The picture here represents a considerable part of my reality–I love beautiful tables and flowers and visual and performing arts and so very much more. But beyond this frame there is more than meets the eye. This day I feel a quiet desolation and seek solace.

Despite my embrace of the captivating fullness of life, real happiness arising from even transitory moments, hauntings can occur in my life unannounced. Nights hijacked by old suspects and worn out frights, mornings stolen by that which I believed were barest of images within vast, more interesting records of memory. I am at times caught unprepared and that makes it harder. This!– despite years of education and therapeutic insights, despite solid training on how to maneuver within frightening contexts both literal and figurative. I still must chase away ghosts that, though vaporous, insist on inhabiting my space. I keep thinking I should no longer have to slay those dragons, corral and banish those memories. It is only the intangible past, not the present reality but it yet survives to varying degrees, right here, within me, despite my best intentions and hard work. Mostly I am not that person with that kind of  suffering. And then it comes around again.

It was a conversation that veered suddenly into dire places. But it might be a terrible movie scene. A certain car and truck passing by. A stranger on the street who moves and watches like a predator. People who spit out hard, bitter words. The sounds of someone shoving or hitting another. A knife flashed. A fierce warning to say nothing, to make no sound. Another song that disparages women. Seeing a child whose face appears frozen rather than round with contentment. A youth whose eyes reflect a ruinous something, an emptiness where once was excitement for life.

And then I may start to free fall deep within, and the falling ignites travail and its grief. I have moments to stop the fall or it could accelerate, even if for a few moments, an hour. Or a day or two. But I am fortunate. I know what it is and I know what to do.

Anyone who has experienced significant trauma knows what this is. It has a clinical name many abbreviate, as if this might make it seem less distressing and it has been more and more tossed about for all sorts of things: PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a great deal more its name denotes at first glance. It represents an array of internal and external responses to internal or external stimuli that carry the person back to the initial trauma and feelings associated with it. It can be experienced even as difficult–or more–than the original events. Because it is never quite entirely over. We sometimes don’t care about greater understanding of the originating cause and complicated effects. We are more invested in trying to live beyond both. And our intellects, our will, tell us we can do it when emotions are busy issuing their own commands.

This thing we feel is a razor-sharp grief that resurfaces, a shock that feels like a grab around the neck. A nebulous fear that fools and undermines. A threat of hopelessness that seeks to badger one into believing there is no point to faith, courage and persistence; that peace and joy are wretched fables. It is the vivid remembrance that harm came and there was no rescuing and that this remains a possibility. It is a mirror you look into, seeing only devastation behind blurred eyes. It can take a person and transform him or her into someone unrecognizable. The tragedy of trauma injures badly and even cripples– and although healing seems complete, aging wounds can reopen to threaten the wellness that has been recreated. This is life with PTSD, even when it is familiar territory: experiencing old and new dangers, standing your ground despite renewed distress and becoming more resilient. You further determine to become and/or to remain whole.

I have often written of emotional and spiritual programs one can engage in to live beyond the harm done, to overcome trauma’s effects. And also how often in my counseling work I have seen people not only recover but come alive again (for it is a kind of rebirth to get better) in powerful ways, and move forward. I’ve spoken of my childhood abuse and adult abuse/assaults including domestic violence to help establish the honest reality of what I have lived. I haven’t written of specific events because sometimes graphic exposure does not make the story more powerful or worthwhile–nor the storyteller feel any better nor reader more truly informed. Violence against children and women: this tells of the crimes.

But trauma did not negate the happiness of my growing up, the fond memories of family cohesion and caring and many wonderful experiences I’ve freely written about. I’ve shared the fact of abuse to also demonstrate how it has become an impetus to change that led to growth. A serious challenge I took up spiritually beginning in early adolescence. It has been part of what fuels my creativity as well as strengthening empathy and compassion for others. I have deeply wanted to assure others that there is the potential for joy beyond the burden of past abuse–because I have found it, myself. This is the truth as I have known it, as well. But it doesn’t mean that my life is easy and that all that pain has vanished. It is more that I have learned to manage PTSD  symptoms and know my limits as well as my potential to be a braver and healthier woman.

Survivors of abuse need to know where our responsibility begins and ends. I was not responsible for what happened to me. I was not responsible for parents and others nearby being unable or unwilling to help me. I was not responsible for the fact that there was too little clinical knowledge forty, fifty and sixty years ago to appropriately treat children and young adults who had been violated. I was not responsible for a culture that accepts and fosters, even glorifies violence against females. I was not responsible as a teen for becoming gradually dependent on potent barbiturates, tranquilizers and amphetamine the family doctor prescribed rather than ask what was wrong. I was not responsible for feeling abandoned and thus not loved, and making poor choices that sprang from a grave sense of worthlessness. I was not responsible for the horror and pain, years and years of it. And I was not even responsible for longing to die, for nothing else made any sense. But I stayed alive. Held on to what mattered. Perhaps because I yet believed despite the seeming evidence that God had not forgotten me, that God had always offered a steadfast love.

But at some point I saw–we see–there is much work to be done and it is time to stop the blood- letting and crying out. To stop just enduring–and to get on with it. As an adult I am responsible for taking back my life. For seeking help when I have needed it, of informing myself of options available and then taking reparative action. I can be, must be, far more than a survivor. I am a human being who is living a life that I value. Making mistakes, failing to accomplish all I desire but striving to do even better, to become more enriched, kindhearted, even celebratory than yesterday. There is no other choice for me, anymore. I have lived much longer than I had expected; I have come close enough to death a few times. I know that the present offers me opportunities to be fully present and to be of good use, no matter that suffering might pair up with exultations. And in between the peaks and valleys there is just the business of life to attend to; it is my intention to attend to it as all deserve to have done.

But there are still weeping days. And the weight of hulking nights. There are memories that still twist my heart. Losses that can track me down like mad dogs. I have to take hold, take greater care. Take the time to heal that spot more again. To be patient with myself. Create kinder moments and reach out to friends and family. Remind the anguished child (who became a woman, a caretaker of other wounded ones, an adoring mother and a sort of writer-warrior) that she is never truly alone nor unloved. I must look into the ogres’ faces from time to time and find it in me to forgive as often as it takes. And maybe one day they will not materialize at all. Or I will have left the haunted premises, truly free. But if they do, I will manage.

I have questions that have no discernible answers, yes. It is disconcerting since I have a great need to understand, to embrace the truth. There are prayers I pray that may travel beyond forever or land on far planets or crowd among the prayers of millions more. But it is our human nature, too, to send a floating globe of light into dark-draped skies and with it a fledgling hope, a heartfelt longing, a silent but resounding word to God. And so today I have let the aching just be here for a bit. Acknowledged what it is. Now I remove it from my center. Hold it in my hands, raise them high; breathe in, breathe out. Let it go once more. Step out the door, move on.