Sam’s Journal of Survival

My Name Is Sam

010926 This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.
My Name Is Sam

This is the first non-professional journal I have ever tried to write. At work, I am required to document my entire day. It’s important for the powers that be to know what I’m working on and how it’s progressing.

This is not that.

Right now, I’m home, sitting at my kitchen table. My cat is stretched out beside the laptop. I think she likes the warmth. Every now and then I have to lift a paw off the keys, though I suspect that part is for attention. The house is quiet. No music. No television. Just the occasional sound of traffic passing outside.

The doors are locked. I’ve checked. More than once.
I should feel safe.

My name is Sam. People call me that because Samantha feels a little too formal for something this private. I’m writing because I’ve run out of places in my mind to put the personal things that take up so much space. Part of the reason they stay there is because I find it very hard to talk about my personal life.

On the surface, my life looks orderly. It always has. I like structure. I trust routines. They give me something solid to hold onto when everything else feels uncertain. I’ve built a career around that idea, and I’m good at it.

What I’m not good at is explaining what remains after something terrible happens.

People think survival is an ending. They believe that once you’re out of the situation, once you’re technically safe, you can return to who you were before. That things should go back to normal.

That isn’t how it works.

The story doesn’t end so neatly. Trauma changes the shape of everything that comes after. What follows is difficult to explain, even to myself.

The changes live in small decisions and half-formed thoughts. In the way my body reacts before my mind does. In the things I avoid without meaning to.

I don’t yet know what this journal will become. I only know that I need somewhere to put the truth while I figure that out.

For now, this is me trying to cope with a life that no longer feels the same.