How do I describe such conditions. It is a nightmarish reverie.
My mind and body are strangers, split to survive environmental horrors.
There is a paradox of the inner and outer realms where I present with an eerie stillness while internally reckoning with
my tumultuous body.
Eyes twitch with a vigilant gaze both near and far. I stand straight and taut with my stomach in knots; my mind oscillates
between confusion and conformity. I hold on to known defenses to keep afar a fragmentation I may be unable to weave
back into cohesive patterns. I’m terrified I will emerge a stranger to myself.
How can I stand on my own two feet? They wither underneath the weight of my psychic despair. I imagine them
crumbling underneath me.
Anonymity is my shield; a magic cloak securely wrapped so as to not be seen. I am numb, robotically compliant, with no
vitality. Do I even have a pulse?
Where will I find the wherewithal to exist day to day?
Can I count on “getting to the other side?” where despair relents to allow a smidgen of possibility and hope?
I laugh in disgust: Going on being, that amorphous psychic unity of mind and body now seems elusive; is it a
maturational fraud? Will I find that empathic other to offset this fracture, to take me in and believe?
It is indeed a massive wounding by reality
References:
Boulanger G (2007) Wounded by reality: Understanding and treating adult-onset trauma. El Dorado Hills CA: Analytics Press.
Winnicott and the vastness of Trauma retrieved April 10, 2023 at https://traumatheory.com/winnicott-and-the-trauma-no-one-ever-sees/ Posted by calford@umd.edu on August 28, 2015
