Of all the mental health issues I discuss openly, there are few I mention as little as my PTSD. Mostly because I don't really believe that mine exists. My brain rationalises it differently compared to other things. I was raped, but I managed to put the man that raped me in prison and it's over, so I can't still be experiencing things related to in this far in the future, can I?
I was diagnosed with PTSD when I was 24 I think, I don't really remember the exact time but I remember I was living in Essex with my Dad and working in London. I had no idea what it was, only that I was suffering from intense paranoia. My attitude to my symptoms is that I'm used to the ones I experience every day and I try to manage them but, when new symptom arrises, I know it's time to check in with my doctor.
As I didn't register with a new doctor when I moved to London, I got on a train back to Norfolk went to visit my mum. It's really difficult to book appointments at my doctor back home and so I turned up, got an on the spot appointment for that day and waited to see the nurse practitioner.
This was one of the only instances where I'd asked my mum to be in the room with me, because I didn't quite know what they were going to stay. As it turns out, I shoved her out within the first 30 seconds of the appointment. Old habits die hard and I didn't feel comfortable with her there. After she left, I fully explained my new symptoms and the back story of what had been going on over the past few years. Long story short, the previous events in my life had caused me to develop PTSD, and the paranoia was a result of my brain trying to deal with things in its own unique way. Like I said I didn't really believe what he was saying, PTSD just didn't seem like a rational connection to what had happened. Instead, I added it to the list of things my brain was dealing with, explained the updates to people at work and got on with things. I'd made it this far without letting being raped ruin my life and I wasn't about to start now.
Since then I very, very rarely talk about my PTSD. I don't think about it in connection with the rest of my symptoms, and instead, place it on a lower rung to everything else. After all this time I still don't still feel that I deserve such a diagnosis because I feel that what I went through wasn't really that bad and that in putting the man that raped me in prison I didn't really do anything.
There is no one on the planet harder on me than I am on myself.
We're currently in January and the start of one of the shittest periods of the year. Not only did I spend that year of University trying to complete my degree while simultaneously putting the man that raped me in prison, but I also lost a really good friend of mine. His birthday is in January, the man who raped me pleaded guilty at the beginning of March and Matt died towards the end. The trial was in April, on a day that cruley landed on that of Matt's funeral preventing me from being able to attend, and I was raped in the last weekend of May. To say things were difficult would be a bit of an understatement.
The only reason I am acknowledging my PTSD right now is because it stops me sleeping. On the anniversary of these events, it starts up once again and I'm unable to sleep. After a few days, it passes and I return to my schedule of near-constant unconsciousness, but will pop back up again until the end of May.
I'm struggling to sleep at the moment owing to last week having been Matt's birthday. That, combined with my experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder means that, if I could, I'd happily skip the first five months of the year. It's something that I live with every year, and probably always will. If I could say a little prayer to the gods of BPD, it would be to give me a decent night's sleep, because I'm fucking exhausted.
xXx
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