a war of triggers

 Like everyone else in America and around the world, we are inundated with scenes of war...Ukraine, Isreal, Gaza, and elsewhere.   It is impossible to turn on the tv or your smart phone and not have "bloody, horrible, images" displayed before us....

I realize the media does this for sensationalism and to give the world a peak into reality....most people watch these, and tsk tsk it away....they are muslims, they are jews, they are whatever.....it doesn't affect me in my life, its sad, but not detrimental to my life.....

I beg to differ.   So many people have PTSD and other mental conditions as a direct result of violence, trauma and abuse...war...soldiers, and non soldiers alike.  The media is doing a disservice to these people.   Scenes of war, graphic images of children and people being murdered, blood and bombs....these are triggers.

I, like everyone else, has been following the saga of the hostages and the war in Israel.   

The little girl, the 4 yr old, that is a dual citizen,  has upset me the most.   I have been so upset about her being kidnapped....when she was released, I burst into tears....tears of happiness and tears of profound sadness....why?

Last night, I started having nightmares.   The kind that when you wake up and try and go back to sleep, the same nightmare continues...

In my dream, I am an adult, and outside with other people.  I looked down the street and saw the "terrorist" coming....I ran into a house, and climbed up into an attic, trying to hide.   In the attic, I was a little girl.  A small child, terrified for my life.   My little brain was telling me "be quiet, don't move, don't let them find you"...stark terror would wake me up....

This morning, trying to process this dream, I realized that that little girl, the pictures of her, she has brown eyes and reddish curly hair.   When I was that small, I also had reddish curly hair and brown eyes.....in my dream, I am that little girl.

I spent so much of my childhood running away and trying to hide, only to be found and brutalized...My heart aches for her.  Her parents were murdered, she was kidnapped, she saw death and destruction and evil, she is only 4.....

Yes, she has surviving siblings and is with her aunt.  Yes she is safe now, physically safe, but mentally, she will need help desperately....all the children will.  Children are not resilient, they just cope with trauma differently than adults, they don't understand, their brains cannot even register the amount of carnage they are witnessing...so they put it away....this is DID.   

She will seem normal,  her life will go on, but what about her mind, her sense of security?  If she does not get the immediate and ongoing therapy over this horrible event, it will stay festering in the back of her mind,  and it will effect the rest of her life....it is too late for me to get the therapy I needed as a child in order to heal and not split.  It is not too late for her, but it needs to start now!  Not when she is older and freaking out from triggers she is not even aware of....

I am so happy and relieved that she is safe with the rest of her extended family, but at the same time, I am profoundly sad.  Her life changed forever, forever, she will never be the same...she will never feel safe and secure the way she did before all the carnage began.   And this breaks, no shatters my heart into a million little pieces....

S, Tessa