Life after trauma takes a bit more time…if that makes sense.
Simple decisions that used to be decided in a single thought now seem to take days. And even after you’ve made a decision you rethink that every single moment until you make yourself crazy.
You find yourself distracted by everything and anything and focusing on anything in particular…besides your trauma…just seems utterly impossible.
Mindless distractions take the place of responsibilities. New ticks take the place of healthy habits. Nail biting, picking your cuticles until they bleed, biting your lips, staring off into space, scratching your skin, tapping your foot, rubbing your sleeve…all things you do to self soothe…yet they never seem to work. You obsessively pick at yourself until you feel better.
Life slows down, it stops, it pauses, but at the same time it’s going far too fast and you can’t seem to catch up.
The simplest things take far too much time, far too much brain power, and everything weighs so much. Life is too heavy.
Life is wading in water and sometimes the wading becomes so exhausting that you slowly begin to drown.
It’s easier to close everyone out, even the most important people in your life, than to let them in even for just a second because you know as soon as you do the rawness of your vulnerability and scars may scare them away.
So you sit in your trauma…in your pain…in your loneliness counting down the days until you feel normal again.
Kaitlyn Brynae 