I've been thinking about traumatic events in people's lives, and how it affects them, mostly because I recently experienced a traumatic, life-altering experience.
I have known for at least all my adult life that people experience traumatic events, and are forever changed afterward. I myself have had a few of those experiences. But never before have I felt as fundamentally changed, different, no longer my own self.
I can't explain in what ways I have changed, other than that my writing is not as funny as it used to be. I only know that I'm not me any more. I don't know who I am. I don't react the same way as I used to.
I cry more easily, and more often.
I spend a great deal more time alone.
I have a strange reluctance to be where there will be large numbers of people, and when I am with a lot of people, even people I love, I feel uneasy, and find it very stressful, to the point of needing a two-hour nap afterward.
I often have a sense of dread, as if something really bad is about to happen, and I don't know what it is or how to stop it.
Anxious. I feel anxious.
Tomorrow is my birthday. My darlin asked what I want. I told him I don't want anything; I am just thankful to be alive.
But there is something I want, and I don't think I will ever have it again: I want my life back.
I want me back.
But I think that me is gone forever.
I'm stuck with the new me, and I don't know who I am.
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1 comment:
Jan, the real you will resurface eventually.
I'm 3 years post-surgery & post losing my brother, and I'm FINALLY starting to feel real again. Sometimes those major events shake us more deeply than anyone realizes, and it's not depression, but it feels like it. Almost like you are fighting your way to the surface from a very deep cave.
One of the things that helped me alot was reading books by Michael Phillips and Brock & Bodie Thoene. The spiritual insights that they put in their fiction absolutely helped me rebalance myself.
You are in my prayers. ((HUGS))
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