Sam DeSilva gets candid about his inner self talk.
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Sam DeSilva has been blogging about PTSD since being caught in the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. More of his writing can be found here.
I can deal with the constant messed up dreams, the flashbacks, the hyper vigilance, being disorientated with fear and even the vice-like grip of the screams that echo throughout the day. . . It’s all just become a different sort of normal.
But unlike reliving the trauma, people can actually see the depression still affects me. How can it not? At times, I still can’t believe it all really happened? Each time it comes back, it’s not any less painful. Sometimes you’re numb to it, sometimes not. Either way, there’s no stillness of mind.
It’s depressing because the tsunami and the aftermath weren’t just traumatic beyond belief, it was really, really fucking sad. I wasn’t trained to kill, I was trained to teach. The human suffering was incalculable and was personally far more traumatic to witness & experience, than the physical trauma of dealing with the severely injured and the dead.
People occasionally notice and can see it in me when I get really down, but that’s only because I can’t mask it all the time. I’m always fucking sad, you just don’t see it…
What’s worse is that I’m stuck with myself, there’s nowhere to escape to. However explosive, it’s only my voice in my head. I don’t hear voices or anything like that. It’s just that my voice or my inner dialogue can be horrific at self-compassion. I have to live with my mistakes, my epic fails, and worst of all, myself.
I may have had a predisposition for it, but my bouts of depression aren’t caused by some raging chemical imbalance, but rather reactions to insanely traumatic events and the aftermath of all the shite that comes with the trauma of living with trauma, aka PTSD.
This is only temporary… I hope.
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This article originally appeared on PTSD Jedi
Photo credit courtesy of author.