When the World Gets Too Loud

Some days
the world gets too loud.

Not just with sound;
expectation, too.
Memory.
Urgency.

now, Now, NOW

what, what, what?

Everything and everybody talking at once, asking for answers
my body doesn’t give and I don’t have.

PTSD feels like
the volume turned up
even after the danger has passed.

It sneaks up on you and screams:

AARGH!!!

So I draw.

Not just to escape the world,
but also to quieten it.

When pencil meets paper,
my breathing slows.
My shoulders loosen.
The noise begins to thin.

The world doesn’t go silent
but it stops shouting.

Trauma lives in the body, so I am told.
Drawing speaks in a language
the body understands.

Movement without demand.
Focus without force.
Stillness arriving through motion.

Stillness comes
not by closing my eyes,
but by watching a line take shape.

I don’t have to explain myself here. Blank pages need no explaining.

They are just ready to receive.

I can shade grief
without defending it.
I can draw tension
without naming it.

The page doesn’t interrupt.
It doesn’t rush me.
It lets truth arrive
at its own pace.

Trauma steals means.
Creativity returns them.

I decide where the line goes.
I choose the pressure.
I can pause.
I can begin again.

Nothing collapses
if I change my mind.

The world doesn’t end.

When PTSD pulls me backward
into moments that no longer exist
but still demand my attention

drawing anchors me here.

Paper.
Pencil.
Light.

Now is different from then.

I don’t draw to fix myself. No.
I draw to listen.

Sometimes meaning shows up.
Sometimes it doesn’t.

And for once,
that’s enough.

Drawing doesn’t push me forward.
It walks beside me.

When the world is too loud,
it reminds me
I am still here.

Until my next post…

Be salty, stay lit.

Rainer Bantau —The Devotional Guy™

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