Pulled Back

This is my attempt at explaining some of what’s been going on. Getting pulled back to another time and place or having ‘flashbacks’ of bad experiences is part of the PTSD so I wanted to try to put some of what that’s like into what words because I had a really hard time explaining it to the lady at the clinic.

~

Sitting quietly surrounded by the comforts of life, a warm cup of tea in my hands and shadows stirring in the corners of the house. My loved ones snore nearby and cats grace every available perch but their presence isn’t enough to drive away the force that pulls me inward. The warmth of my home seeps away, sounds fade and colors are lost- my senses escape to another time and place.

I’m there again, the moment calling me like a siren on the rocks. I know I’ll crash but I couldn’t pull away even if I knew how. Adrenalin rises and suddenly I’m no longer in the present, traveling back over a once trodden path where thorns lay in wait for my returning heart.

I’d pinch myself to pull away from the moment but I know the pain will only spur it on, add a physical layer to the phantom sensations echoing against my skull.

It’s never just one to any present time. It’s many. The thousand facets from a shattered stone, no more worthy than the coal it once was but twice as precious even as it draws blood from my fingers when I try to pick up the pieces. Each piece a story too complex too truly tell. Each piece a barb that should never have been placed.

But I suppose even piercings can be beautiful.

I’m going back, farther and farther till I no longer remember the now. No longer the strong woman I am but once more the little girl crying out for figments- knowing her mother would never come.

I am once more the silent watcher, frozen in horror as he holds the hammer above her head.

I am once more the rider in the dark, wondering if it would really be so bad to get hit by the car if only it would take me away from the darkness of the night.

I am once more the sleeper awakened by the cops.

I am once more the nothing she made me be. A lonely child cowering as she yelled and spit, my hair in her fists and running up the stairs.

And then, through it all,…

I am once more the child too innocent to know that this sunshine painted world will hurt me so. Dancing in the flowers and singing nonsense songs. It is this memory that hurts me most, drawing tears like trails of crimson from the deepest wound I had ever known.

Their faces, all in the same day, the same moment, under the same roof. Never again would this happen and though clouds brewed between every other moment, an intricate and sticky web binding them together and apart, I would be kept separate.

Left to play in the light with my characters. Untouched by darkness. A blessing and a curse.

I double over with a pain no doctor will find as I am pulled back through the years. Images blur pass me and though I once more find myself in the present it will be a long few moments before I find myself truly here- before I am once again who I am, the shadow of who I was lost to the past where it belongs.

My lungs heave with breaths held too long, knees weak and tea cold. Cats laying undisturbed atop their respective humans who still snore in pleasant dreams. The television has been left on again but I don’t hear it as I hold myself tight, pleading the sun to rise just a little sooner as I spend another sleepless night gazing out into the darkness.

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