In this blog, our Trauma Ambassador Georgina writes about the experience of overwhelm.
‘It didn’t come slowly and surely.
It came like a burst of wind — shattering the silence, slamming a door, and there it was.
The moment.
The moment when it all felt too much — sounded too much, smelt too much — physically and emotionally overwhelming, with such a too-muchness about it that there was no space left to breathe.
To others, they didn’t understand the woman doubled over, glasses shielding her eyes from the twilight — though the sun had long since set.
To her, clutching her ears despite the large headphones, her breath came in sharp bursts, an irritated sigh escaping now and then, her body twitching — an anomaly to the others on the bus.
Her body struggled against an inferno no one else could feel.
A piercing scream, a screwdriver, a blade, a laser of light through her eyes — though no such dangers were there.
Her body curled in on itself as though in pain.
It was all in her mind, yet it lived inside her body.
She wished to be small — as small as she could be — tucked up within herself, wishing her skeleton could provide the safety, the space, the containment she needed.
To anyone else, she was just another Friday night commuter.
But behind their eyes were plans for the weekend, not nervous systems startled into flight.
Behind hers — a battlefield:
a risk behind enemy lines,
a target in a blitz,
awash with anxiety,
awash with exhaustion,
awash with the need to surrender or flee.
And yet the bus continued on.
And no one noticed.’
Georgina,
Trauma Ambassador