The Fog of PTSD

I’ve awakened in a fog. In every direction I look, I see nothing but grey and clammy mists. I know that I’m near a beach — I hear the waves crashing and feel the sand at my feet. I only know that I cannot hope to cross the ocean behind me, so I move away from the beach still unable to see anything but fog.

Soon, the sand becomes grass and the sound of the ocean begins to fade into memory. I try, so hard, to keep walking straight. Still, the feeling creeps in that I’ve taken turns along my walk that will only result in me being even more lost than I already am.

I soldier on through the fog, listening for anything that might help me find my way. All I can hear are the sounds I make — my breath, the steps of each foot as it hits the ground. I think about how I might use the barely visible patch of ground beneath my feet to navigate, but it is hopeless.

Soon, holes begin to appear in the ground. There is no warning, and more than once I stumble and fall. At first, only my pride is injured, but as the holes grow deeper and steeper, my body suffers too.

The grassy earth transforms into cold, unforgiving stone. My fear builds, as now, a stumble like those I’ve survived is sure to kill me. I walk more slowly despite the voice of fear screaming at me to run, to remove myself from this place as quickly as I can. I admit death would be release, perhaps rescue, but there is some part of my soul that knows this to be less than the entire truth.

Besides, I don’t want to have endured and survived so much just to die. No. I want to find my way.

My way out of this fog — to see the ocean wave and the wind touch the grass. I want to know that continuing in blindness will lift me up to a place where I can see out over that which once felt like everything, reducing it back to the trivial.

As the ground reaches up towards a sun that I cannot see, cannot feel the warmth of, but trust to still be there…the holes disappear. Now it is the ground itself that cannot be trusted, as its heavy and dangerous rocks work loose and send me tumbling down in a broken heap, back where I started. With each painful trip back down the slope, my goal feels ever more out of reach.

Hurt, tired, and afraid, I stop. I sit. The fog thickens around me, seeming to sense my despair and fortify itself from within. Now just to stand means to push back against this accursed blanket, and when I look up to catch a glimpse of some motivating thing to give me hope, to push me on — there is only the fog.

I pray to everything and nothing. I pray to God. I pray to myself. I beg to be lifted from this place, to be brought into the warm embrace I believe to exist outside of this. The stone drinks my tears but not my blood; the smears stay behind to mock me and remind me how fruitless my efforts are.

I look at the pebbles, barely discernible through the mists, and wonder whether they are stone at all. Perhaps they are instead all that remains of the weather-worn bones left behind by any others who have walked this path before me. It feels silly.

So much easier to believe in failure, than that they simply made it. And that I might too.