My Traumaversary

All weekend, I have been avoiding anything that could compel me to write. The date of May 4 has, without permission, been carved into my bones, my mind, and my very best friends’ calendars: My traumaversary.

In the past 365 days, I have been completely transformed. Becoming a redhead, suffering from powerful writing sessions, experiencing more breakdowns than my fingers and toes can count, numbing with all the wine in sight (minus Chardonnay, because gross), shedding so many layers and friends that I thought myself to be empty-handed and alone, and unrelenting yet inescapable flashbacks to exactly where I was last May 4, are all markers of a beast named PTSD.

I tried to silence the words that my muscles were screaming. I tried to suppress the power within that kept daring to rise to the surface. I starved my insides, buried the pain in my shoulders, placed an indignant fist on top a barrel of a gun I sometimes wish I never found. A gun I didn’t realize had its crosshairs on me with its trigger pulled back so far, it knocked its shooter of his horse. A horse he convinced me was white. And I paid for his deceit.

This polarization of experience involved such low lows that I looked up to see rock bottom; high highs found in moments where I forgave the woman in the mirror and the man on the horse, or found myself in the arms of those I trusted to bear witness to my human condition. Today alone was a cycle that began with calendar dread but ends with gratitude and release.

Beautifully so, today’s New Moon in Taurus asks us to examine that which is inherently ours but has been taken away. What internal fixtures have been desecrated, and what means of rebuilding do they deserve? The voice that I can no longer suppress for reasons beyond my own answers, “I choose to be ruled by curiosity over fear. I understand that security lies within, even when my physical safety is stolen. I am shapeshifting from a situation I cannot and would not change because it has led me to my most prized possession: me.”

So within the last 60 minutes of today, I am wishing myself, the beautiful souls that support me, and even those I have lost in the process, a very happy, healing traumaversary.