Trauma?

Have you ever felt so much internal discord or inner turmoil that you are shocked to find that other people around you actually don't notice anything different about you? Like, you're feeling so much conflict internally that you are sure it must be obvious to people who see you, only to realise, to your shock, that they're completely unaware as to your inner battles and demons. 

I remember back to when T raped me, and I was walking home that day, I felt so sure that everyone who saw me must know exactly what had happened to me that day. It was as though I had undergone this massive change, I felt so different, and it confused me that everyone around me seemed completely unaware of what had changed. I couldn't understand how no one could tell, how everyone else around me just carried on as though nothing in life was any different, when in fact, I felt as though my entire existence had been shaken to the core. Everything felt wrong to me, I had no idea how to react to anything, and I was desperate for somebody, anybody, to realise what I was going through. Except nobody did, because apparently I was the only one aware of the dramatic changes I felt within me. 

Eventually I learned how to deal with the way my life had changed, although mostly it involved denial and avoidance. Denying that it had happened or was real and avoiding any thoughts related to rape or any feelings that came up. 

It had taken me 15 years and so much hard work and therapy and counselling to get myself to a place where I finally felt like I would be OK, I'd realised that I was enough, I'd learned that not only was I able to like myself, I could actually love myself too, for the first time in my life I felt content, I felt positive and I loved being me. 

Move on to today, I'm currently back in therapy, for an unrelated issue. I'm working on my anxiety levels when I'm a passenger in a vehicle, as a result of a car accident I was involved in over a year ago; I have a tendency to panic when other vehicles come near to ours. It would seem though, that the car crash trauma actually runs much deeper than I ever anticipated, and that in fact the trauma from all those years ago when I was raped, is still festering away deep inside me, and even though I can talk about what happened to me more openly than I have ever been able to, I had disconnected myself from the emotions and feelings related to that time of my life. It's only been through talking about these things in session that I have begun to realise how the trauma of being raped has continued to affect me in ways that I wasn't even aware of anymore, because without realising, I had disconnected from that part of my life in order to avoid feeling the distress it brought me. 

But now I'm learning that I need to feel the distress, experience it, and realise that it cannot hurt me any more. Because by avoiding it and disconnecting from it, I am simply reinforcing the trauma over and over, making it something to fear, and ensuring that it is something I will continue to carry with me until I learn to face it and desensitise myself to it. 

That is how, it seems to me, that I've come full circle, I suddenly find myself at a great place in my life, feeling positive, blessed and truly grateful, yet right on the brink of dragging up some pretty distressing and traumatic events and wondering to myself how all the people around me cannot see the inner turmoil that I am suddenly facing? How can nobody tell there is so much conflict swirling about inside me, so much distress just bubbling away right below the surface. How can no one hear my voice crack the way that I can when I try to speak, can no one sense just how close to crying I am on a permanent basis at the moment, do they not see how inside I'm screaming out, they can't tell that everything in me is just desperate to be held, to be hugged, to be comforted. On the outside I look exactly the same, I carry on with my life as I always have, I just wish that someone would realise what was going on inside.