#ligjts

But also, I can tell you that recovery from PTSD is a very, very real thing. It's a constant struggle but you do actually wake up one morning and everything feels distinctly different. And you feel perplexed at the sudden change, but you'll realise in retrospect it's happened in increments over the past few months of your life. There are honest to god probably THOUSANDS of things I can do now that I couldn't imagine doing last year. Wow, friends! The colours and sounds and people come back in a way that is frightening, but not in the same, terror-induced way. Trauma makes life seem small. Recovering from it, makes life feel exceptionally large and abundant with possibilities for pockets of beauty and safety. I was reading a book about trauma that likened recovery from it as "a second adolescence". It really does feel like that. It's that same period of rapid growth you experience as a teen, where you're constantly being exposed to new things, and consolidate and find your identity even in the smallest of ways. With PTSD, your identity becomes synonymous with the trauma. When you start to recover, the world and its experience become a place to rediscover your place as somebody new. It's exhilarating. And it's hard, because the voices don't go away. Whether they manifest in the night terrors or in the feelings of restlessness. But it gets SO much better. The terror dissipates. You start to trust and be affectionate again knowing well you might have your heart broken, and you continue to do so nonetheless. I am at a sort of peak in terms of the affection I can readily give people important to me, and it's a bit of a joke every time I think about it, because I didn't have this capacity for affection and connection only a few months ago. It's a great quality to have in my opinion, and I'm making sure to hold onto it and nurture it because it's who I think I really am fundamentally. I want to do lots of things with my life, but above all else I think I want to observe, connect, love, share, learn and listen. And I'm really happy to have the capacity for those things again. I feel like a lover of life and of people, knowing well how horrible and painful each of these two things can be, but holding them close to my heart anyway. There's such a strength in being able to give of your mind, body, heart and soul to others or to things, knowing they could hurt you, but fearlessly doing it anyway (because that's the opposite of what the voice of trauma tells you to do). And I think in doing so, a certain trust becomes apparent. A trust in yourself. A trust to be okay even if life throws more at you.