Day 500

Awful milestones and slow healing

500 days

God, this has lasted forever.

500 days since I started to remember The Violences. 500 days of flashbacks, every single day.

It’s an achingly long time.

But as I reach this awful milestone, I want to reflect a bit. I wrote about when I reached 400 days before, and I was in such a dark place. I was spiraling all the way down and couldn’t get up. So goddamned often throughout this, I wondered if I’d ever move on, at least enough to feel like me again.

And as I hit day 500, I think I’m there.

Or, at least as close to there as I’ve felt this whole time.

I don’t really know when it happened, but there was a day recently where I just felt like me again. I didn’t feel broken or empty. Didn’t feel like a consciousness trapped in a cracked shell. I felt like me.

Albeit a me with significant mental health issues. I still have PTSD and that’s not going anywhere. I still get triggered to the point I shut down for days at a time. I still have almighty breakdowns where I am this feral version of myself. Still have nightmares, chronic sleep deprivation, hypervigilance. All that good stuff.

But those are just symptoms. They don’t consume me like they used to. They’re just things in my life to manage. They aren’t the sum of my parts.

I found early in this process, when the memories were fast and fierce and awful, that I couldn’t find any real accounts about what this part of recovery was like. Most people just said, “it was hell for years, but then I learned to cope.” It was one of the main motivators for deciding to write openly about my experience, even if it is pretty awful to do so (I historically haven’t loved opening up on private stuff like this, but I’m pushing through!!)

I also desperately wanted anything concrete at all I could cling to of when it would be over. Obviously, nothing could possibly say. But at 500 days, I think I have my answer.

At 500 days, I think I’m okay. And I think when I say I’m okay now, I actually mean it.