My first real trauma happened at 19 in the USA. I had no mechanisms to deal with it and my response was to move overseas to finish school. 7 years later I was married and still living overseas and the PTSD hit. It was like a bubble was burst... And the world was no longer the same. For the following 3-4 years I cycled from intrusive PTSD, severe panic (constant terror), catatonic depression, paranoia and disassociation. I cycled from over medicating, to cutting, to over excerciseing to overeating. I was in a hospital three times and on countless medications. I'm 2011 I separated from my husband and from then until 2013 I really started to recover and we divorced. It was the right move. I barely remember my marriage and I barely remember my ex husband - and we were married for 7 years.
In 2013 I hit another severe episode of depression and ultimately headed into a manic period where I engaged in severely dangerous and out of character behavior. I resigned from my job and moved to a developing country for 7 months. I was successful there in terms of work and networking, but I experienced a significant and major trauma while there in my first month. Even now I can not understand how it happened and why. But it did. However I stayed there. For a few reasons. And then ultimately decided to go back home to the USA (which I had not been to in a long long time).
I moved back, got a good job, my own apartment. I got into a very bad relationship with someone who turned out to be severely mentally ill and angry, but 8 months later I successfully negotiated my way out of that too.
But.... All I feel, and have felt for a long time, is this deep hopelessness. I've felt this years ago. It's not new. I am tired. I am so worn out and exhausted with this deep exhaustion that goes so deeply within me, that I can't imagine it ever going. The panic in me is that this exhaustion won't even go even if I die. For me, true hopelessness is when I am so hopeless that even death isn't enough. That panic feeling of not being able to just erase your entire being. This feels very deeply internal and feels like something that is not fixable. It's like part of my brain has been opened and the reality of the hopelessness can never be taken away. It can't be changed. I feel often that I am separate or different from everyone else. That I'm either on the outside looking in... Or that I'm not even real.
I feel like even death is not enough to rid myself of the servere depth of an intangible hopelessness and panic. I wish I could just push a button and then cease to have ever existed.
And yet I also don't even attribute this to anything I've experienced. I feel like this is ...just me.
In 2013 I hit another severe episode of depression and ultimately headed into a manic period where I engaged in severely dangerous and out of character behavior. I resigned from my job and moved to a developing country for 7 months. I was successful there in terms of work and networking, but I experienced a significant and major trauma while there in my first month. Even now I can not understand how it happened and why. But it did. However I stayed there. For a few reasons. And then ultimately decided to go back home to the USA (which I had not been to in a long long time).
I moved back, got a good job, my own apartment. I got into a very bad relationship with someone who turned out to be severely mentally ill and angry, but 8 months later I successfully negotiated my way out of that too.
But.... All I feel, and have felt for a long time, is this deep hopelessness. I've felt this years ago. It's not new. I am tired. I am so worn out and exhausted with this deep exhaustion that goes so deeply within me, that I can't imagine it ever going. The panic in me is that this exhaustion won't even go even if I die. For me, true hopelessness is when I am so hopeless that even death isn't enough. That panic feeling of not being able to just erase your entire being. This feels very deeply internal and feels like something that is not fixable. It's like part of my brain has been opened and the reality of the hopelessness can never be taken away. It can't be changed. I feel often that I am separate or different from everyone else. That I'm either on the outside looking in... Or that I'm not even real.
I feel like even death is not enough to rid myself of the servere depth of an intangible hopelessness and panic. I wish I could just push a button and then cease to have ever existed.
And yet I also don't even attribute this to anything I've experienced. I feel like this is ...just me.
