As some of you know, I am just a few weeks shy of facing the
anniversary of the horrifically life changing nights last June;
the nights a male stranger thought he had the right to violently
and humiliatingly invade my body. The anxiety of it approaching
has been great, almost overwhelming me at times. Some moments
are so intense that my mind actually gets into a state of fear
expecting that it is going to happen again when those dates arrive.
I know it is completely illogical and irrational, and that is how trauma
and PTSD behave. I have cried rivers of tears in the last couple
of months.
I talked about this in my support group as everyone else has already past at least their first anniversary. One friend described it as sort of a bad birthday. Her friends and family call her and make sure she is okay and at least one of them makes sure she is not alone for that day. Unanimously it was acknowledged to be hard. I should try to stay distracted and stay with people.
Then I decided that spending so much time and energy dreading the inevitable was not healthy and was not profitable in any way. I also decided I wanted to redeem the days. So much was stolen from me on those nights, and the collateral damage continues to this day. I don’t want that week stolen from me every year, the anticipation is too painful.
I have not figured out what I am going to do on the thirteenth, and I have already booked a timeshare up in the mountains to engulf the eighteenth. I am going with a friend, the one who has been a rock through this even though she does not fully understand the pain. I plan on doing a lot of writing to recognize each person who has been instrumental in my healing journey and to validate how far I have come since then. Though I know I have healed, too often when the PTSD flashes, it is hard to see any growth at all.
