I am sleeping.

I dream that a terrorist is chasing me with a long knife, trying to kill me.

I escape.

I awaken, sweating, my heartbeat is racing. My heart won’t stop racing.

I go to work.

I feel like I’m being suffocated and it’s hard for me to breathe. My whole body is shaking, out of control. I try to concentrate but I feel nauseous. I try to relax, take a pill and wait for it to pass. Let there be a few more hours of quiet until the next panic attack.

Over seven years have passed since the attack. The terrorist didn’t manage to set his explosives off. There were no fatalities and no one was injured physically. But since then I have been suffering from anxieties that have only worsened. I don’t feel safe anywhere. People don’t understand what an emotional wound is. I have to struggle to keep functioning and I feel so alone. I have loads of friends, but when it’s hard for meI have no one. When it’s hard for me I am alone.

I see the world outside so beautiful and pleasant: Blue skies, trees, flowers, birds. But the world within me is not as beautiful as the world outside. The world within me is black, full of fear and death and a bottomless anxiety with no end in sight. I need to use all my strength to survive. It is hard for me to be strong when I’m shattered inside. Sometimes life looks so black. An infinite darkness of coping and hardship and frustration.

From within this darkness, Mikie, the Hotline volunteer from NATAL, is like a small shining star which lights the way. When I feel that I have no strength to go on, she supports and strengthens me. When it’s hard for me, she reminds me that I am strong enough to go on. When I didn’t know how to even understand these problems that fell upon me, she helped me find ways to relax and supported me in the fight to be recognized by the National Insurance Office. After six years of being unable to, she managed to help me learn to stay home alone at nights. She always reminds me to focus on the things I have managed to do. Even when I fall again and again, she never gives up on me.

Thanks to her I have managed to cope with therapy and to succeed in it. I work (as a volunteer) all the time between hours of light and beauty and peace and between hours of stress and discomfort.  I work so much, to the point where I feel completely detached. And within this detachment, for already two years now Mikie has been providing me with a stable base. I continue to struggle to enable myself a happier and calmer life, and the journey is long.

I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to Mikie and to NATAL for the continued support which keeps me alive and gives me the strength to continue.