The C-PTSD Survival Guide
Sebin Thomas
In the
BEFORE
I walked through my life as if
in a cloud
a m i s t
a f o g
Low visibility;
In a state of inertia
I sat without comfort,
I slept without rest,
I rested without recovery,
I loved without receiving,
I acted without moving.
Like snow on
warm ground,
nothing stuck.
Healing hit me like a ton of bricks, one piano-falling-on-my-head of harsh clarity after another. I lay crying for weeks at a time with just the thought that someone I loved wasn’t who I thought they were. People are their actions, sometimes. After basically a quarter of my life spent waiting—waiting for someone to love me back, waiting for someone to get sober, waiting for the slap on my cheek, waiting for someone to come sleep in the bed left open for them, waiting for some movement forward
It was up to me. I realized every moment I spent pointing the finger, making everyone else’s problems my responsibility, and my suspended animation theirs was just another moment, month, year of my precious time wasted. I broke down. And then built back up. And then broke down. And then built back up. It was labor-intensive joyous work. It was an uncovering of the truth of me.
The thing about truth is it demands to be shouted. Every boundary I attempted to lay was a gift of trying to “make it work” and most of the time it failed. I learned I couldn’t force anyone to come with me—that even that desire was a symptom of trauma.
Sleep became a savior, a respite from all that fucking feeling I was doing. Damns of grief and anger and more truth and fear and mourning for the me I never was spilling over in tidal waves washing me away from a life I’d built on a faulty foundation. I didn’t know better. But I learned.
Healing became my center, my roots (and boy were they were thirsty) and they took over my life. The shifting and shaping of my path unfolded in ways I never could have seen coming and often my lessons looked like failure, like heartbreak, like loneliness. I carried on, anyway. I grew stronger and more agile as I fought through the booby traps and snags and crumbling of limiting beliefs and suddenly life felt a lot less miserable. Things that used to wreck me barely left a bruise. Suddenly I was protected by discernment, acting from a place of intuition, unencumbered by the voice in my head playing someone else’s story.
Suddenly, I was free.
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