The scars you don't see: what it's like to live with PTSD

The scars you don't see: what it's like to live with PTSD
I didn’t break down instantly. It was at least a month before I had the first dream where I woke up, safe in my bed, but sheeted in sweat, scared to go back to sleep.
New Statesman
BY WILLARD FOXTON
PUBLISHED 02 MAY 2013

I was standing about 40 ft away from the man when the mortar bomb hit him.

They don’t travel that fast, and I’d swear to this day I could see it coming, a little dart zipping down, hitting right at his feet. At least, that’s what happens in the dreams. The bomb was small – probably a 60mm round with no more than 2lbs of explosive in it.

I know that because I’m not dead.

That small bomb was still enough to make that man just instantaneously cease to exist as anything recognisably human. The effect was not unlike a jar of strawberry jam being struck with a sledgehammer.

I was knocked to the ground. I scrambled into the slit trench nearby and hid, terrified. As the shelling died down, I felt I had something sticky on my face. I reached up and slowly peeled a rasher of bloody human skin off my cheek. This is hard to write. I’m shaking and breathing quickly from the memory. Thinking about it is like picking at a scab.

I didn’t break down instantly. It was at least a month before I had the first dream where I woke up, safe in my bed, but sheeted in sweat, scared to go back to sleep. After a few months, I was a mess. I was incredibly irritable, and would fly off the handle at the slightest thing. I stopped enjoying reading or watching films, spent whole days doing nothing. Just eating and sleeping. Staying alive.
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