The Will To Live After PTSD Recovery
My Last Post was “A Reason to Live” while it sounds the same it is quite different. This post is about making the choices in life that give me the underlying desire to keep choosing.
I can give you many reasons why it would be easier to die. Don’t misunderstand me I love life and people, but living on planet earth is not a blast of fun. It is hard. Relationships are hard. And then we get sick occasionally; some people more than others. My sweet daughter lives with chronic illness; my son also lives with a rare eye disease. I have my own “illnesses” that are mostly the result of being raised in a house of horrors. However, today I am going on my second week of being physically ill with some clinging-on virus that causes my body to feel sluggish while I fight off various respiratory symptoms. Eventually I will get to the point that I am sick of being sick and go to the doctor but like a good solider of life until then I will give it my all and try to fight it off.
I have been dreaming a lot lately. I haven’t done this in years. Every night it is like a go to a movie theater to watch movie after movie-- of course, they are bizarre, but some themes are common. Like the one I had last night that I can never find clothes to wear. In my dream last night I am actually at a job training to work in a retail store. We are all sitting around a table and I am quite friendly with everyone but I find reasons to excuse myself because I need to go find clothes. The actual clothes I have on under my coat are inappropriate for work and the weather. The training is in a department store but as the dream goes and often my life I don’t have money to buy clothes off the rack, so I go scavenging, hoping to find some clothes in a lost and found or a pile somewhere that nobody wants anymore. This is also a repeated theme in my life. I scavenge through people’s left overs; I seem to want to find purpose in what is thrown away.
Well, in this dream I go through several scenarios of how the clothes I find never end up being right (I didn’t have my own clothes in growing up. It was more like having a group closet with my sisters. I don’t even recall having my own underwear, socks, etc. Everything in life was a shared commodity or none at all.) In the dream the clothes I find end up even complicating my situation after I try on many. And of course, I am missing the new hire training. I pop in here and there but it is the usual training talk and I assess that I am not missing much, so I decide it is more important to find clothes to be ready for when I am expected to “preform the real job” then to be there for the blah-blah talk and social mixer to form co-work cohesion. I have never met a personI could not talk with. (I might have to take that back after my last teaching job and found many highly-protective, tight-lipped people. No wonder I never felt like I fit in.)
When the training winds down and the trainer who doesn’t seem to notice in her large group the I keep disappearing sends everyone on their way, I go searching for my husband to drive me home. I awkwardly have tons of things to carry, big and heavy overflowing totes filled mostly with books. Even in real life, I am carrying books with me where ever I go. And as the common theme goes, my husband is no where to be found. (It is not his fault; it is my dream.) It is during this time that I realize I have very little in common with him. We don’t think the same or have the same hopes for the future, but I am to remain his loyal “other-half”.
He is my better half as the saying goes but clearly being the flighty scattered brain that I am, I do not qualify to be his “better-half.” In real life I call him my “better-half” because without his stability of holding down a steady job for 30+ years with excellent medical benefits I would not have had the opportunity to endure 10+ years of trauma therapy to be as mentally stable as I am today. I would not be able to sleep through the night and have anything but horror dreams stirred up from my unresolved abusive childhood. Thankfully, about 95% of the time, I am free from the negativity of my past.
And still I have to lay hold and cling tightly to the Will To Live. After what I endured I can never merely live life, but I have to live it with gusto. I have to make an impact--to touch people’s lives--to make a difference because I was there or here (as it may be).
So, therefore I embrace the will to live because I am doing God’s work. I am his eyes, his ears, his hands, his feet and hopefully his mouth. That is the only means for me to find the will to live and never to question while I am living.
While I see some people who have found a way to work and through their work have found the job that gives them delight, this of course is not the case for most. It is the way I want to live, but I have not found this yet. I look forward to my upcoming teaching job and hope I can enjoy the people I work with as much as the children and the labor of love- teaching itself.
If we are honest in our assessment, life is not easy.
However, it is up to each of us to choose to do the things in our day that align with our motivation for living - this is our will to live.
For me, God wills me to live (I am not dead yet), therefore I must have a God-calling left in me. He wills me to live; my lungs breath air, my brain is functioning, and my heart keeps beating a regular rhythm. So, I remind myself that I must continually be yielding in life, making HIS will mine.
This is the beautiful place where we find the perfect will to live life.
