You know the song my REM “It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I feel fine)”?

After I started experiencing my PTSD symptoms it felt as though it was the end of the world as I knew it. And I felt anything but fine.

The hardest part for me was being told to “let it go”.

Trust me if I could have, I would have.

PTSD isn’t something I can control. I can’t tell the flashbacks and nightmares “hey there I let it go, you can stop now”.

I honestly wish when this first all started happening and I was in tears crying sobbing cause I didn’t think I could take it any more. Asking  when would this all end? When would it stop? That someone had just placed their hand on my shoulder and said “I’m sorry but it won’t. You’ll have to learn to live with it.”

But they stayed quiet. I don’t blame them and I’m not angry with them. Because honestly they didn’t know. PTSD is different for everyone.

I’m learning to live with PTSD. Struggling with it every day. Because it isn’t something I’ve learned. I don’t think I can ever learn it. Not sure if I want to.

I say I struggle, but I happen to live a productive life. I say struggle because out of left field it will hit me. I’ll have a flashback, and it feels so real.

I’ll be walking in the mall and bam a trigger. Those emotions flood back and I will start to tremble. I will avoid things just to feel safe.

“I’m safe” those two (three if you don’t hyphenate) precious words that mean so much.

I’ve been trying to write a blog about what happened. It’s hard. It’s hard to put into words what happened.

On the outside I may look like nothing happened. That’s because it happened on the inside. And the inside is the hardest to fix.