Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome

Change is inevitable. It’s been hammered into our minds for a while now. And yet, when it comes for us, more often than not, it leaves us breathless, choking, gasping for air.

It’s worse when it’s sudden. One moment you’re happily daydreaming about a rosy future. Then you blink, and find yourself mourning a loss so deep, so dark that it seems impossible that tomorrow will ever come.

But it comes. With scant regard for your broken self, the world continues to turn. People continue to live. Work happens, so does play and you’re left wondering if what happened, happened at all.

You pick up the phone, to go about your daily routine and find that your fingers are frozen. Your body knows, even if your heart refuses to believe it. That’s why your fists are clenched, your chest is filled with a dull pain and you can’t feel your feet anymore. That’s why your breath is caught in your lungs, your stomach is cramping and your mouth turns into a pathetic grimace without consulting your brain

Something horrible has happened. Remember that. Whatever else you choose to forget – and its unlikely that you, with your fabulous memory for the morbidly tragic, will forget – remember this. It happened. And it was horrible.

Nothing can change it. It will always be there, like the scar from a near-lethal accident, yet another accident in what seems to be forming a pattern. It didn’t matter that you wore a helmet, it didn’t matter that you trusted the rider. Nothing mattered. Because you believed that the wind will stay in your hair forever, that you will speed happily along the highway of life, without stopping for a red light.

No wonder you crashed.

So remember this the next time. It happened.

And you survived.

Again.