He Touched My Adytum

He Touched My Adytum  

“My father’s silences were bits of him that I could absorb, feel. Even as a child, I sensed where he went, why he went, why I was not taken there; his anger and forlornness enveloped me at these moments when I watched him slip back in time.” 

This is a very poignant quote, from Adytum, for me. I cannot count the times my father left me when he was right beside me. I know that I have stated that I felt alone in my struggles to keep my adytum whole. I was directly in contact with my father’s solitary struggle at the same times that I felt alone. 

He could not protect me from his moods and I could not protect myself. I was too young. So, I absorbed his fractures into myself and tried to live a happy life while I knew unhappiness dwelled directly beside me. That is a difficult place for a child to be. It was too much for my child brain to comprehend. It drove me closer and closer to my father’s PTSD and into my own.  

I wrote Adytum trying to ease this burden for others who feel alone in their struggle against PTSD. I could not ward it off. No one truly can. Whichever form of trauma is too much for us, IS LITERALLY, TOO MUCH FOR US TO HANDLE. So, knowing that others survive gives hope to trauma survivors. I hope that reading Adytum will separate survivors from their anger and forlornness so that healing can take place with therapy/meds—with whichever assistance suggested by medical professionals to survive one more trauma, PTSD itself.