My Heart Swells

I got this note as a Facebook PM the other day.  It made my eyes leak a little bit.

I’m still secure in my masculinity, I’m just not so shy about admitting  human foibles anymore. (see yesterday’s post).

With permission of the author, I share it here:

Hi,

I hope you don’t mind me getting in touch. We don’t know each other, but I happened to see the link to your blog on the Unity Run Facebook Page.

Your writing really touched me.

I too, suffer from ptsd. Mine developed from a trauma at 14. I struggled many years with nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, self harm, an eating disorder – everything around me was a reminder of that day, and yet somehow, with the help of many different therapists, I still managed to function.

In 2006 I experienced my very first panic attack – only I didn’t know it at the time. Slowly my world started getting smaller. It’s funny, things like that have a way of taking on a life of their own when you don’t deal with them, because after 7 years of these attacks they finally became too much. I stopped going out all together. By 2013 I was completely housebound.

When it feels like you’re a prisoner in your own home, you start to run out [of] things to live for really quickly. You go from a completely independent, contributing member of the community, to someone who can’t even make it to the corner to mail a letter. Whatever little bit of life PTSD didn’t take from me, agoraphobia did.

I wanted to share that with you. I wanted to let you know that your writing is very powerful. Especially today’s post about Everyone Needing Help. It was a very validating piece.

I felt like I needed to reach out. There’s a realness in your words, that you don’t find very often. I know the blog is very personal and you created [it] for yourself, but Thank You for offering that to those who may need it right now.

Take Care

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