Life After Trauma: I Taken From Me

      I am about half way through the semester and I have to say that going back to school has been one of the hardest things that I have done since the incident that started my PTSD. I am finding it difficult to form new relations and maintain old relations with the people around me. When I am confronted by people at school, I freeze up and panic. The only thoughts that cross my mind are negative and hateful, and that is not the person that I want to be.  I wish that I could be free from my trauma and go back to a normal life.

      There are days that I just want to go into hiding and avoid the world. The last few weeks have been full of those days it would seem. On one such day, I had arrived early to class and was left to wait outside while the earlier class had finished. Standing in the hallway, I wore my headphones and tried to pretend that I was elsewhere. Without consent or warning, a woman in my class that I had never spoken to, walks up to me and starts playing with my hair. Unknown to her, she had just triggered a flashback. Paralyzed, I stood in the hallway trying to bring myself back to reality. Hands shaking and mind racing, I managed to stumble my way into class and plop down in my normal seat. The lecture began and I was unable to think straight. Memories of violence, torture, and abuse ravaged my thoughts and it slowly and painfully got progressively worse. The walls began to close in on me and all the sounds in the room became background. It would seem that I would learn little this period all because someone had touched me.

      The second that class was over, I gathered my things and chose the quickest exit. I did what I do every time this happens to me on campus, I hastily walked to the business and news building that is always quiet with very few people. I stood on the second floor bridge and smoked one of my last cigarettes and hopelessly tried to find an ounce of inner peace. I looked out over the campus and continued to tell myself that I was safe and that I was stronger than my illness. To add to the horror, an acquaintance came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped back and when I looked at him, it was not his face that I saw. It was the face of someone that I once knew and I tried to hold in the rage but failed. It took all of me to see things clearly and not strike him. He look at me with an annoyingly confused expression and apologized for scaring me, to which I replied as calmly as I could by shouting “FUCKING SHIT!”

      I hate this illness, I really do. I wish that I could go back to the fun and friendly person that I used to be, but to be honest, I don’t believe that it is possible. When I think about my disorder, I don’t feel as if life was taken from me. I feel as if I were taken from me.