(Photo Credits: Medovly Lug by Anhen, clothes pin by jonastomter, hangers hang clothes by vampire-zombie all on deviant art)
I can give you many reasons why it would be easier to die. Don’t misunderstand me I love life and people, but living on planet earth is not a blast of fun. It is hard. Relationships are hard. And then we get sick occasionally; some people more than others. My sweet daughter lives with chronic illness; my son also lives with a rare eye disease. I have my own “illnesses” that are mostly the result of being raised in a house of horrors. However, today I am going on my second week of being physically ill with some clinging-on virus that causes my body to feel sluggish while I fight off various respiratory symptoms. Eventually I will get to the point that I am sick of being sick and go to the doctor but like a good solider of life until then I will give it my all and try to fight it off.
Let’s get on with it--the topic at hand--“The Will To Live”.
I have been dreaming a lot lately. I haven’t done this in years. Every night it is like a go to a movie theater to watch movie after movie-- of course, they are bizarre, but some themes are common. Like the one I had last night that I can never find clothes to wear. In my dream last night I am actually at a job training to work in a retail store. We are all sitting around a table and I am quite friendly with everyone but I find reasons to excuse myself because I need to go find clothes. The actual clothes I have on under my coat are inappropriate for work and the weather. The training is in a department store but as the dream goes and often my life I don’t have money to buy clothes off the rack, so I go scavenging, hoping to find some clothes in a lost and found or a pile somewhere that nobody wants anymore. This is also a repeated theme in my life. I scavenge through people’s left overs; I seem to want to find purpose in what is thrown away.
Well, in this dream I go through several scenarios of how the clothes I find never end up being right (I didn’t have my own clothes in growing up. It was more like having a group closet with my sisters. I don’t even recall having my own underwear, socks, etc. Everything in life was a shared commodity or none at all.) In the dream the clothes I find end up even complicating my situation after I try on many. And of course, I am missing the new hire training. I pop in here and there but it is the usual training talk and I assess that I am not missing much, so I decide it is more important to find clothes to be ready for when I am expected to “preform the real job” then to be there for the blah-blah talk and social mixer to form co-work cohesion. I have never met a personI could not talk with. (I might have to take that back after my last teaching job and found many highly-protective, tight-lipped people. No wonder I never felt like I fit in.)
More Than a Job
When the training winds down and the trainer who doesn’t seem to notice in her large group the I keep disappearing sends everyone on their way, I go searching for my husband to drive me home. I awkwardly have tons of things to carry, big and heavy overflowing totes filled mostly with books. Even in real life, I am carrying books with me where ever I go. And as the common theme goes, my husband is no where to be found. (It is not his fault; it is my dream.) It is during this time that I realize I have very little in common with him. We don’t think the same or have the same hopes for the future, but I am to remain his loyal “other-half”.
He is my better half as the saying goes but clearly being the flighty scattered brain that I am, I do not qualify to be his “better-half.” In real life I call him my “better-half” because without his stability of holding down a steady job for 30+ years with excellent medical benefits I would not have had the opportunity to endure 10+ years of trauma therapy to be as mentally stable as I am today. I would not be able to sleep through the night and have anything but horror dreams stirred up from my unresolved abusive childhood. Thankfully, about 95% of the time, I am free from the negativity of my past.
And still I have to lay hold and cling tightly to the Will To Live. After what I endured I can never merely live life, but I have to live it with gusto. I have to make an impact--to touch people’s lives--to make a difference because I was there or here (as it may be).
Making HIS will Mine
So, therefore I embrace the will to live because I am doing God’s work. I am his eyes, his ears, his hands, his feet and hopefully his mouth. That is the only means for me to find the will to live and never to question while I am living.
While I see some people who have found a way to work and through their work have found the job that gives them delight, this of course is not the case for most. It is the way I want to live, but I have not found this yet. I look forward to my upcoming teaching job and hope I can enjoy the people I work with as much as the children and the labor of love- teaching itself.
However, it is up to each of us to choose to do the things in our day that align with our motivation for living - this is our will to live.
For me, God wills me to live (I am not dead yet), therefore I must have a God-calling left in me. He wills me to live; my lungs breath air, my brain is functioning, and my heart keeps beating a regular rhythm. So, I remind myself that I must continually be yielding in life, making HIS will mine.
This is the beautiful place where we find the perfect will to live life.
(Photo Credits: Medovly Lug by Anhen, clothes pin by jonastomter, hangers hang clothes by vampire-zombie all on deviant art)
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