The Ringleader

Imagine, for a moment, that you are trapped in a room. This room has no doors, no windows, no way out at all. You are sitting on a chair facing a wall that is covered with screens of different sizes. In fact, every wall is covered in screens. All the screens are dark.

Then one of those screens flashes to life.

Flickering in the darkness, one of the smallest screens has a scene on it that you can barely see. You strain your eyes to figure out what is on the screen when another flickers on. This new screen is larger, you can just barely make out what's on it. It's a scene from your past. 

You try harder to focus on the screen when another turns on. The screen is large enough that you can clearly make out that it is most definitely a memory. The more you focus, the more screens turn on all showing the same memory. The last screen is so clear, the picture so perfect that it's almost like you are there. As you watch, you realize that you aren't watching anymore- you are in the memory again. You feel everything just the same as when you were during that memory. Every second is exactly as it had been. It feels so real that you could be in that time, that place again. But you can still feel your body, the coldness of the room, the hardness of the chair, you can look away from the screens at yourself and see who you are now.

Now, imagine that the memory that appears on the screen is one of the worst memories you have. 

Instead of some happy or simply neutral memory, you are surrounded by screens depicting the worst time of your life and though you try to ignore the screens, if you look at a screen, another turns on until it gets to the screen that makes the memory feel real. 

The memory is terrifying and feels so real that the chill of the room or the things you can see and feel with your physical body do not reassure about what is real because they are now simply a part of the memory. You can't breathe, your heart is pounding so hard you feel like you are dying. You want to look away, to stop watching but you are in the memory now without any way to differentiate between reality and memory. People around you become a part of that memory, they become actors in your memory. 

This is one small part of what the leader of the pack does. 

The leader brings things to the front of my mind whether I am awake or sleeping. She makes sleeping a formidable task and likes to bring anxiety and depression in to play. She brings the past into the present and when she takes over, I am lost. I fight hard to keep her in the smallest screen, to avoid even wondering what memory she may want to show me because she never shows me the good things, I have to search for those. 

The thing is, I doubt people even notice when the leader comes to play. I get quieter, maybe, but I keep my mask firmly in place when she visits. I pretend that everything is completely normal even though I am fighting the urge to run away, prepare for a fight or both. I wage an internal battle with her while faking at being normal. It is why she brings anxiety now. For years, she could bring those memories and paralyze me, but as I've gotten older, she needs help to make me sweat.

It took years to get the right diagnosis for what was wrong with me. Finally a doctor told me that I was not suffering from manic depression, borderline personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or post partem depression. I exhibited all the signs of post traumatic stress disorder, which happens sometimes when people experience a trauma, whether sustained or a singular incident, that results in a wide variety of symptoms that can make life difficult for the sufferer. 

More specifically, I have PTSD that presents with high functioning anxiety, panic attacks, hypervigilence, night terrors, and depression.

I've tried talking to my family about this. Unfortunately, they are the sort that believe mental illness doesn't exist, that it is an excuse people use to make people feel sorry for them, to treat them better than others, that they are just blaming their past because they can't succeed in the present. They look at me when I try talking about how I feel and tell me I just need to get over it because I am successful. As though being successful means that one cannot suffer from mental illness. 

That makes me avoid talking to my friends and even the love of my life, because I am afraid that if I say something people will think differently of me. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I want people to understand. I want to feel comfortable talking to those close to me rather than a doctor I pay to hear me talk and give me medication. Maybe sharing this way will help too.