“Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in.
Shawn Mendes
Sometimes I feel like giving up.
But I just can’t.
It isn’t in my blood.”
“Laying on the bathroom floor, feeling nothing.
I’m overwhelmed and insecure, give me something,
I could take to ease my mind slowly.
Just have a drink and you’ll feel better.
Just take her home and you’ll feel better.
Keep telling me that it gets better.
Does it ever?”
So many times I lay on the coldness of my bathroom floor, trauma ripping through my body. Panic leading to despair and stomach-turning agony that kept me up all night purging my body, in hopes of purging my soul.
I had wished that there was something I could take, a magic pill to ease my pain. That would slow my mind and take away the horrors that I had experienced, carved deep into the recesses of my mind. Yet nothing would let me forget, or wipe away the images that haunted my mind. Leaving me feeling insecure and overwhelmed.
‘Have a drink’ well-meaning friends would say as if the potent elixir would be the answer to my torment.
‘You are ok now, take your baby home and you will feel better’, were the cries of those that sought to console me as they willed me to get over it. Everyone said it would get better, but I didn’t believe that it would ever be better again. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
“Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in.
Sometimes I feel like giving up.
No medicine is strong enough.
Someone help me.
I’m crawling in my skin.
Sometimes I feel like giving up.
But I just can’t.
It isn’t in my blood.”
So many days I felt like the walls were caving in. The walls of my mind, the walls of my heart. I felt like I couldn’t carry on, that those I loved were better off without me. That my only option was to give up the battle and let it consume me.
No medicine was strong enough to vanquish the terrors. At times I felt like I was crawling in my own skin. I didn’t know who I was anymore, I felt lost and abandoned. A mask my hiding place, a shield from the world around me.
Yet while I felt I didn’t know how I would get through the days, I knew that I couldn’t give up. I would have the strength from somewhere to carry on.
“I’m looking through my phone again feeling anxious.
Afraid to be alone again, I hate this.
I’m trying to find a way to chill, can’t breathe, oh is there somebody who could help me?”
Anxiety was my daily companion. From my phone, smiling faces beamed back at me. Everyone else was ok, wasn’t they? Happy Mums, happy families. Snapshots of others’ perfect lives, while I felt trapped, in a bubble of pain and anguish.
Afraid to be alone, but feeling a burden to ask for help. Panic ripped my soul in shreds. Oh, how I hated this. I would try to distract the intrusion of my thoughts, try to slow my breathing and find ways to relax. Trauma however held me firm in its grips, making me doubt myself, bereft of hope. Was there no one who could help me?
“I need somebody now.
I need somebody now.
Someone to help me out.
I need somebody now.”
Why did help feel so hard to find?
Why did no one want to listen?
How could anyone be left like this?
Passed around like an unwanted burden, no one knowing what was wrong with me. Pitiful glances, and scolding words inferring that maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough or that I liked being this way. At night my silent pleas for help muffled by burning tears.
“Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in.
Sometimes I feel like giving up.
But I just can’t.
It isn’t in my blood.”
I wouldn’t let the walls of my life cave in. so I held them up with my bare hands until the light again could beam through the windows. Help came from deep within.
I would not give up, no matter what lies trauma told me. I was loved and wanted and needed. My voice was small but it would be heard. I would find the help I needed, to heal to find myself again. I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t let go of hope. I would find a way to feel peace again. To not fear being alone.
I would not let trauma rob me of everything that I held precious. It wasn’t in my blood to let go, instead, strength surged through my veins, to break out of the darkness, to lift my head to the light, to unfold, heal and be free.
It isn’t in my blood.
It isn’t in my blood.
You can hear Shawn Mendes song, It isn’t in my blood here.
