The Truth Behind Trauma

It’s okay to talk about trauma. In a world that is advancing so quickly, and everything is available at the click of a button, things like mental health can get swept right under the rug. It’s hard to try and keep up with an ever-growing society without losing some part of your identity and self-care. I didn’t openly talk about my trauma because it never fit into the topics that were spoken about. My trauma did not fit into sexy celebrities on vacation or what the Kardashians are up to now. It’s so easy for us to talk about murderers and rapists, but never about the victims who were unfortunate to come across those people. It’s so easy for us to want to kill Brock Turner, the rapist from college, but never stop to think about how his victim is doing. For women it has become even harder for us to bring up our trauma, because people will assume that we are lying or exaggerating for attention. The problem is that there are people who have exaggerated or lied for their personal gain, and ended up hurting many people in the process. That made things extremely difficult and unfair for those who deal with real emotional, mental, or physical trauma. There are so many forms of it, and while some may seem worse than others, it all feels very similar. Everyone processes things differently, but there are two main similarity between trauma victims. They feel scared and they feel hurt. There becomes a time when you lose a lot of yourself in what happened to you.

It took a lot out of me to find myself within what I had experienced to become whole again. It was like everyone took a piece of me with them, and I didn’t know how to get them back. All of the justice in the world was never enough for me to make them feel the way that I had felt. I never really got justice. Just anger. I became so bitter and angry towards the world in general. All I could see was evil, and the world became so dark. I didn’t trust anyone or anything. I couldn’t go into public without panicking or becoming angry at any little thing anyone did. I attracted awful things to myself, because that was all I could see. Humans were trash, and I wanted to get rid of them all. I blamed every single person for what happened to me, because the people who hurt me got away with it. I no longer knew how to experience anything but anger, and it was draining the small glimpse of myself I had left. If someone cut me off, I would follow them home and threaten to kill them. If someone gave me a certain look in public, I would scream at them and make a huge scene. I wanted everyone to hurt the same way that I did. I wanted everyone to pay for their actions, because I was left feeling empty when my perpetrators never paid for theirs. I felt like thorns that nobody wanted to touch because all I ever did was inflict pain. I was hurting so badly inside, but it felt like nobody cared enough to help. I was bitter towards the justice system for being negligent. I was angry towards anyone who had happiness, because I couldn’t feel any. Trauma effects everyone differently, but that is how mine portrayed itself.

Sometimes it’s unexplainable pain in your body that nobody could ever understand. There’s days where you might not even want to look in the mirror, because you don’t recognize the person looking back at you anymore. You might have uncontrollable angry outbursts that could easily scare anyone off that isn’t willing to understand. You might feel everything so vividly, or you might feel nothing at all. There will be times when concentrating becomes impossible, and finishing a task is worse than daunting. You might want to sleep through it all, but are unable to even close your eyes. You could even become addicted to anything or everything. Mine was food. The irritability may take over your personality, and you could become intolerant to everything. Just because you cannot physically see the pain, does not mean it is not there. It is different for everyone.

Those aren’t things that people tell you about trauma. It’s not always flashbacks and panic attacks. It’s real, pure, genuine anger and sadness. It’s steaming at the ears from the egotistical person driving that car that cut you off, which is actually only a second of your day. One second out of 24-hours can feel like a lifetime when you feel like that inside of your own body. Everyone experiences trauma differently, but that does not mean that it’s not there or real.

I’m here to tell you that it’s possible to find yourself again. I still have my days where I am sad and bitter, but that’s a part of me now. It might not be a part of myself that I love, but I choose to accept that I am different. I couldn’t possibly be the same person as I was before what happened. That’s not realistic. I take every day as a new challenge, but I do still have my bad days. Recovery isn’t constant sunshine. It’s hard and it takes a lot out of you. I have decided that I don’t want to inflict the same pain that others have inflicted into me. Those are the people that I spent so long hating, and I was sad that I was only repeating the same cycle of abuse. It’s okay to talk about what happened to you. Find someone who you can trust. There are many support groups for many different types of traumas/experiences. If you can’t find one, then reach out to me. I have gone through many types of traumas, so I will always be able to understand and never there to judge. There will be many blogs that dive a little deeper into exactly what happened to me, but today I wanted to start by saying that today is a brand new day. Find those puzzle pieces that may have fallen under the couch. Put them back together. Put yourself back together. You may be hurting now, but you won’t hurt forever. I can’t give you a magical elixir to make the pain go away. You have to be able to find a way that works for you. You have to choose to win. You have to be willing to forgive.