My Reality of Awakening with PTSD

(*Trigger Warning.)

I wake up. For a brief moment, I feel “normal” — rested, sleepy, groggy, lethargic yet excited to see what the day holds so I fight to shrug off the lazy impulses… Normality genuinely feels heavenly — a breath of fresh air in a never-ending storm…

Yet the moment I blink my eyes open… the moment I am victorious in shedding my sleepy self to seize the day… the moment I choose to embrace the day rather than cower from it… the moment I decide to attempt to rise my physical being from bed… I am FLOODED with pain.

The man who wrapped his arms around me to pin me against the ground, snapping the bones in my wrist & elbow fully out of place & severely bruising all surrounding muscles while also yanking my shoulder out of place…

The men who had their sexual way with me against my will…

The months & years of pain & fear while disabled & battling homelessness…

The moments, all too many!, in an ER bed, alone, terrified, in excruciating pain, with no plan or options or hope or resources or comfort or reassurance or answers of any kind… No one by the bedside to guide the way to mental or physical safety… Nothing to fill the deafening silence with a reason to choose courage over fear or hope in any form…

The never-ending hour of holding my cat, sobbing, watching my apartment building & lifetime of memories & hard work burn up in flames… That first night alone in an empty apartment without a single thing to distract from the voices demanding my death…

Ten years of suppressed physical pain managed in devastatingly unhealthy ways due to the amnesic state of my dissociative identity…

It all floods me.

How am I to rise?

How am I to embrace this threatening day?

How am I to hope that life could improve somehow from this dark, dark pit of deep, deep despair?

I must jump into heavy, intensive coping immediately if I stand a chance at emotional survival.

My body lives on.

It is hope that keeps withering away.

It is hope I must continually breathe life into, even when it exhausts me to tears.