Surviving While Trying to Thrive: Life with CPTSD

The Friday Edition | No. 10

Surviving While Trying to Thrive: Life with CPTSD

“Surviving while f*cking trying to thrive” was the initial title for this piece but it is a better explicit beginning statement to describe how frustrating and difficult complex trauma is; how life-jarring trying to heal from abuse and neglect can be. And the irony of trying to heal and face old wounds that expose and break us apart, and dismantle old paradigms, stories, and flimsy safety features while at the same time attempting to hold ourselves together.

Life with complex trauma is a roller coaster ride of uncertainty – plunging us into deep crevasses only to find ourselves back on the rising swells of hope and possibility. Everyone that has experienced trauma has their own way of dealing with and expressing the deep hurt and pain, the losses and never agains, and hopeful rays of light that come in whims of uncertainty and unreliable, chaotic thunderbolts. You may know someone that has alluded to past abuse or childhood trauma, or this may be you.

In the end, we all have the wish to heal, to thrive, to feel fully into our body and mind – and into the moment. We long to know what true love feels like and looks like – we long to trust another fully and let ourselves unfold. We yearn to know who we are without the shackles and memories of traumatic experiences haunting our every breath, and the words and actions of callous abusers creeping through our mind disguised as our own thoughts and beliefs.

I heard someone say “healing is ruthless honesty.” It stung.

Pains and hurts find us and bite the hardest when we are at our most vulnerable.

It brings us to our knees and as we grow, we find a similar sting from events and others that we meet along our life’s path.

Patterns return.

Cycles cycle.

It hurts.

It burns.

It tears us apart again and again as we try to heal and piece ourselves together.

The saying “two steps forward and three steps back” is an understatement but we know what it means.

Hope: the thing that keeps expectation alive – of good things, salvation, and relief to come.

The princess in the locked tower waiting for rescue by a handsome prince.

But this is not a fairy tale and hope always disappoints. If it were not for the constancy of disappointment, we might still have an ounce of hope left but now there is nothing for it – hope is long gone, and good riddance too. I often wonder what is left when all hope is gone.

I hike, I write and I think. I read.

I watch and listen to teachers, healers, and therapists, and I exist.

I study nonduality, I write poetry, I soak up the sun.

Life goes on and nothing really changes except the healing – the endless f*cking trying – to integrate all parts of myself, heal and become whole, understand the universe, and let the past go.

To be free of what I think is holding me back, what keeps me imprisoned, and feeling separate from the world.

My trauma –

a fortress surrounded by a huge moat filled with alligators pretending to be a barrier of safety,

an unwanted prison,

keeping dangerous and unknown others at arm’s reach.

The drawbridge comes down but rarely.

Easier to just keep it drawn and wonder if the food and money will hold out or if I will get lucky and die before I have to worry about diminished resources and more feelings of lack.

Life can be cruel in these ways.

Dead woman walking.

A ghost at the grocery store.

Waiting for death – wondering at life.

No more hope.

No more fire.

No more abiding.

F*ck it!

Writing has been a way of speaking my truth. Of salving my pain. Of not normalizing or minimizing trauma but breathing in and breathing out ruthless honesty. Of understanding and learning to love and nurture myself. It has been a further effort to share what I have learned and unearthed along the way. I have become an archeologist of trauma – simple and complex, and an autobiographer of the forced, unbidden, experienced, and accepted life stories and the story of survival and attempts to reach the gold ring of thriving. It is a way to help share light, love, and understanding with others who are also struggling, and say fervently – you are not alone; those whose life has been overshadowed by abuse, trauma, and neglect, and are venturing to appreciate themselves, heal, and step more fully into their own lives.

As I stand back as an observer, this space of HeartBalm is my brain unfolded, my heart unfurled, my way of being and seeing and processing life – relaxed and sometimes pausing in the eternal moment of Now. The entirety of it is a map of sorts – of my life, the trauma points, the harrowing journey from complex abuse and non-sensical actions and events to learning about love, life, connecting and belonging; the mysteries of this universe, the world, and everything in between. Trying to make sense of it all when none of it – this life – has rarely ever made sense to me.