I almost didn't write this.

But PTSD Awareness Month isn't about the loud stories.  It's about the quiet ones, too—the ones we bury so deep we forget they're ours.

When I was a kid, someone touched me in a way they shouldn't have.  I didn't have words for it.  I just knew I wanted to disappear.  For years, I wore baggy clothes, trying to make my body feel invisible.  These days, I wear leggins or jeggins, but I still pick shirts long enough to cover my back.  If I'm wearing jeans, it's usually just a regular t-shirt—but even then, I still stiffen when a man walks behind me.

It's automatic.
It has been for nearly thirty years.

There was violence at home, too.  Watching your mother pinned to the wall by someone you're supposed to trust—getting hit for reasons that change by the hour—it makes you learn to read anger fast.  Especially the kind that doesn't raise its voice.

And then... there's what happened while I was in the military.

I rarely talk about that time.  For years, I couldn't even acknowledge I served.  Because of what happened.  Because of how it was handled.  The incident itself changed me, but the aftermath shattered what little trust I had left.  The jokes.  The disbelief.  The ones who thought silence meant guilt.  I wasn't just hurt—I was erased.

Intimacy hasn't been simple since then.

There are times it's hard to even think about being touched—and other times, I've craved the opposite.  The rough, unfiltered kind of closeness.  Not because it healed anything, but because it helped me forget.  Or feel something in a moment when everything else was too quiet, too distant, too numb.

My therapist once told me that it's normal for people with PTSD, especially when it stems from sexual trauma.  That our nervous systems sometimes seek out intensity to override the fear, the silence, or the void.  It's not shameful.  It's human.  And knowing that helped me stop hating myself for needing what didn't make sense on the surface.

It's been twenty years, and I still find it hard to leave the house some days.  Not because I'm afraid of something happening again, but because part of me still believes I'll be punished for speaking.

That's what PTSD is.
It's not just fear.  It's memory buried in your muscles.
It's bracing for danger in safe places.
It's wanting connection but recoiling from it.
It's needing control over your body, your space, and your silence.

This is why I write the stories I do.

Because sometimes the only way to tell your truth is through someone else's voice.  Because healing doesn't always mean forgetting—it means finally being allowed to remember without being shamed for it.

I've been in therapy for nearly nine years now (if I remember correctly).  The first four were just about getting me to leave the house again.  I still go—still untangle the knots trauma left behind.  My therapist uses EMDR, and some sessions leave me shaking... but lighter.  Like something I buried deep is finally allowed to surface without swallowing me whole.

Healing isn't linear.  It's not quick.  But it's possible.  Even if it takes a lifetime.

If your past still walks with you...
If you ever had to choose between being believed and being okay...
You're not alone.

And you never were.