the complexity of being a human being living with a traumatised brain
my trauma has made me complex. this isn't to say that human beings aren't complex in general, but it has made me complex in a way that I can no longer understand or recognise. I feel like I am living inside a paradox: a brain that was strong enough to survive something so harrowing, yet tries to take me out at every given opportunity. safety within my own body is something I was robbed of long ago, and I don't feel it is something I can get back
I have found myself trying to forgive what happened, but I don't feel I will ever be in a position to forgive. I was never given an apology, so why would I forgive what happened? my acceptance of what happened does not equate to apathy, and I will forever be angry and hurt about it. I sometimes feel I am making myself worse by allowing myself to feel so negatively, but I don't feel I am able to derive any positives
despite me coming away from what happened with my life still intact, I still feel as though my life was taken. not in a physical sense; but the life I had the potential to live will never see the light of day, because of the actions of one person. I could've been brilliant, but instead I fear I will always be sat in the dark, ruminating on what could have been had that night gone differently
survival hasn't made me stronger, it hasn't changed me for the better, it hasn't done me the amount of good people keep trying to tell me it has. I never needed to be made stronger and more resilient, I was sixteen. I was a child, a young girl robbed of her early womanhood who had to watch everyone around her do things she could only dream of being able to do
even after surviving what I did, it has left me with feelings on unfulfillment with everything I do. if that night had never happened, where would I be now? how different my life could have been where managing to leave the house wasn't considered an achievement. and despite all my efforts, I am still alive almost nine years later, living a life that feels disorganised and as if it were thrown at me.
I thought survival would make me feel gratitude for everything ,but instead I feel filled with dread at the thought of living another 50, 60, 70 years feeling the way I do. I had no intention of living to see 18, then 21, then 25, now here we are. I feel like I am floating through an incomplete story timeline that the writers haven't finished writing yet. picturing myself in 5 years time feels like a momentous task: how am I supposed to picture a life I never planned on living?
complexity can be beautiful, it makes the world and the people in it more interesting. my complexity is not something I ever wanted, it was something thrust upon me by a person I did not know, who committed an act so evil that I can't bring myself to think about it. yet, my brain takes it upon itself to make sure I think about it daily, for reason unknown to me. because trauma has made me too complex to understand












