Ruination

19. Trauma

-Breathe, just breathe through the storms-

Sila

Locked, liquified into bones that suffocate you completely...

It's chaos inside of you, and the haunting sensation is that you can't leave. You can't leave your mind that it torturing and turning you into an insane mess. 

Terrifying basements, nights spent experiencing haunting pain...I found it so hard to hold on to my sanity. I felt wildly mad, almost insane, yet couldn't mutter a peep out. 

I was trapped inside my own mind. 

I have experienced what was purely mental torture; kept in basements with several other female prisoners, spat at by many frustrated prisoners and punished by being thrown in isolation dumpsters. 

Stolen as cheap labour, I had been to work at factories and industries that smelt of lead and destroyed lungs. There was hard iron rubbing and a constant thud sound that was scarring. 

Beaten for making mistakes, starved since the stronger ones managed to steal the food, I had experienced life from the point of view of a survivor-a survivor of dark market exchanges and jobs. I have survived only because I was too weak and cried too much, which didn't go away with thorough beatings. 

I had been kept underground for so long, ridden by dark corridors and enclosed spaces, that it was almost alien-like to explore normalcy all over again.

No one and nothing made sense. 

I was in my mind-mute, locked and in shock. 

I was a survivor.

My environment felt soft. 

For me, it was just colour changes. Dark to light, cold to warm...it was so much pain that I couldn't identify a single feature of my surroundings. Faces were familiar, but I was purposely blocking them out. 

It was a coping mechanism. 

Block out everyone-everything that brought me pain, that hurt me, was being rejected. 

Sometimes the mind does that-it rejects. In fact, sometimes, our minds turn into such stubborn organs that they refuse to ignore the pain and force us to deal with it according to their defence mechanism. 

A single episode of something traumatic can be enough to trigger the stubborn side of our minds. They make us build a shield until the wounds manifest in one side of our personality. 

One tries to move on, forget, suppress, everything, but the impact remains there. 

The memories keep taunting us with their occurrence. 

Trauma had turned me into a mindless and numb skeleton-just bone and nothing more. I couldn't speak, eat, move or even think; only clawing at the walls of my prison. I was repressing everything because the moment it started compiling on me, I wouldn't be able to bear it. 

So numb, with remittances of tears rolling down my cheeks, I was spending my days just hiding inside my mind and pretending that I was still the girl who had been kept sheltered at her home,  couldn't accept what had become of me, take the new version of my personality.

Bruised and battered...

Lost and terrified...

"Drink this..." Amongst the darkness, some shades of light did try to escape towards me, but that light terrified me even more. I could only stare with a blank and baffled expression as the voice spoke to me again. 

"Sila, I said drink this. It will help."

I had lost the ability to do anything. It was until I tasted the chill of a cold liquid that I remained the function of taking in quick gulps.