Trigger Warning: This poem focuses on post-traumatic stress disorder and contains mentions of suicidal ideation.

PTSD.

One and done.

Doesn’t matter

If it was

Big T

Or little t.

It just matters

That it happened.

Not easy,

But one event

To recover from.

C-PTSD.

Repeated trauma

Keeps rolling

Its punches

Neverending

And the big Ts

And little ts

Stacking up high

And it feels

Impossible

To identify

What happened

At what time.

Traumas to work through

Different places

Different people

Don’t know

When the

Next blow goes

I can’t brace myself.

I can heal

All the way

Someday,

But today

Is not that day

Because the real nightmare

Might just happen again

The very next day.

Meanwhile,

For us both,

Who knows

When the trigger

Will be pulled?

Who knows

When we go back

To that flashback?

I don’t mean

The ones in fairytales,

I mean the one

In my head

On repeat

Repeat

Repeat

Won’t stop

Messing with me

And when grounding

Doesn’t work

And seemingly time

Is the one

That makes it end

And helps me

Inhale

Exhale,

But until then

I suffer

In silence

Because I can’t breathe.

I can’t move.

I can’t speak

Or communicate

I need someone there

With me.

Until then,

I’m in a room,

All the oxygen

Sucked out

And I shake

Like a leaf

In the wind

But I can’t speak

Because

I

Can’t

Breathe

Because all the oxygen

Is gone.

I jolt up

In the middle

Of the night,

The trigger

Replaying

In my mind,

Gasping for air

That my brain decides

Isn’t there.

I see someone hung

And that reminds me

Of when I wanted

To be in their place.

I hear screaming

And it brings me back

To when I screamed

For the fighting

To stop

And the screams

Of pain.

I see punches

And I witness

The people throwing them,

But their faces replaced

With the ones

From those days.

All this

Because of a trigger.