The captain need not apologize for the storm.

There are many trauma responses out there, but in my case, I feel like one of the most consistent is constantly feeling the need to say, I’m sorry.

I think this response is twofold in nature. And when I say that, I mean that it truly is a trauma response—but it was also reinforced by years of systematic emotional abuse.

As I was scrolling down a YouTube rabbit hole at 2:00 in the morning the other day, I came across the quote I used at the beginning of this piece:

The captain need not apologize for the storm.

After a little thinking, I found it remarkably appropriate for how I’m feeling. Because, much like giving myself grace, I am very often taking responsibility for the storm, not just what I did during the storm. Not just how I navigated it, the storm itself.

I do think some of that is the result of years of abuse. When you spend enough time being made responsible for someone else’s moods, anger, disappointment, behavior, or unhappiness, apologizing can become almost automatic. But one also can’t dismiss the fact that it is a trauma response.

PTSD itself can be incredibly complex. There are many things a person would think should trigger a response that simply don’t. And the reverse is true as well: something completely benign can elicit an unexpectedly powerful response.

If there is an exciting aspect of PTSD, it’s that you never quite know what your response to a particular situation might be until you’re standing in the middle of it.

Of course, I use exciting facetiously.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m having fewer obvious triggered episodes. I don’t necessarily think that’s because the PTSD has magically packed its shit and moved out.

I think my triggers have been hammered so consistently over the last couple of years that, at a certain point, I hit overload. In some ways, I feel almost numb to the normal stimuli that once would have caused an obvious response.

What I do find, however, is an abundance of trauma responses and coping mechanisms quietly showing up elsewhere. Apparently, the storm finds other ways to make itself known.

In addition to constantly apologizing for it, I don’t sleep well for more than about two hours at a time. Yes, that’s even with sleep medication on board.

I also have to have some kind of light in the room and some kind of noise. Usually, I leave the TV on with one of the seemingly endless channels offering ASMR, eight hours of rain falling, bedtime stories, or some other gentle background noise. From what I’ve read, there can be comfort in creating a sense of presence in the room—a presence that isn’t itself the source of stress.

The only actual presence in my room when I sleep is usually my dogs. It is very rare that anyone else is in the house with me after bedtime. That’s about to temporarily change. I’m going to have a housemate for a short while as I recover from my total shoulder surgery in the middle of September. Having another human being in the house with me will be an odd adjustment. I suppose wandering through the house and muttering to myself all the time is going to have to be put on hold for at least a little while. They’re just going to have to get used to it.

Probably the latter.

Regardless of everything else, though, the terror still exists. Night terrors have been a pretty constant part of my life for longer than I’ve been a widower. Sometimes they’re more intense than others. I imagine this may add a new and interesting twist for the folks staying with me while I recuperate. I’ve never found much rhyme or reason to them. Quite often they’re a strange hodgepodge of traumatic events, memories, places, people, and things that never actually happened together., and sometimes they seem to be about nothing at all.

That’s the strange thing about trauma. The storm doesn’t always announce itself with thunder and lightning. Sometimes it’s apologizing when you’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes it’s needing a television playing rain sounds at 2:00 in the morning. Sometimes it’s waking up terrified without knowing exactly why. Sometimes it’s needing your dogs nearby. And sometimes it’s simply realizing that you’ve spent years accepting responsibility for weather you never created.

I’m still responsible for my ship.

I’m responsible for how I steer it, what I learn, how I treat the people around me, and what I do when the seas get rough. But maybe that’s where the responsibility ends.

The captain need not apologize for the storm.

I’m trying to remember that.

As always be the kind of person your dog and your mom hope you are.