While I do not always feel so dark my experience with PCS has definitely left me with a dark streak.

PCS is a terrible beast.
It took my confidence, time, memory and good health.
It gave me unbelievable pain and heartache
and is a constant dark angel.

It changed me irrevocably, deeply, utterly.
You can not understand this struggle
until you live it.
There are no words to adequately explain.

Even if there were I wouldn't remember
anyways.
No one cares when I am really happy.
Everyones worried if I'm horribly angry.

I do not know me!
I look in the mirror and know the face
but nothing inside feels the same.
I would just like people to understand.

I look the same.
But that is as far as it goes.
The beast has stolen me and left a shell.
While all wish that I would just heal!

Don't give up on me, I am not making this up.
I have much to offer,
It's just a struggle now, for what was once so easy.
I just can't be the way I was,
everything is different.

Thanks just doesn't seem enough for putting into words what so many must feel.


For myself the struggle is finding the words to advocate for myself, even to vent the despair. I feel voiceless in every way, like my spirit, my sense of self has vanished and all that's left is pain that I can't even adequately express. My hope is crushed under the weight of this "beast".


Add to this, I've only just begun my PCS "journey" if that's what we call this hell.... and "the guilts" have begun... you know, the self imposed burden that "good" people feel, such as "many have it worse than me so I should REALLY just be thankful". Though those thoughts seem true, they rob me of my natural grief. I have never given myself permission to grieve and say, I'm NOT ok. I'm in constant debilitating pain, how can that be ok? And how can it be ok that I've been treated terribly by doctors, WCB case workers, and a human resources officer at work? What makes it ok to declare I'm not even worth my own grief?


So, thank you for sharing this post, which lets me feel acceptable with having a dark side rather than monstrous and selfish. I can stop faking that smile for just a few moments... You all know the fake smile that helps put others at ease because we love them and want to reassure them...

Someone once told me that we all go through a dark passage of the night. A time when there is precious little light in us or around us. I feel my early experience with PCS was just that. It tested me to my depths. Thankfully with rest, proper medication and treatment that darkness is fading. If you are still in the dark do not despair, their is always a some light within us no matter how dark it gets.