Riptide

Escapism is a beautiful place for a while, it feels almost painless. It feels okay because you can breathe without that pounding in your chest, or that hole in your stomach that looks like the milky way but feels more like a tornado. It speaks so softly I can’t hear the words, but I feel the doubt of everything. I wake up in the morning and I feel it, until I can find a way to ignore it. No matter how I try it’s always there, like that sound of chalk on a chalkboard; only I am the chalkboard. I try to think of or create beautiful places in hopes that someone might understand, perhaps someone will find peace knowing that someone feels the same way. But my escapism is a dream with a beautiful beginning that ends in a nightmare. People wonder how that feels, that is people who have never been there. The only way that I can describe it, is like this

“It feels like death, like everything is ending.”

No one has ever asked me what that has felt like, but if they did, I would say this;

“It feels as though I am pulled under water by a strong, heavy riptide. I’m pulled so far below the water into the depths of darkness. The only light I see, I can’t touch, but I reach out for it anyways, as it waxes and wanes in the distance."

In that darkness, I reach for any bit of hope I can. I reach for something, call it God or a light that never stops flickering, or a spirit of hope.

Since no one has ever asked the first question, I doubt they will ask the second; but I will answer regardless whether or not they ask, “What does life after the darkness feel like?”

The answer is “It’s like I’m a ghost coming back to life. It’s pure resurrection of my soul. It’s as if everything has purpose and I feel that life has meaning again.”

People wonder how you can be pulled out of a spell that deep. My answer every time will be that “Love brought me back.” I’d think of people who I loved and all the ways I mattered to them. I’d think of the people whose lives I touched in big or small ways. I let myself feel those things deeply and think of them all ripped away from my soul to become intangible, and I didn’t want to lose them. It was like being washed ashore from drowning, letting my lungs free and breathing in fresh air again.

Most of all it feels as If I’ve woken up from a nightmare, and life is now a beautiful dream and I feel thankful again. Living with PTSD has made me appreciate moments of sanity and moments of reality and all the people who make my reality a beautiful place to live.