No more unweighted, meaningless conversations and menial tasks that have no interest to me. I put myself away because I was afraid of things that I didn’t know how to stop being scared of until I learned. The fear left and I did improv. I drove across the country and wrote and met people and made deals and painted a store front in downtown Savannah. I’ve made friends with millionaires and reversed heroin overdoses. I have lived life across the entire spectrum and it didn’t really start until the day I left.
Trauma therapy for a diagnosis of C-PTSD changed everything I thought I knew about myself and what I thought it meant to be alive. The process started July 1, but didn’t really get stable until two days before Thanksgiving. I’m somehow the same person and nothing like I was before. Understanding I was wired in a way that made everything more difficult wasn’t easy to accept. The process hasn’t been pretty, but there is no way I can ever go back to who I was or how I lived. There are different emotions when I look at old pictures and I have this comfort inside that didn’t exist before. I was trapped inside of a person who was trapped inside of a life that wasn’t made for me. It never really fit, but has finally become everything I forgot it was supposed to be.
Two days before Thanksgiving it all fell apart. I had to leave the life I had been investing in for 8 years. I had to drive away through the rain and the tears fighting the certainty that I was never going back. That one decision to leave brought an overwhelming sense of freedom and life, but also a fear of how easy it was to leave. The next morning was worse because I felt better. Light and airy with a sense of ease and comfort. “After 8 years I should be more upset or even sad” I kept thinking for weeks. My therapist said trauma bonds can break fast and it’s not uncommon, but it’s uncommon for me.
It worked amazingly well for me. Things got rewired and hooked up correctly. I’m living with more passion and vulnerability than I knew was possible and the world is reacting. My life isn’t what I thought it would look like, but feels better than I imagined possible. My days have different faces and different names, but still the same spirit for life. People aren’t that different, but they’d never agree. The more you meet the more you realize how much they’re alike. Any interest you have has a community online of thousands and we think we’re individuals. Why do we have to stand out or fit in when we really need to belong?
I never understood belonging or fitting in or why they’re different. But as these last few weeks unfolded it all made sense. I never belonged with me. I never trusted that I could make good choices that would benefit me so I didn’t belong with me. Let me say it like this… If someone in your life tried to stick needles in your arms or pills down your throat I’d guess you’d call the cops? Shoot them? I don’t think the answer would be letting them do it for decades. They wouldn’t belong in your life if they did those things to you. I did those things to myself for a long time and I was supposed to be watching out for me. When this therapy did its job I was finally able to trust myself. I finally belonged with me and that made being alive so much easier. That’s what finally clicked two days before Thanksgiving that changed everything.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, consider yourself lucky. Life gets dealt out in all kinds of ways and some have their decks shuffled a little too much. Things get put in wrong places and we drink too much or smoke too much, but for me it was misunderstanding simple emotions and how to route them. I learned that I am fully responsible for myself and my emotions. That also taught me that everyone else is responsible for their own too. This is stuff people figure out earlier or never, but it’s something I had backwards until the wires got fixed. So I took responsibility for my emotions, gave others back control of theirs, and decided to stop playing.
