Trauma recovery is heavy but for me it has become lighter over time. Every day I feel lighter, a bit more myself, closer to actualisation.

Then the doom comes.

There’s not always a trigger, or a warning. There isn’t necessarily a road map from ‘good’ to ‘bad.’ It just comes. The anger. The sadness. The disappointment.

When the doom first came it was a solid mass of rock enveloping me. Nowhere to move, nowhere to hide, sucking me of oxygen. Now it’s more of a mist, a dark fog which surrounds me. It’s still hard to breathe or do anything else, but I can move through it, and I can see through the fog onto the other side.

Yesterday there was a fog, a deep, dark, angry fog which stole me of my ability to think or behave logically. It took my sensorial sensitivities and dialled them up to 11. I dissociated most of the day. My bones and my soul tired.

All I wanted to do was scream and shout and swear and scream. And I did some of that too. It wasn’t pleasant for me or others who happen to go through my cross-hairs.

And once I felt better? Once I screamed and shouted? I felt lonely and ashamed, sorry for what I’d done and said. The fog rises a little but my soul dips.

I can learn from this. I will learn from this.

Trauma recovery is dark and twisted, awful and scary but it is also enlightening and it’s were real growth happens. Where learning and unlearning happens. It’s not the only place this happens of course, but I refuse to believe that my trauma recovery journey is not one of re-learning. It does not go from darkness to light, it is not linear. I walk it with care. One foot in front of the other.