Content warning: This post contains references to childhood abuse and trauma.
The thing I wish most in the world is that people could understand how it feels.
Not to judge. Not to dismiss. Not to offer easy solutions. Just to listen and understand.
I wish my words and emotions could show people how hard it really is just to breathe sometimes.
I wish I was not seen as inferior because of my “issues”. Above all I wish I did not feel like this at all. Because if I did not, there would be no need to explain why functioning in this world can be so difficult.
It should not be about people needing to understand. It should be about me being able to cope and cope well.
But we should also live in a world that recognises that not everyone is okay and that looking down on people or casting judgement is as unhelpful as it is cruel.
The older I get, the harder my mental health becomes to manage.
Perhaps youth has advantages. When you are young there is a resilience that keeps your head above water. There is energy that fades as age slowly creeps in. There are fewer expectations and responsibilities pressing down from every direction.
Maybe with age that energy simply disappears. Maybe the strength it once took to suppress everything has finally exhausted itself.
Or maybe being a mam to eight children and being the face of positivity, encouragement and strength has taken a toll on the parts of me that can no longer hide.
Because for me, as long as my children have love, affection, warmth and hope, then I have done at least one thing right in this world.
But the truth is I am struggling more now than ever.
Breathing itself can feel difficult.
It is anxiety that never stops. Twenty four hours a day. Seven days a week.
A constant panic that never dulls or fades.
Every breath can feel like it might be my last. Doctors might call it somatic OCD, but labels do not capture the reality of living with a constant sense of doom sitting in your chest and stomach. The physical symptoms often overpower any ability to simply push through.
I am actually an easy going person by nature. Laid back. Accepting. I rarely complain about the everyday things people often become frustrated by.
But trauma lives in places most people never see.
The ping of a microwave can send panic through me.
Standing near a cooker fills me with fear. Not because of the pain of burns, but because of the memories. As a child my mam would burn hidden parts of my body.
Closed rooms frighten me, even in my own home.
Baths terrify me because as a child my mam would hold my head under water until the very last moment. Until the fight drained out of me and only then would she release me and I would gasp desperately for air.
Even drinking a simple glass of water is difficult. As soon as the cup reaches my lips my body panics for breath.
I keep trying. I never give up trying. But my body feels stuck in trauma mode.
All the understanding in the world cannot always break the chains of physical memory.
And then there is the weather.
The sky.
The smell in the air.
The subtle shift of seasons.
Things most people barely notice can send waves of panic through me because they are tied to memories my body never forgot.
And then there is March.
March is a cruel month for me.
One that traps me inside memories created by something horrific my mother did.
My medical records even show it. Every year my mental health spirals during this time. I did not even realise the pattern myself until years later and saw it written clearly in my notes.
I had always believed I was simply falling into random depressions. But with age, therapy and understanding comes painful realisation of how trauma stores itself inside the body.
I hate saying what happened out loud. I have only managed to speak about it twice in therapy.
But this blog is the only safe space I really have.
And as March begins I can already feel the shift inside me. The fear building. My best friend worrying about how I will survive the next four weeks.
Today I am lying in bed writing this while my children are at school or work. After the school run I had no strength left to remain up.
The sky outside is the same sky from that memory.
And I cannot bear to look at it.
March 1996.
I was fifteen.
Naive. Not street wise. A child who already knew far more about pain than any child ever should.
In our kitchen my mam kept a calendar. Each month she circled the day my period began. My initial sat inside the circle like some kind of trophy she had claimed.
It filled me with shame just looking at it.
But I never questioned it. Questioning her was dangerous.
That March there was no circle.
She was angry.
After school she ordered me into her bedroom. Her room had a bay window and a full length mirror. The sky filled the glass. Soft clouds drifted across pale afternoon light.
Even now that mirror and that sky remain fixed in my mind like a stain that cannot be removed.
She told me to take my clothes off.
This was not unusual. She often forced me to stand naked in front of the mirror while she mocked my body and humiliated me.
But that afternoon something changed.
Standing behind me she suddenly violated my body in a way that sent sharp pain through me. Tears filled my eyes but I could not scream. I could not cry. I had already learned those rules.
You never question her.
You never cry.
You never talk back.
By the time it ended I could barely stand.
When I told her I was bleeding heavily she dismissed it as simply being late for my period.
But something had changed in me forever.
From that moment my fear of bleeding was born.
It is not a trigger you can escape. Periods. Childbirth. Miscarriages. Medical procedures. Even conversations around women’s health can send waves of panic through my body.
So every March my body remembers.
Even when my mind tries to bury it.
The pain in my abdomen returns.
The anxiety doubles.
Flashbacks arrive without warning.
And the sky becomes a doorway back to that room.
The pain of accepting that my own mother, the person who was meant to nurture and protect me, could inflict such horrific sexual and physical abuse sits on my chest like a life sentence. I have never once hurt my children. I have never even thought about raising a hand to them. Sometimes that makes the question even harder to carry. How can a mother look at her child and feel hatred instead of love? How can the one person who should celebrate your existence become the person who tries to break it?
Right now it is 2.35pm and the school run is approaching.
Soon I will have to open the door and step outside.
I will look up at that same sky that holds so many secrets.
I will collect my children from school.
I will hold their hands.
I will listen to their stories about ordinary things.
Inside my chest the storm will still be there.
But every year I do the same thing.
I breathe.
I step forward.
I survive March.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Spring arrives for everyone else.
For me, March is the month my body remembers.
