Triggered

PTSD.

One and done.

Doesn't matter if it was

Big T or little t.

It just matters that it happened.

Not easy, but one-event recovery.

 

C-PTSD.

Repeated trauma

Keeps rolling its punches never-ending.

The big Ts and little ts

Stacking

Up

High

It feels impossible to identify

What happened at what time.

 

Traumas to work through

Different places

Different people

Don't know when the next blow goes

I can't brace myself.

I can heal all the way someday,

But today is not that day.

The real nightmare might just happen again

The next day.

 

Meanwhile,

For us both,

Who knows when the trigger will be pulled?

Who knows when we go back

To that flashback?

 

I don't mean the ones in fairytales,

I mean the one in my head

On repeat

Repeat

Repeat

Won't stop messing with me.

When grounding doesn't work

And seemingly time is the one that makes it end and helps me

Inhale

Exhale.

But until then,

I suffer in silence because I can't breathe.

I can't move.

I can't speak

Or communicate

I need someone there with me.

 

Until then,

I'm in a room,

All the oxygen sucked out

Shaking like a leaf in the wind

But I can't speak.

I

Can't 

Breathe.

 

I jolt up in the middle of the night,

The trigger replaying in my mind,

Gasping for air my brain decides isn't there.

 

I see someone hung

And that reminds me of when I wanted to be in their place.

I hear screaming

And it brings me back to when I screamed for the fighting to stop

The screams of pain.

I see punches and I witness the people throwing them,

Their faces replaced with the ones from those days.