The Curse of Atreus [PTSD Series: Part 1]

1

The way that I started to heal from my C-PTSD was so extraordinarily simple, that it seems incorrect. I'd built it up in my head as such a devastating and impossible problem, that I had convinced myself I needed a miracle to fix myself. But so you don't have to read the whole series to understand what I did to cure it, I'll tell you right now.

First, you stop panicking.
Then, you remember that you are in control and that it is possible to get better.
Then, you do what needs to be done.
Repeat these steps for the rest of your life.

The path to realizing that has not been an easy one, and I have done many things to make myself realize that these were the only real steps that I needed. The hardest thing I have done throughout this whole journey is realizing that I am in control of myself, and I have the power to change.

I said the solution was simple. I didn't say it was easy, and I'd never dismiss anyone's suffering. This is just my personal experience, and I know many people have worse PTSD than I do. As of today, I would not say that I'm cured, as I still have flashbacks, bad thinking patterns . However, the symptoms have been significantly reduced

2

I used to write poetry that I was cursed.

When I first read about the curse of Atreus, I knew it was about my family. The curse started with Tantalus, a son of Zeus, who chopped up his son Pelos and served his body to the gods in a stew. This curse goes all the way down through the generations to Agamemnon and Menelaus, who were largely responsible for starting the Trojan War.
It’s not Greek mythology to me: It’s the story of how inflicted pain can ripple through generations, bubbling into people and exploding out the other side. So that by the time the initial act is long over, the pieces that have been set in motion to start a war have largely been forgotten, although they still carry with them the consequence. Thousands die, THOUSANDS die, because someone in childhood was hurt.
Pain is not something that stops at the source. Pain is an entity, that moves through time, accelerating and gaining power if left unchecked.

I wrote this poem when I was about 18:

The House of Atreus

When I cannibalized my most tragic daughter,
I was really thinking of you

Your skin fried pink, butter limbs
swimming on Tantalus’s Texas sized dinner plate.
I can’t escape this hungry posterity,
This Eve that begets a murderer,
This murderer that begets a daughter like me

In the womb I shouldered your sister
And ate your shadow
Now it just won’t leave me alone.

I wrote poetry about being cursed because I thought my pain and my suffering were as immutable as cosmic destiny. Instead of trying to fix myself, I accepted my destiny. I'd carry it nobly, I thought. It'd be like walking through life with a crow weighing down your shoulder, occasionally pecking your ear so that it welled with blood.

I used to tell people calmly, "I think I'm going to die of suicide." The serenity this gave me would've probably disturbed someone who hadn't been born in the center of chaos, who hadn't been born to accept pain.

I wasn't cursed, but I didn't know that yet. I'd become an atheist when I was 14, yet I accepted my fate as if it'd been given to me by god.

3

For years I'd have flashbacks, but didn't know they were flashbacks then. C-PTSD is a form of PTSD that results from a state of continuous trauma, like childhood abuse, so oftentimes the flashbacks are emotional instead of being tied to a specific memory. Something would trigger a flashback - and I'd become so crazy and lost in my thoughts. I'd scream. Hit things. Cry until I got sick. I called them meltdowns, and it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't escape them. It was like once it happened I was sucked into a black pit of misery.

When I was having a flashback, time became frozen. I knew nothing of the future or the past, and had no capacity to understand that the moment was temporary. I felt agonizing pain and became convinced that it'd last forever. I'd do anything to make the pain go away, and that often meant lashing out at the people around me, or hurting myself.

Over the years I've been told I had many things: Aspergers, borderline personality disorder, depression, general anxiety disorder, broken attachment style, anorexia.

But mostly I was just called crazy.

Someone once told me they'd never seen anyone wail so hard over seemingly nothing. That they'd seen people cry like me when their family members died. It confused and frightened them. Not only that, I was verbally and occasionally physically abusive. I scared a lot of people away.

I tried very hard to keep that part of me hidden. I knew that it was triggered in part by close emotional intimacy, so I tried my best to keep from getting close to people. It made me disaffected, lonely like I'd been stripped and hollowed out. I was always painfully shy, in part because I felt like I had no worth. Although I craved intimacy I didn't know how to bridge the gap between me and another person.

And when I did get close to people I hurt them. I felt that I was destined to hurt them. So I made misery romantic as best as I could, dressed in robes made of blood, glitter, and thorns. I warned people away from me, but I drew them near anyways. I wasn't as bad as I thought - I was intelligent, creative, pretty.

I saw myself as a monster with sparkling eyes who'd devour everything she loved.

The most difficult thing for me has been realizing that I have an ordinary problem. That I am not a monster, but a human woman, and I can fix this.

I can fix this.

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