Rather than a pill, I think about how it might have been different for me "if" when I was growing up there was the knowledge we have today available to my parents to actually "help" my older brother instead of "punishing him" for his "disabilites".

Because of the knowlege we now have about Autism, Asbergers, ADHD, dislexia, to name a few, we have developed ways to help these children work around these challenges, rather than "punish them" because they are different and struggle.

I can still remember, as if it was yesterday, being so little and sitting in a "psychiatrists" office hoping that man behind that door would be able to "fix" my older brother. I was terrified of my older brother because he took out his "frustrations" on me. The answer that came from this psychiatrist was for my mother "not" to coddle him, bath him, and that he had to be diciplined much more. Well, that made him worse and my whole environment was "anger, yelling, stress, and screams coming from the shed my brother was taken to for "dicipline".

All my life, I always felt like something was missing somehow. I can remember being in school and just feeling like I didn't have that first part that I needed to understand what I was being asked to learn.

My teachers would tell my parents, all through school, that I was smart but that I didn't "pay attention". What wasn't said was, "This little girl is smart, but you cannot expect her to be able to pay attention in school when her home environment is so stressful to her that she struggles to sleep. That waking up to screaming and yelling and then climbing on a school bus only to witness her older brother being picked on and bullied all the way to school is tiring her out. How can you expect your child to have the ability to pay attention and learn when she is totally stressed out and exhausted by the time classes begin? How can she be expected to retain what we are teaching her when she has another challenging bus ride home and knows her brother has been so punished and abused by other children and teachers all day that she has to "run and hide" because he takes it all out on her? That he is either CSA, or chasing her threatening to hurt her badly.

Ignorance is when this little girl presents with PTSD as a woman in her 50's and is suddenly "reliving" these childhood challenges as if they are happening in the now and her husband yells at her to "stop acting like a child". A middle aged woman sitting in her bed crying like a child, trapped in that state of mind, can't escape it, or understand it, being yelled at, by IGNORANCE. And then some "ignorant" person happens to say, "I had bad life experiences too, you just gotta move on and get over it".

Yes, for a while I did have to take a pill until I got to a point where I could understand "why" I was going through this challenge. The only way I could get rest at night was this "pill" because otherwise at anytime I could wake up "trapped in the worst kind of nightmare I could have ever imagined". And how do you tell other people who are "ignorant" that when you finally do wake up you feel like someone dragged you outside and beat you up so badly your whole body aches everywhere. And at the same time you mind is also "exhausted" and disoriented.

I suppose if there truely was some kind of pill that could just fix that challenge, I would be glad to take it tbh. Unfortunately, there is no pill for that right now. The only thing we have right now is "therapy" and a long path of working through everything that comes forward in the brain. And the everything is a sudden surprise and the only way to gain on it is after the "surprise" happens.

The hardest part is when all the people around you are "ignorant" and come up with these ongoing "just" comments. All the while every minute of every day, that is what you really want, is to "just" again too. And then somewhere in the background some person, know it all says, "Oh, I don't think there really is a PTSD, I think people who say they have it are just looking for "sympathy" or "some excuse" ".

Open Eyes