My PTSD (a poem)

May16

It doesn’t matter if it is cold, hot, sunny, snowing or raining.

There is no telling when it’s going to strike.

 

Are they alive or dead?

Is that pain real or echoes from pain long ago that

Resurface with a memory?

It’s like being held hostage by your mind.

Is today the day I am set free?

 

I look like everyone else.

I know the difference between right and wrong.

Yet in my head I sometimes can’t remember

The last ten minutes of my life, or what day, year or time it is.

 

Are those smells read or is that a smell from a place and time when I

Was being held against my will?

Am I really hearing the sounds of helicopters, planes,

Cicadas, and birds?

Or is that the sound coming from a place that no longer exists and

Should never be talked about?

 

I want so much to be like everyone else.

So I will keep pulling myself up the rope.

Out of the clutches of PTSD and all the skeleton hands of the past that

Keep trying to pull me down.

My job is to live, so I can live.

That’s all I can ask of myself if I am going to have a future.

©Alexis Rose

31 thoughts on “My PTSD (a poem)”

  7. Thank You! I totally get it about describing dissociation. If its about losing time, or being disconnected from my body, or Who is That in the mirror. Its hard to describe sometimes isnt it! Someday hopefully hopefully we wont have to describe it. Someday ❤️

    Liked by 1 person

  8. That so describes PTSD. I have been trying to describe dissociation and it’s just so difficult. It takes different forms and I’m not past or present and that nothingness is just so scary.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. You will conquer it, or at the least, kick its face in. You’re above those skeletons on the rope – so you’ve got an advantage. And you’ve got all of us cheering you on.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. You’re very welcome darlin-I’m just grateful to have found someone brave who speaks my language. I will have a stab at poetry tomorrow, eek! It’ll be a challenge and different to my usual writing Xxx 😊

    Liked by 1 person

  31. This is very moving, and a very accurate and relatable description of what PTSD from childhood trauma is like. I feel just like this myself, so had to leave a comment encouraging you to keep writing, and I hope writing will grant you some freedom from your torment xxx 💛

    Liked by 2 people

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