Strings Around My Ankles
I can feel my legs twitching, my muscles contracting. I can feel my feet stretching on their own accord, as if someone was pulling at them with a string. Every single muscle in my legs is tensed up and flexed, and I can do nothing but watch it happen and wail in pain.
pull part 1.
Everything happens so suddenly, I never have the chance to go back to what I was doing before the attack washes over me. It is usually a minor thing too, something small that upset my brain somehow, triggered a trauma response within me. For the most part, those are subconscious and I have no way of controlling them or avoiding the triggers, because I am simply just not aware of them. So I am forced to watch my body twitching and convulsing all the while not having any idea why any of it is happening. The only thing I know is that it hurts like a fucking bitch.
pull part 2.
Sometimes my legs get twisted into positions so unnatural that I am amazed they are even able to bend like that. I have hypermobility in all my joints, but even that is not able to explain why my ankles get turned in a 90-degree angle. Something like that just should not be possible, and at times, it makes me worried: what if this is something more than trauma? A physical illness, a neurological, perhaps? But then I am reminded of the way that psychological trauma quite literally damages your brain, to the extent that you can see it in MRI scans. If my brain is indeed damaged, no wonder something like this happens.
As I don't experience psychotic symptoms, I am not going to claim that what I am experiencing is even remotely the same thing as the physical/touch hallucinations someone in a psychotic episode experiences. But sometimes I get this feeling that there is a string tied around my ankles, and someone is pulling at them, forcing my limbs into weird positions, controlling me like a puppet. Sometimes that feeling gets really real, and I have to assure myself that there is no one pulling at my legs – no one in this current time, at least.
Trauma is a funny thing. Sometimes it's this abstract entity that seems to control every aspect of my life, and other times I can feel it condensing into one or a few people, either ones living in the real world or only in my head. And in these moments, I genuinely feel as if I am being controlled by other people, that I have no autonomy over my body or my mind. That all my life, I have been nothing but a worn-out ragdoll for others to throw around and pull apart.
When will it be my turn to decide what happens to me?
Cutting the cords,
ichigonya
