Truths About Life And Living With Trauma

I've spent the last month or so away from San Antonio. Being away from San Antonio has been where some of my most amazing memories have been made. There are numerous traumatic experiences that I've had throughout my life in San Antonio and because of those numerous traumatic experiences I've developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When I'm in San Antonio I feel awful. I'm constantly on alert at my apartment and most other places in San Antonio because of those traumatic experiences I've mentioned that have happened in that particular city. I'm very jumpy because I feel unsafe and like I always need to be prepared for danger which could be lurking at any corner. I sleep horribly because I have horrible night terrors. For anyone who doesn't know, night terrors are not the same thing as nightmares. Night terrors are where the dreams a person is dreaming seem so real to him or her that he or she is actually drenched in sweat, crying or screaming loudly or has a racing heart. When I experience night terrors I experience combinations of the things I've just mentioned here. I initially wasn't going to write about mental health issues on my blog but I got to thinking that I want people to see all of who I am because I'm human just like they are. Plus talking about mental health issues here is a great way for me to keep record of what I've gone through and who I'm becoming. So anyway being in San Antonio is not fun for me at all. So when I decided to take a month or so vacation in an entirely different state I realized how being in a place where a person hasn't had traumatic experiences drastically changes his or her life for the better. Since I've been away from San Antonio I've slept the best I've ever slept, I haven't had any PTSD symptoms whatsoever and I'm able to cope with stressful things somewhat easier than I can when I'm in San Antonio. I feel safe here in this different state which is something I can honestly say I've never experienced before. I feel like I'm able to be confident in myself, not just because I feel safe but because I know I'm capable of navigating the world with ease now. . There are things that I want to happen for myself and I'm determined to see those things through. One of the things that I want to make happen for myself is to be able to talk about trauma as I'm doing here on my blog. I think that society's view of trauma as well as society's view of people who have mental illness is unhealthy, to put it mildly. I also think though that I'm someone who has the power to change people's thoughts on mental illness/trauma because I live with mental illness and trauma every day of my life. I'm told that people don't think of those things when they see me or talk to me because I don't come across as someone who has "issues" of that sort. Really though what the fuck does a person who has dealt with trauma look like? What does a person who sometimes resorts to bad eating disorder-related behaviors look like? I'll answer both of those questions: a person who deals with trauma and who sometimes resorts to bad eating disorder-related behaviors looks like...YOU and ME. Just because I appear to some people not to have those sorts of struggles, does not mean that what people perceive about me is true. I'm making it known now that I'm no longer willing to keep secrets about myself. I'm no longer willing to let how people may perceive these things stand in the way of me telling part of my story. Because that's just it: the fact that I live with PTSD symptoms when I'm in San Antonio and the fact that I sometimes resort to bad eating disorder-related behaviors, are things that I live with. These things are part of what makes me human. I'm well aware of the fact that society sees these sorts of things as things that should be swept under the rug because talking about these things forces people to be uncomfortable and sit with their discomfort. I'm well aware that talking about these things makes people feel uneasy because those people perceive mental health issues to mean that people with mental health issues are defective human beings who are not worthy of receiving love or experiencing joy. Unfortunately I used to buy into that mind-set myself: I used to feel that because I had mental health struggles, that I somehow was unworthy of having a meaningful and joyous life. I felt like because most of my family, the people who were supposed to love me, showed me otherwise, that their actions and words meant that I was unworthy of goodness because I was part of their family. Honestly it's taken a lot of work for me to undue this thinking and it's a work-in-progress on a daily basis. However I no longer believe that I'm powerless to change the cycle. The bullying and physical and mental abuse has stopped because I moved out of my mom's house in May 2009. I'm nothing like the people who repeatedly traumatized me. Even though I experience PTSD symptoms when I'm in San Antonio I don't have to continue to stay somewhere that repeatedly harms me every day. Because I'm an adult I have the power to make my own decisions about anything and everything. Sometimes though I forget that to the extent that i can control what happens in my life, I can make a conscious choice every day about how I want to feel and how I want to live while I'm here on Earth. The reality is that whether people are sighted, blind, multiply-disabled or able-bodied, every person in this world has things that he or she struggles with. Every person's struggles are different but if we learn to speak openly and honestly with one another about how our struggles affect us then that will be one step towards making the world a more loving and healthy place for us all to live in. If we all work together as I've said in my blog before, the sky really is the limit!