Healing Isn’t Erasing Memory, It’s Learning to Cope

"It's all in the mind", this is what I started telling myself after some experiences that I can not even start explaining how it went. And I also tell people this too, it's all in their mind until it isn't. One of the powerful things about the human mind is how we can keep memory intact in our head once we decide to, whether it's good or bad.

Nobody wants to experience bad things, nobody wants to be traumatised and nobody wants to live most of their lives being afraid of one thing or the other. But as the world has always been, people experience some things that they wish they didn't. And that is how traumas are birthed, today we have people living in fear and in anxiety.

Honestly, I am on one of them living in fear but because I have the fear and I don't wish to continue, I would love to share about it here. But then, I've shared about it a good number of times already in the past, I think it's one of the reasons I've been living better because I am aware of my fears and now, I tell myself "It's all in my mind".

So to share something new and more relatable than my own story for the prompt about "Post Trauma", I'm reminded of a friend I knew some time back, a girl who I called friend because we happened to live together in the same neighborhood and we had only ourselves and a few other kids to play with. We were all so close.

Few months into living as friends, I noticed how she would always react whenever someone tries to touch her legs. As the children we were, it was very normal to play and somehow touch ourselves especially in the obvious places. But the rest of us noticed how she would react too unexpectedly different whenever it is her turn.

At the beginning, we couldn't understand her at one, we just started to think she doesn't really liked us the same as we all believed we liked like. We slowly began to stay away from her, at least, so we don't touch her where she doesn't want us to and cause a fight. She noticed the withdrawal, stayed away instead of questioning our actions.

Days became weeks and weeks became months, we just lived in the neighborhood like nothing like that happened between us. Indeed, we were really just kids who didn't think anything serious was going on until a day came when the reason came out as clear as the day. An adult man was caught about to molest a girl child, in a building.

As sad as that situation was already, my friend (our friend living in fear) who was present at the scene pointed at the man that he did the same thing to her, and unfortunately, he went to even worse length with her as he was about to do with the little girl he was caught with. Our friend had been molested, that scare has kept her in fear.

Even until years later when we left the neighborhood, our friend still remembers that experience and her present feels like it's a product from that experience. She doesn't feel scared about being touched anymore, she has fought a lot through that experience to live her life better. She is living even better than some.

But the memory is still there and affects some of her decisions especially in a relationship with a man. It's not possible to overcome traumas but it's very possible to live without the post traumas, living as normal as possible because indeed, it has become a past and it's all just in our mind now. So settling at the end? Yeah, that's the word.