Settling In...PTSD

1 Sam. 10:26  "And Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had touched."

Settling in...PTSD

Settling into my home was not as easy a task as you’d imagine. Happy-go-lucky Joni was a shell of a being. The nurses had noticed in the hospital and nursing home, and they didn’t even know me, the physical therapists saw it, and my family just assumed I was sad. No, the trauma I had experienced was a little more than depression or sadness, it had all the earmarks of PTSD.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not a light analogy of depression or sadness, it is a severe trauma that is triggered ever so lightly by sounds, pictures, faces, or names. It is a fear so intense that not even the Light of God Himself standing beside you can wash away, it is THAT severe. People who don’t have PTSD will never comprehend the magnitude of pain a person suffers through.

Last year is almost a complete blank to me, except for the trauma. Have you ever opened an MS page and saw a blank screen staring you straight in the eye and you felt a trembling panic for a few seconds not knowing what you were there to write? Every morning I open my eyes a blank page lay before me; what I put on that page shapes my day physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. What people say or do become triggers like a bullet waiting to be tapped and released from the barrel, words can shoot a person down. Without even knowing the triggers, friends, and family set off a ticking time bomb inside the psyche of a person suffering from PTSD. Anger, fear, frustration, guilt, and shame all become an open floodgate in the way of tears streaming down my face at any given time. At home, the doctor's office, the physical therapist office, or even in the food store, tears unleash without warning.

When my home health nurse noticed my PTSD along with my physical therapist, I was put in touch right away with a counselor. While I liked Dee, she was more about telling me her story than hearing mine. It was fine because that is the kind of front I put up, I’ll help you, you can’t help me; it’s an unbreakable barrier. I basically thanked her for listening and sent her on her way as I cringed inside. I was broken.

I could see the pieces of myself scattered on the floor. I wanted ever so much to take a whisk broom and scoop the particles onto a dustpan and toss them in the trash but I was immobile, disabled. There was no scooping going on any time soon. I would sit in the silence of the house, meditate in the quiet of aloneness, and pray to the only God I know and worship. Only He could get me through this, in time. HIS TIME, not my time. Here we go again.

Settling into my new surroundings would have me fearful of nightfall. Sounds would ricochet off the walls while shadows would pirouette. You would think that home was familiar surroundings but to me, I felt as if I was an orphan dumped off to this house with a family I didn’t recognize.

As the fragments of my life lie on the floor, images of last year shine like a mirror swaying in the sun, blinding me as I see good and bad portions flailing about. This trauma was not a phase I was going to laugh my way out of as if nothing bothers me. Each step I take would be like tiptoeing in a minefield, a trigger to tears or to laughter, to pain or to joy. I don’t have a choice in the matter, I just tread lightly and make every day a new day, every step a step toward healing.

God's time is not my time as I stroll along the healing path. I’ll endure the steps I needed to take to get me to the healing sea where I will eventually take a luxury dip and swim like a fish in open waters. Right now I’m still in an saltwater aquarium awaiting release in the open sea. God tells me ‘patience’, ‘faith’, and most of all ‘TRUST’, and in Him is where I’ll find my healing. The Joni I remember is still there in the windowed world… it's just going to take some patience, faith, and trust to find her again.

Lam.3:23 "They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

Isolation

Psalms 34:17  The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
***

As a writer, I enjoy the quiet still mornings where the only sounds I hear is the refrigerator kicking on and off, the creaks of the bed where slumberers are still resting and the wind gently tapping on the window, stirring my muse.

When I was kid, I would go to the park and that is where I would never be found on a seesaw, or a maypole, or sliding board, I could be seen swinging high into the clouds. I’d go so high, I often imagined that I could fly and sometimes, with my eyes closed, I did. In the air of the swings forward motion, I flew off of the swing and soared above the park and saw all the people below laughing, giggling, inane behavior,  while the grass swayed, the clouds spun and I was free, finally free, until I realized, I was just sitting on a swing.

Even as a child I liked isolating myself from people. Maybe that is why I chose to write at such a young age, because no one really liked me, I had few friends, and life was isolation for me, reading and writing.

I don’t isolate intentionally. One day I’m happy go lucky, then I turn around and I’m alone in my thoughts with words bouncing like ping pong balls off the page. Words in a sea of foam, go crashing front and center and elude me but I catch them and toss them onto paper and then, it happens, I’ve written a thousand words that I didn’t even know were lurking in there.

I have this thing with wanting sincere people around me. Whether online or offline, I like people who are sure of where they are going, know where they have been, and have found that God is the only thing in life that will get them from point A to point B.

I can count my genuine friends on one hand, and that’s if I had a few digits missing. The genuine one’s reach out to me, comfort me, and make me feel loved, the others use words words words to convey their sincerity and to me, it is more hurtful than actually comforting me in my time of need. And most, who claim sincerity, wave me off like butter on a piece of toast.

Isolation to a writer is a place of contemplation. The small things run off the shoulder like water off a gooses back, (Canadian friends inside joke there.) It’s the larger and grander things that aren’t so easy to just let roll. They’re there, and you have to face them, write about them and move forward! So today, as my friends whoop and holler and have a grand old time, I will cherish the ones that embrace me in my isolation, love me in the darkness of the day, and bring sunshine and light to a cloudy day. Thank you!

Poetry Sunday ~ The Shell Remains ~

Psalms 34:17  The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
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The Shell Remains
(c) Joni Zipp
***
I sit in the hollow halls of pain
with nothing to comfort but the rain
they say, they say they care
when really they mean, when I’m there.

I’m alone in this fragile world of mine
greedy paws take away my shine.
like a flower beaten by a deluge
something grander something huge.

Abandoned by my nearest and dearest
all of them that dwell in the fear fest
I bow to the wind and all its fury
unleash on me His reigning glory.

When I’m happy, you’re by my side
a wonder of words in which I confide
but when I’m down and at my worst
my body shreds as if I’m cursed.

You leave me to dangle like a thread
about to break by the fiery dread.
Walls collapse, my mind reformed
like a babe about to be born.

I can not stay in this lonely shell
where loads of lies run rampant as hell;
the fire burns endless my soul will not sour
I’m controlled by love and a Higher Power!

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