Last year, two weeks after we locked down, I posted for the first time about my journey with life-long PTSD. (see it here)-and why it was easier for me than for most to lockdown. I\’ve been in some form of internal lock-down for most of my life.
Of course, I had no idea that more than a year later we\’d be in such a mess, still. No one could have predicted how this would play out. We weren\’t thinking ahead at the time anyway. Fight, flight or freeze had been activated, and we were only worried about the immediate future.
When I look back now on March 13 of last year, I think about my early childhood traumas, and how they just *BAM* shut me down. And hid. That\’s what trauma does. It makes our life do an abrupt about-face.
And how we come out of that, if we do, what that looks like…is not something we can predict, or often control.
When I was a kid, I didn\’t even know I had shut down, so I just somehow developed around it. Developed friendships and passed each year in school and worked and had relationships. I have no idea how, I really don\’t. the grace of God? Resilience? Grit? No clue.
I said in my post last year that I didn\’t find lockdown that hard. When I look back on it now, it was kind of a relief, actually. Because I didn\’t think it would turn into a lifestyle (!)–it was a relief to be able to keep myself safe. It was not a relief to have a real threat-that was my worst nightmare come true-but it was a huge relief to be able to validate the level of fear and caution I felt. Because I always feel it, but never before has there been such a real threat outside of my trauma-grooved brain.
so I\’ve been vaccinated. So now what?
You guys: I don\’t know. I haven\’t been doing that much differently, to be honest. I\’ve started gathering in very small groups with other vaccinated folks. But just like the threat is invisible, so is the sense of safety. Right? We can\’t see the virus, or even the effects of it all the time. And we cannot see the protection we get from the vaccines.
It\’s easier for anyone\’s brain to lock down in the face of danger than open back up, even when the path to safety is clear. For me, for trauma survivors and people who have valid reasons to be more afraid, more vigilant, it\’s a special kind of difficult to go back to regular life-whatever that means now.
The anxiety from which I\’ve had a reprieve for the last year and change is back. It\’s back, and different. This is unprecedented, for all of us.
I feel like I\’ve been in a cool, dark, safe cave….and now I can see the light outside. I\’m near the mouth of the cave. I don\’t know how to move forward.
Luckily, I\’ve never known. But I\’ve always managed to figure it out, somehow.
[image: the view from a trail in the woods, with light up ahead]