pts (- d)

in the morning on a Tuesday I woke up. it wasn’t pleasant. sometimes in Saturday evenings too, after a supposed quick nap, or at times in a Friday night too.

the palpitation. shortness of breath. someone’s writhing in pain. the sounds being replayed in silence.



let’s talk about what we don’t talk about when we talk about trauma, or rather the psychological aspect of it: that the ones experiencing are not necessarily aware about their existence. not until the stressors subside, not until the battle is over or whatever metaphor have you.

‘but you always seem to be well’. ‘but you managed to get through all that’. ‘but it is over already’.

if only it works that way.

we like to think that there is always supposed to be one point in time where the intense experience defined the trauma. it doesn’t necessarily work that way. there is another, less popular kind where one got the inconvenient gift through extended period of living on the edge.

the intense one-off shatters with a bang. the prolonged exposure destroys in silence.

.

when you are in a siege, feelings take back seat. probably an involuntary numbness too. you calculate, decide, and work on things with the situations and uncertainties at hand.

you don’t have time to feel sore. you even feel okay-ish, taking things on, functioning well in social settings, getting things done in professional environments. basically, you are feeling fine. because in a way, even if subconsciously, you can’t afford not to.

three years.

wherein your heart breaks bits by bits every day, uncertainties assault from multiple fronts, sprinkled with palpable and audible pain of someone literally dying.

in the year that was, the assaults went full force in an unprecedented storm of circumstances.

.

even broken clocks are right two times a day.

in the Thursday morning I woke up, that was hell. it was the writhing pain, the faint ‘I’m sorry’ I remembered, and the flashes of moments in the year that was. took some intense moments. managed to wake up and getting things done at work anyway. all the professionalism and the expected results.

the moments after that, though, were different story. ‘am I good enough’. ‘do I deserve others’. ‘am I too selfish’. ‘do I want too much’. probably the recoil. probably giving up too much in the process, probably for worse too.

I remember the joke, ‘the boy has more issues than National Geographic’. probably rightly so.

but, yeah, at least even broken clocks are right two times a day.