Sally Cronin is revisiting her series on Women’s Health, with posts not only relevant to women. Please take a look at her website to read the articles. by both Sally herself and other writers. This was my contribution…

Reblogged from Smorgasbord:

The next of our posts in Women’s Health Week revisited is by Sue Vincent. I have had the pleasure of being connected to Sue for the last two years here on WordPress and other networking sites. Her blog is a place of ancient history, calm and love of the mystical places in Britain. She is hugely supportive of bloggers and her connections on social media. When you read both the article that she posted yesterday on her own blog, and her article today on the Gift of Friendship, I think you will agree that Sue’s empathy comes from a deep understanding of how life can take you to the depths of despair.

I do suggest that you read Sue’s post first because it will lead perfectly into the following post.

https://scvincent.com/2015/07/29/my-son-the-triathlete/

The Gift of Friendship – Sue Vincent

I woke screaming…again… One after another, I had watched them murdered… chain-sawed… hacked… shot… squashed… Always violent, always bloody… always those I loved most. All of them. Every night.

***

There was a whiff of aftershave as I walked past the stacked tins of baked beans and up to his bedside, when the monitors measured the failing life of my son. There was no change; the antiseptic silence of the High Dependency Unit broken by supermarket music, out of place but insistent. I reached for the hand, cold as a corpse. Time stopped as the tears started and the world fell apart.

Never any warning. Anywhere. It only took a hint of a familiar scent, a noise, a colour.. even a thought… and reality shifts. As if moved through a wormhole in space and time, I am there, no matter where I am. Only remembered horror to live through once again. Time concertinas and weeks of pain can be relived in minutes of frozen silence…

***

For me, it was PTSD. I was one of the lucky ones… there was a perfectly logical and understandable reason for why something in my mind simply broke under stress. It was the most horrendous time, when control of my presence within reality could be taken from me by my own mind without warning, flinging me back into a memory so real it was as if I was living through it once more, while the world around me ceased to impinge upon my senses. There was fear… every small noise could make me flinch and call up terrible possible scenarios… and even though my conscious mind knew I was being ridiculous, the reaction of an injured mind could do nothing to counter the fears which spilled over into nightmares of unimaginable horror.

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