What people don't see

People don’t see the quiet moments of contemplation.

The evenings when the sun is setting, and I’m sitting in a chair in silence in a slowly darkening room lost in memories, just staring at nothing. They don’t see the calculations firing off in my brain as I search for answers, for the ‘why’ and ‘how’ and where do I go from here?

The moments of quiet, where I recognize everything in my past and I see now that I am thirty-six, much younger than some in my family who haven’t been able to seek out therapy or find answers. I feel like I haven’t aged past sixteen years old, just as I’ve felt throughout my entire adult life as I look in the mirror in frustration; my body is looking much older than my brain feels. There’s a disconnect created by a traumatic past I can’t move on from.

People don’t see the struggle within my body, as my brain fires off the flashbacks and I sit frozen, feeling as if I’m back in that moment for a brief time before I come back around, but my body is reacting like it happened just then. The strange arousal I didn’t want is back, the pounding heart, anxiety attack, hot flashes, fear, and then more memories.

It’s enough to consume thirty minutes or more at a time. And it happens every single day at least once and has for the past several years.

People don’t see the nightmares that sometimes result in night terrors or sleep paralysis. They don’t see the moments when I’m trying to regain a sense of reality, of time, or normalcy. They don’t see the moment when I struggle to regain control of myself, and every waking moment is a list of checks and balances to be sure I’m communicating and socializing in a way that isn’t wrong or inappropriate or offensive or anything else I fear retaliation for.

They don’t see the chronic illness, or the exhaustion resulting from all of the above.

They see what they see, and I can’t fault anyone for that. They see when I have a fit of anger and I fire off for paragraphs online. They see when I’ve finally reached my limit and I melt down as my body is once again in a dissociative or flashback mode, consumed by painful memories that cause me to go into a crisis online because I just want someone to listen to me and acknowledge my pain is real and I’m not at fault for it.

They see the fears my mother instilled in me, that no one actually likes me and my friends are faking it so they can watch me because they’re just curious, musing about me like I’m a circus act or a science experiment.

People see the result of the quiet moments that build up over time. They see someone who is blinded by a past that isn’t there anymore, but it still rings true in a brain that can only repeat the reel, whether it be in images or self-judgements placed there by others.

They see the ugly side of me. They see the nihilism, the hopelessness, the fear, and the poorly-worded vent posts that I realize, after it’s all said and done, were the result of another PTSD spiral. The thing that isn’t me at all.

The thing that takes control of my hands and parades in my skin to make me look like a fool with a blindfold.

And I can’t blame those who have left, or who have become angry with me. If that’s what you see and you don’t know about all of the other stuff going on in my mind, it looks fucking terrible. I look like a damned mess. And even with all of that other stuff going on, it doesn’t excuse any of the bad moments.

It’s not appropriate to say, “That wasn’t the real me. It’s the memories. It’s the illness. It’s PTSD turning me into a monster. It’s my brain seeing you as the threat that someone was so many years ago, and I’m so fucking sorry.” But I wish I could. I wish I could say it in a way that wouldn’t make people angry because explaining yourself is the worst thing you can do, even if you are genuine.

You have to sit with not only the pain ‘The Beast’ caused, but with the memories and the new rejection that leads back to a cycle of reinforcing the terrible thoughts placed upon you by those who hurt you.

I have become a haunted house. And each social interaction that goes awry adds more ghosts and cobwebs and cracks in my foundation.

I’ve made progress. Those who are close to me have seen it and recognize the work I’ve done to put these checks and balances in place so I can be a better friend, a better person. Outwardly, I truly have made an effort to learn from old patterns and recognize them the best I can, even when I’m dissociating and struggling with my perception of time. I’m doing so much better with that. I’ve done a lot of work on the outside.

But on the inside, the haunts are active and energetic, and I’ve become stuck internalizing the behavior I worked so hard to correct. If there’s nowhere for it to go, I just relive it inside over and over and over and over.

It’s like an old film reel, except the film sometimes jumps around, playing scenes from other films that reminded me of the one before, and then several are playing at once and I’ve gone still, not realizing that day has turned to night on the outside, and I’ve been sitting and staring at the floor for too long.

All I wish for is for people to know that sometimes, there is more to the story than meets the eye. And for those suffering; an outburst, a bad moment, an argument, a mistake… it doesn’t define you or make you a bad person. It’s an unfortunate reality that we can’t always show what we’re going through, and many don’t understand how PTSD works or what it does to our bodies. It’s equally unfortunate that others sometimes get caught in the reel that’s playing in our head, and they have no idea that we’re not entirely there during that moment.

I’m not really sure what I should ask for at the end of this. There’s no easy way to talk about it. I’ve learned a lot recently, especially while reading The Body Keeps the Score, and therapy has helped me realize that I have regularly been experiencing flashbacks and reliving my traumas repeatedly for the past several years, and I had no idea that’s what was happening to me. I was living the past in the present and interacting with the world as if I was still in danger or under threat. And it’s still happening.

I’m closer to answers now than I’ve ever been in my approximate twenty years of therapy. It took a long time to find the right treatment in a system that heavily favors medication over all else. The system is certainly broken and many give up because so few get the correct treatment, but I’m glad I pursued and didn’t give up on the mental health system when nothing seemed to be budging.

I am working toward being the friend that some felt I would never be capable of being. And I hope that by speaking up I can help others understand that sometimes, firing off that angry response to someone might do more harm than anything. You can never know what someone’s going through.

©2025 Shane Blackheart