I Never Asked for It

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)- is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event. It can cause flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and uncontrollable thoughts. There is no one shoe that fits all when we talk about the effects it has on someone.

For me, I experience Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) which is: a stress-related mental disorder occurring in response to prolonged exposure to inescapable traumatic events. Due to my life experiences, it is a daily battle I have to fight. Always afraid that if I get ready before I get the message of what color shirt to wear, how to do my hair, or what makeup to wear that day, I choose the wrong thing or if I change it up I have to constantly be scared that I will receive a consequence more than just the usual daily threatening texts.

It's being worried about their voices in my head telling me if I have earned the privilege to eat that day and what I can or cannot eat. While I am eating my mind races and I can hear them say “Are you supposed to be eating”, “Are you sure you want to put that in your body”, “You know that it can’t stay down unless we approved you eating it.”

It’s freezing looking for someplace to hide when someone raises their voice. It is constantly scanning my surroundings, making an exit plan for when things go south. Keeping track of everyone’s mood, walking on eggshells so that I don’t say or do something that is going to set anyone off. Wondering if I will ever be able to make it from point “a” to point “b” without getting ambushed. Looking over my shoulder at the grocery store and hearing in my head don’t get anything that is not on the list, don’t deviate from the exact brand that is listed.

It is watching every word I say and how I say it as to not come across in a way that will upset others. My heart races every time I get a notification on my phone, sometimes 300 or more texts in a single day.

It’s not being or feeling safe anywhere, let alone in my own body. It is trying to differentiate what thoughts in my head are true and which come from trauma. Combating the instinct that if I just do what they say none of this would be happening. That if I didn’t step out of their imaginary line I would not have gotten beat and raped. Trying to remember there has never ever been a time that I asked or wanted any of it least of all to have sex. That has always just been taken from me, I have never given consent or even knew that was an option. I never wanted it. Fearing what the consequences of every move will entail this go around.

Questioning who really has my best interest at heart and who just wants to use and abuse me. I was taught to keep the secret and lock the pain inside. That it is unsafe to have or show emotions, and if I do, I am being told they are wrong, and I shouldn’t feel this way or that. It is listening and doing everything others tell me to do, how to act, what to say and feel, never able to quite figure out who I am or that I even have a voice.

I don’t believe the effects of CPTSD will ever go away completely.

If I put in the hard work, I am committed to getting to a place where the effects and my responses are no longer controlled by CPTSD and I start to learn for the first time how to manage life in a positive way.

Where CPTSD is just a scar to remind me of what I have survived and no longer an open wound, while I work to undo the rewiring that my trauma has caused in my brain.

I will break the cycle of generational trauma, so that my kids will not have to carry that weight and go through as much as I have. I will work on turning the hurt and pain into purpose that can fuel me to where I am meant to be. I will convince myself that I do deserve something better and make each day a little bit more manageable than the day before.