My Brain Is On A Leash
The original plan with this blog was to just cannon ball right into the water and unveil some pretty gnarly pieces of my story. It is the story of my life and I want to tell it, but I feel like we need to ease in a bit first... ‘Cuz shit gets crazy, y’all.
Today, I want to talk about trauma and the different ways our brains try to keep us safe. (I love you brain, thank you for protecting me). As I mentioned last week, I’ve been through some seriously fucked up shit, and some of it left me with a little friend I like to call PTSD.
Back in 2019 I wrote a creative writing piece that I feel paints the picture of what it looks like to live with this disorder… and really any dissociative experience (of which, I have also dealt with heavily). This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written and I hope it helps you love and understand yourself and others deeper.
Brain On A Leash
My brain is on a leash. It’s on a leash outside of my body and I take it with me everywhere.
My brain hasn’t always been on a leash. It used to be inside of my head.
Observing.
Reacting.
Understanding.
Remembering.
Now it’s on the outside of my head. Attached to a leash. Attached to my hand. My soggy, mushy brain that I drag around behind me everywhere. It’s still with me it’s just... not the same as it used to be.
You see, this really bad thing happened to me once. Actually, this really bad thing happened to me a whole bunch of times and in order to survive I realized that I can take my brain out of my head and the bad things won’t hurt as much. If my brain isn’t inside of my head, attached to my spine, then I can’t feel things anymore. And it worked during that time! I survived! But now the bad thing has stopped. I’ve moved away from the bad place and away from the bad person but my brain is still on the outside of my head.
They call it PTSD but I just see my squishy brain on a leash. My brain is very forgetful now and it freezes a lot. It’s hard for me to figure out how I’m supposed to react to things because instead of my old, un-hurt brain firing synapses down my spine to my nerves telling me what to do, I have to look down at my soggy brain on a leash and ask. It has to think for a minute and then it tells me. It’s quite the process, this communicating with my brain thing.
I’m working really hard to get my brain back in my head but it’s not an easy thing to do. After all, it’s the removal of my brain that saved me in the first place. It doesn’t want to go back in my head. It wants to keep me safe. So on the leash it stays until I can figure out the magic words to get it to brave the inside of my head again.
So for today, please forgive me if I am forgetful. I might come across spacey or aloof. But just try to remember that my poor slimy brain is on a leash right now and we’re doing the best we can.