PTSD Irony…

Lately some of the unfortunate incidences in my life have been plaguing me. Sucking my soul dry like a leech that I cannot seem to detach.
Sometimes I wonder if people who have not had trauma resulting in PTSD can understand what it is truly like to live with this condition.
On any given day or week you can feel completely grounded, humbled, and strangely at peace with life and the past. It stops haunting you and the noose around your neck releases hanging there unused like an empty pinata’ leftover from a party. Only it’s not empty- it may look like that to the outside world but there are different hidden compartments inside. Compartments that can easily spill open wide exploding with all the pain you hoped was gone.

~More of my story~

The couple of months after I was raped I started getting very involved in my photography work as a means of distraction from what had just happened. My photography is my soul. Captured memories from fleeting moments that otherwise would be forgotten. My new crisis entailed a route of moving from my house I had owned into a small apartment in a very safe secluded area. I could not be in that house not even a minute longer then I needed to get my stuff out. I was a homeowner with my parents help and our monies pooled together I owned my own home. Finally! I had left my ex-husbands house and wanted nothing of it- even the 50% equity FL state gives the wife. I didn’t want anything only to be free from him after being held captive for so long. Was I hung up with chains holding me against the walls? No- although those would have been easier to break free from. Fleeing seemed to work as a solution just like now with the new apartment in an effort to replace where I would attempt sleep from where I woke up that morning.

To anyone familiar with the tv show “The Walking Dead” it was exactly like the opening scene where the main character wakes up to see vast destruction everywhere, and his world as he knew it was forever changed. That is an exact description of what it was like for me (minus the zombies of course.) waking up with no memory to a life that would never be the same.

So I was hired by an amazing man I’d previously met at an event I photographed for a local group called “Creative Minds”. He was starting up his own local magazine and a photographer was needed so since we had become friends almost immediately he hired me. The first event I was to photograph was a Q&A circle for the first showing of an independent film debuting at the Sarasota Film Festival. We were given complimentary tickets to watch the show (press passes) so we rushed into the theater and sat down. I quickly ask “What movie is it Aaron?” He says “Little Miss Brave World”. How very exciting getting to see a first showing of an up and coming feature documentary film! 5 minutes later the film starts and immediately the words RAPE and ABUSE flash out on the screen starting the story of this amazing documentary. BAM. Undeniable coincidence…?
I hadn’t compartmentalized that I was raped yet I was just masking it with other things, but then here it was right in front of me.

Tears silently rolled down my face almost instantly. I became breathless trying to control the sobs from my stomach. I wanted to immediately run out of the theater feeling like an imaginary spotlight was on me making it obvious to the full room that I had been raped too. Had I known what the movie was about I wouldn’t have gone. Then the Q&A for the “Miss Brave World” started…

The Producer of the movie asked all of us in the room to raise their hands if they have ever been sexually abused/attacked.
Surprisingly enough out of the near 30 people in that room 28 hands went up. And it wasn’t only women.
That shocked me even more to see men openly admit to being raped or molested describing stories even in their adulthood.

Here I am doing my best to stuff away those events by focusing on my photography not allowing myself go back to that horrific place…. Then SMACK it’s right in front of my face again. Subconciously I start begging to instantly sucked back up in my own thick shell of believed safety where I retreat from the outside world mentally and physically.
Sometimes being Big, Strong, and Brave doesn’t feel like an option. Unfortunately surviving can come with a big price-tag to pay. Most of us are just trying to get out of bed, take care of basic responsibilities, and function as best we can. Survival of the fittest takes on an entirely different meaning.

I spent so much time doing my best to again try to not think of all that happened and then shortly afterwards I got the opportunity to photograph an after party from that film festival when it happens again BUT so much worse. I see “HIM” across the room…..

He stares at me open mouthed like I was a pin pulled out of a grenade. Someone walked in front of our gaze and when I looked back in that second he was gone. Clearly he was afraid I would call the cops or have to face whatever I could muster saying to him. He ran away from that party with the accelerated speed of guilt and fear. In a split second our eyes met and 2 seconds later I looked everywhere even running outside and he was gone without a trace.

• What would I had said to him is the question I ask myself sometimes?
• Would I have taken my hand in anger for the first time ever in my life and thrown a slap or punch?
• Would I have the nerve to tell him how much I regret ever having known him these past 3 years? Or would have I just froze in fear?

Sadly frozen in fear has been my MO for escaping in the past. I never went into the Fight response- Flight response happened. Just like how I flew away from my mind and didn’t allow myself in any way to see what he and another guy (which I only found out that information much later by the other person who was there) were about to do to my body. Mentally I was in Never-Never-Land, so verbally composing a sentence giving consent I have been assured would have been absolutely impossible due to whatever drug I was given.

Sometimes I wonder Why….? Why did these things happen? Why didn’t I learn my lesson after the first time? WHY?
But then I remind myself that all the questions in the world can never answer the reason why. And why is that? Because I am not nor will I ever will be a cruel sociopath, so understanding why someone would choose to devastatingly hurt someone else would be like understanding mandarin Chinese at first glance. Scientifically speaking our brains are all different like every snowflake. Period.
Realizing that may be the most awakening piece of clarity.
Remembering that may be the hardest part however…..