Knives like silver and diamond fall from the dark onto the windscreen as the blades swish furiously in the dark.
It’s nothing like that day, but the knot in my stomach is there. Filled with dread. My brain is telling me that something bad is coming. That I need to get home and check on my husband and kids.
Until I see them with my own eyes, my mind will keep playing tricks, convincing me there is something terribly wrong.
That day was a cold day. We’d had snow.
I knew something was wrong early on.
I kept ringing. Waiting for a returned call that never came.
And when the phone did ring. My world changed. I’ll never be the same carefree girl I was again. And although relationships have changed and that person is no longer part of my life, the events of that day still leave as big a scar on me as the ones on their body.
I see now It’s a form of PTSD.
I have friends who experience PTSD. For the longest time, I didn’t relate this feeling to the experiences they’d share with me. The sense of panic that strangled them and cause hyperventilation. I pretended I was in control of my emotions, but that was a lie.
I will always need a phone call to tell me you’re there safe. I’ll always need to check in and make sure things are the same, that I’m still loved and wanted, worth fighting for. And I will always be transported back to that time when I let my intrusive thoughts get the better of me.
Although my world is so very different now from that day, I know that feeling will always be there haunting me. Dragging me back to a time when the world was thrown upside down.