When The Trauma Ends

This isn't a poem, I don't think I have any metaphor to start this rant with. It’s more than pain, more than darkness, more than anxiety, more than anything anyone could ever imagine. I can only feel it myself. It's ineffable.

Grief. It’s such a lonely word, I can write pages on it. Because its loneliness matches mine. There aren’t many ways to give someone an idea of how it feels. Much less to make them actually understand. They'd sit there gawking for a while and then showcasing some pity curtained behind a façade of sympathy.

Imagine you’re sitting in a garden, alone with your thoughts and ideas. The sun is shining above you, the breeze is calming your nerves down.

The melody of greens and blues around you enables you to easily pen your thoughts down. One moment the page of your diary is a peaceful white – plain and stainless. The same paper is covered in swirls of emotions soon. Next, you see a red blot on your page. A few seconds, and another one, on your threadbare shirt. You touch your nose and your fingers come back stained with blood. It puts you in a flurry of intrusive thoughts. You gasp for air but, suddenly, you see yourself tied up in a wooden chair, ropes tearing at your already sore skin, raw with the dried blood on your wrists. Your mouth is stuffed with a choker fabric, forcing your purged blood back into your body. 

Your nose is still bleeding, you could feel the rivulets of warm liquid on your chin. Your organs are burning due to the lack of oxygen. You can’t breathe.

Everything is closing in on you now. Claustrophobia hits you like a ton of bricks, almost knocking you unconscious. When hope is running a little late, the tiny room you’re in starts filling up with cold water. The walls that seemed smaller rapidly grow on you now. You’re counting the dry inches left on the wall before they are submerged, too. The water would calm you on one normal day, you wish it came. Right now, it’s something you fear the most. You feel as if you forgot to swim. Your dead limbs don’t know what to do other than silently let the ropes hold you. The spine-chilling water reaches the bottom of your lip, that’s when the adrenaline kicks in. You start struggling even though you know all you’re doing is making those ropes tighten around your body, your wrists, your ankles. You feel the sting of icy cold water on your fresh wounds. The water is turning red. You can’t breathe. Your lungs are on fire.

You’re losing your vision. The brain is going dead. 

The water is entering your lungs. Your eyes, nose, and throat are on fire. You desperately want this to end but your body isn’t allowing it. It’s keeping you awake to feel the pain you usually don’t. Even your body is aware of how apathetic you are in front of others. Black splotches cloud your vision, but your other senses are heightened. The water is pulling you down. You want to wonder why the room you thought was so small, is suddenly an endless pitch of darkness. But you can’t. you’re drowning. You’ve given up. Your body is aching to stop for once and for all. It isn’t happening. You just want to end it. It isn’t happening. You want to sleep forever. It isn’t happening. I just asked you to imagine. It isn’t happening to you. It is my literary expression of a panic attack. When I have this display of my vulnerability, all I can do is try to calm down and breathe. 

A panic attack. It sieges my body.

Imagine feeling as helpless like this. If not more, at least once a day. Again, I’m just asking you to imagine. On the outside, I look like I’ve been on crack for months on end. As if I haven’t slept in ages. But no. I have slept a few hours that week. I’ve not been on drugs. That’s how tired I am and I hate myself for this. They call me a burden on others but little do they know that I have the baggage of my own. The bullies aren’t tired though. They keep going. I can’t build up the courage to ask for help. I don’t want my dad to know. I know I need to seek help. No more delay, thinking that it's a phase that'll pass with time and I won't ever be able to recover. 

For me, anxiety is a trigger. A key. To the door behind which all my demons live. One episode would last for around 4 to 5 minutes followed by hours of recovery and breathing techniques. I unconsciously let those merciless demons loose and possess me. It takes me more than a day to lock them up again. But, little does time pity. It’s a new day, and the vicious cycle starts again. And every day, I wait for a little, hope a little more, of a time when the trauma ends.