Checking my mirrors

Like most cars, mine comes fully equipped with an assortment of mirrors that play a role in keeping me safe. Shhh, don’t tell the other two, but I have a favorite. The right mirror, with its handy warning—Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear—reminds me that something unexpected might pop into view, and I need to be ready in case does.

You know how you check your mirrors only occasionally when you’re alone on the road—like if you’re driving through the state of Wyoming—but you check them every few seconds when you’re weaving in and out of five lanes of L.A. traffic at 75 mph? Well, as the anniversary of the crime neared, I started checking my mirrors with ever increasing frequency. It was time to prepare. Shit was about to go down.

I’d been tooling along for months on mostly empty roads, feeling strong and in control of my symptoms. May approached, and I was optimistic. Was I going to skip right over this year’s anniversary with only minor inconvenience?

I have no doubt that you can see where this is headed. We both know the saying about counting your chickens…

As April came to an end, a couple of moderately stressful things—normal life kinds of things—dropped onto my plate, and my symptoms began to creep back in. I didn’t feel terrible all the time. In fact, on most days, I felt pretty damn good. Clearly, I’d covered some distance since the prior anniversary. But it quickly became obvious that I was not going to cruise past the fifth anniversary without some bumps in the road. The demons from my past had their feet pressed to the floor in a last ditch effort to catch me, and, on the night of the anniversary, intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance arrived with lights flashing and sirens blaring, keeping me awake and on alert for the first time in months. But I rode it out; I’d been checking my mirrors; I was prepared. I knew the demons wouldn’t be able to keep up with me for long, and that, come daylight, I would flip them the bird as I surged ahead, the wind whipping through my hair and Dorothy’s Missile blasting from my speakers.

Recovering from PTSD is not linear. For some survivors, there is no finish line. Some days you’re racing along and there’s nothing in your mirrors—you’re completely untouchable—while other days are full of false starts and fender benders. Am I ever going to overcome all of my symptoms? It’s still too early to tell, but I doubt it. Those two days in May will always be there waiting to trigger me. And a few of my symptoms have proven to be so stubborn that I’m not convinced there is a way to leave them behind. But I don’t need to eliminate every trigger and every symptom in order to maintain a full and vibrant life.

Whether you realize it or not, you interact daily with folks who are struggling to recover from trauma. Between 7-9% of Americans develop PTSD in their lifetimes; about 9 million adults have PTSD in any given year, 37% of them with severe cases. That’s a lot of people with a lot of trauma. When you factor in everyone who hasn’t been officially diagnosed, those who have symptoms but don’t meet the criteria for PTSD, and all of the traumatized kids, the numbers are astounding. Symptoms of PTSD don’t just affect the survivor, they affect the survivor’s entire social circle—family, friends, co-workers, and folks they interact with in their community.

As we wrap up another May, and transition from National Mental Health Awareness Month to National PTSD Awareness Month, please take a moment to learn more by visiting one of the sites below. We all benefit from a greater understanding of how trauma impacts us as individuals and as a species.

Thanks for reading.

National Alliance on Mental Illness

National Center for PTSD

Sidran Institute

Today’s photos are from a cross-country trip that first took me through Yellowstone, Custer State Park, and the Badlands.