Embracing Shadows

Someone very dear to me regularly used to say “Don’t demand fairness! Life is tough,” and end off with “be tougher!” This person is my brother Alec, probably the toughest guy I know, mentally, emotionally and to a large degree when he was much younger, physically as well.

The vessel that is my body, and the mind that encompasses me, has never been more aware of the reality of his statements than right here and right now.

As these words fall from virtual space onto the page in front of me, my mind races to keep up with the volumes of ideas and words that are spilling into the ether waiting to be caught.

Where do I start?

Who would understand what it is that I am going through?

If it were not for my wife, my partner with whom I share a deep, deep connection, I might not even have picked this up.

I’m still not even sure if it is a real thing, all I know is that since our emigration from South Africa (SA), I have been a little off, and it is a subtle change, hardly noticeable unless you know me well enough to see it.

“What are they?” You ask me, “these changes, what do they look like?”

All that I can say is that where I used to be calm and steadfast, now I am erratic, and quick to ‘feel’, whether it is an emotion like anger or irritation at the smallest of things, or sudden joy and happiness at the strangest of triggers and with that, tears well up and I am lost for words and scrambling to hide them.

This just isn’t me.

I am unable to control my emotions as well as I used to, and my self diagnosis is that I am experiencing a very mild form of PTSD.

Some of my symptoms include:

• Negative thoughts about myself, other people, or the world (Social media, Covid and two wars aren’t helping much.)
• Some things are hard for me to recall, memories about certain events are unclear.
• Difficulty maintaining close relationships, really small everyday problems become huge arguments or issues with people I have known my whole life and love dearly.
• Feeling detached from family and friends, sometimes I feel like I just want to be alone and hide at home where I’m comfortable, but I know this is not a good thing if done regularly.
• Lack of interest in activities I once enjoyed, like writing, music, boardgames, cooking, educational books and video clips, philosophy and even psychology seem a chore to consume and mindless series are easier for me to manage.
• Being easily startled or frightened, Nadia (my wife) often catches me off guard and likes to playfully give me a fright, and often my response is to get angry, why do I get angry?
• Irritability, angry outbursts, or aggressive behavior have plagued me since our move, I have been in a physical altercation with a random stranger, and a few outbursts with family and friends have happened where I would have been able to calmly explain my thoughts and ideas in the past.

Sometimes I am embarrassed by some of these events, and then I realise that these are congruent with people who experience PTSD and while mine are very minor in comparison, I never would have thought that the act of leaving the life I had would involve me going through this process.

As a further example of the above, one of the little things that upset me without any real reasons are parking spaces. In one of the parking lots that I use there is a car that parks in two spaces everyday. So as not to have another car scratch theirs, they take up two spaces in a parking area where there are more cars than spaces available.

This would usually occupy my morning thoughts and my anger would build, I would begin to approach the car and look for the owner with wild thoughts about what I would do to them, or their car, or both! Fortunately I would be able to stop myself, realising how silly I am being, only to be consumed by my rage, and reignited at the thoughts of the injustice and on my way to the car again! Then like a pendulum I would regain my senses and wonder what is going on with me.

It’s just a parking space.

It’s just another asshole, there are millions of them.

It is in these little things that I realise that my time in SA programmed me into a certain behaviour with certain habits and patterns that were necessary at the time.

A behaviour that is no longer needed, but the patterns and the habits are still there looking for ways to manifest.

You don’t look for trouble in SA, you don’t approach someone in anger, and certainly not over a parking spot, you could end up in a far worse situation if you did. Life is more about staying out of the way, being inconspicuous, especially when just the night before, someone close to you had their home broken into, or a colleague at work had to travel back to their homeland because their sibling died of some tragic accident, or were murdered or raped.

Living in SA is for emotionally and mentally tough people, if you don’t have the aptitude for it, you will struggle. With the politics, the violence, and blatant disregard for life and property, you will struggle with the senselessness and tire of trying to make sense and just accept that it is the way it is.

You get used to a level of discomfort and when things get tough, you adjust and get used to a new level of discomfort. As long as you keep moving forward, you keep going, keep surviving, you ignore what you can, become desensitised to what you can, and when something comes along that directly impacts or affects you, then you deal with it as best as possible and try to move on as best as you can.

This is the way.

There are many, many benefits to living in SA. It is the most beautiful and diverse country in the world, I believe it could be the best country in the world, one day maybe, however my article isn’t about SA, it is about my struggle with living a “normal life” after living in SA.

Now that some of the threats I used to face are gone, and there is nothing really to fear, how do I adjust? How do I stop looking over my shoulder, stop checking for my wallet or the safety my phone. How do I stop tossing and turning at night because of my thoughts that someone might be breaking in, or “what was that noise? Was it glass breaking?”

When will I stop waking up at those loud noises that I thought were gunshots when in reality they were just firecrackers. People here don’t randomly shoot or stab people for the change in their pocket, or their cellphone, or because it was a gang related initiation .

How absolutely ridiculously strange is my predicament?

I am here on an Island, in one of the safest countries in the world and yet I am still a prisoner to my old way of life?

My belief is that this is the end result of my mind and my emotions working through the changes. As we settle into this new life, as we get used to ‘not looking over our shoulders’ and over time, it will become easier. It is already, the events that I mention above are far fewer and less frequent than they have been in some time.

Without these changes, there can be no growth and no benefits. We cannot move forward unless we move through these challenges.

The more I think about it, the easier it gets for me to accept and understand that change and time are intertwined. One does not operate without the other, and only time enables change and change is inevitable given enough time.

For reading this, and giving me the platform to allow my emotions, thoughts and ideas to be released and to fall where they may, I thank you.

Therapy comes in many forms, and in all of them, self reflection is the key and writing gives me this much needed view of myself and my surroundings.

Come what may, these words will always ring true for me, no matter what level of difficulty I have in life, “don’t demand fairness! Life is tough, be tougher!”