Beneath The Surface; spoken word poetry; PTSD

It’s hard to express how physically brutal, psychologically devastating and socially isolating the day-to-day reality of living with a chronic disease can be.

There is a very real sense of grief that occurs when comprehending the loss of large portions of your life to illness, and experiencing violent levels of pain on repeat, pain that makes you feel like a prisoner in the torture chamber of your own body, can leave sufferers with prominent PTSD responses in the long term. Often it is compounded by other traumatic life events, which can be like the last thread, tipping us over the edge of our capacity to cope.

This is a poetic expression of my experience navigating complex post-traumatic stress, for others who might feel alone in the process, like I did for a long time. (The support of a trauma-informed therapist has been instrumental in this process)

I am a ship adrift on grim, turbulent waters, where each sound is thunder, each shadow a ghost. Memories are lightning, flashing bright and searing, leaving me blind and trembling.

I am a fractured mirror, reflecting pieces of a past I can’t escape. Each shard is sharp, cutting into my present, drawing blood from old wounds. Familiar places, faces, scents—they are the sirens of my mind, luring me back to places I don’t want to return.

Sleep is a broken voyage through uncertain, yet hauntingly familiar terrain, recurring dreams invaded by unwelcomed enemies. I wake in a cold sweat, dripping, heart pounding, shaking, mind fracturing as terror floods me and the world itself seems to crumble. The line between past and present blurs. Reality and nightmare intertwine in a cruel dance. Insanity knocks at the door of my mind, desperate to claim me. Inhale, exhale. It dissolves under the cunning lens of my observation.

I wear the residual angst like armour, a heavy, suffocating weight, pressing down upon my chest. Trust is a distant shore, and I am anchored in a sea of doubt. Voices around me are muffled, as if I’m submerged underwater, struggling to surface, to connect, to breathe. Do I exist in a seperate reality? Sometimes I feel empty. My stomach turns, my head aches, the sun is irritating, it sears my eyes; a persistent migraine clawing at my clarity, I can’t think, I’m exhausted, into fantasies I escape. Hope for the future is a double edged sword when the body won’t cooperate. 

Then grief comes like a river and erodes all my defences. It reminds me it is ok to hurt, that I needn’t always play the warrior, that sometimes, the warrior must rest, and that broken things can be mended with loving grace.

Amidst the chaos of my processing mind and ruptured nervous system, there is beauty. The pink hues that splash the sky at dawn remind me that every day offers the opportunity to arise anew, and the icy embrace of the ocean reminds me that I am alive, a surviver, a human, being. Whispers of renewal, fragile yet persistent, beckon to the part of me that is eternally resilient, to a peace within as vast as the ocean at its depth, beneath the surface turbulence.

Faith sets my heart ablaze with a flame that cannot be extinguished. Eternal, its light keeps me grounded and sane, and in the eye of the storm I find stability.

Stripped down to my naked core, the surface frames that entrapped me in falsehoods are devoured, leaving me humbled by something divine and true. And in the wake of adversity, gratitude blossoms within me. There is something sweet and kind beneath the pain that seems so vile.

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