I kind of landed myself into a nervous breakdown and started having panic attacks all the time…

so I “got help”.

I see a psychiatrist. I’m on lexapro and prazosin and buspar. Sometimes I take flexeril, a muscle relaxer that might be addictive but I’m not sure. I do “self-care” all day long. Everything I do is to try to take care of myself.

I’m in prolonged exposure and cognitive processing treatment with a psychologist who specializes in pain psychology and ptsd. the traumas at large: a sexual assault and domestic violence when I was a teenager (from 13-20). I do journaling about trauma. I speak into my Voice Memo app about it and then tell my doctor about it over and over and over again.

but now here I am.

I feel like I’m falling into the depths of my brain, down down and down into a spiral of thoughts and ideas that don’t make sense or that I think are the best ideas I’ve ever had. Question upon question. Frantically switching from one idea to another.

I’m not in control.

why am I so trapped in here?

It’s brilliant in here. There’s so much beauty and creativity bursting from my synapses but then… it feels like a prison.

I know I’m more than the worst thing that’s ever happened to me but then why do I have PTSD? Why does it matter what happened in my past?

I want to live, not exist.

I try to remind myself, over and over again: PTSD is a brain disease.