Lauren Crawford, is a pretty 22 year old girl who nowadays seems to have a quiet and relaxed life; she has her own apartment, studies at the university, works part time in a bookstore and on her days off she goes out with her friends or distracts herself with anything. It's always the same routine, she usually spends the whole day busy until the night comes; that's when her nightmare begins, literally.
In the past, when she was 10 years old, Lauren was in a car accident where she was seriously injured. That day her mother took her for a walk to the park closest to her house, she was so excited that she started running to get there faster. As she was crossing the street, she heard her mother call out to her in the distance:
"Lauren, look out!"
She turns around, and what she sees is her upset mother, running toward her, screaming:
"Daughter, run!"
The next thing she felt was a loud bang that sent her flying through the air; then everything went black.
When she woke up in the hospital, she was told that she had spent a month in a coma, had wounds all over her body and a severe head injury.
As time went by, she gradually recovered and was not left with any physical retaliation, but with psychological retaliation. Her parents never took her to a psychologist so that she could deal with the trauma of being run over.
To this day those memories continue to haunt her.
Every day, once she goes through her daily routine, she does not sleep for long at night because at midnight she wakes up with a nightmare.
Immediately bad memories come to her mind, she tries to silence these thoughts but she can't. Her body fails her, she feels her chest closing up, she can't breathe, her head hurts like it's going to explode. She quickly realizes she is having a panic attack.
She places herself in the fetal position and with her hands on her head begins to repeat to herself in a whisper:
"Not again... That's enough... Anxiety can't get the better of me... Concentrate."
She tries to take several breaths in order to calm down and after several attempts she succeeds. She is used to this, as it happens every night.
Each day she slept less than the previous one, she was so exhausted, both physically and mentally, that she finally decided to see a psychologist, hoping that the therapy would reduce the nightmares.
After several sessions with her psychologist, he recommended that every time she woke up at midnight she should look for a hobby that would distract her from her thoughts.
So, on one of those many sleepless nights, she follows the advice of her psychologist and starts looking for something to do.
It crosses her mind that after the accident her parents enrolled her in an oil painting course; she liked painting very much but over time she stopped. This reminds her that in the back of her closet she has several paintings stored away and in one of her rooms there is a blank canvas, so she decides to paint a little.
After several hours of painting, she realizes that the result is really good, the work transmits solitude, peace, beauty, depth, strength.
https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/cuadro-caballero-pintura-al-%c3%b3leo-3995999/
She feels overwhelmed by all the feelings it gives her, but she also feels that a weight has been lifted from her shoulders, so she goes to sleep and surprisingly manages to fall asleep for the rest of the night.
The next day is the same routine as always, the only difference is that she wakes up at midnight to paint.
As she makes her artwork she finds that this distraction actually helps her a lot, because once she places her brush on the canvas, she has no tormenting thoughts at any time.
https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/pintura-al-%c3%b3leo-pintura-cuadro-5268873/
With this thought she arrives at her next therapy appointment and brings it up with the doctor. The explanation he gives her is that this method works because it is her way of expressing her emotions. Before she was simply holding them in and the only way for them to see the light was through nightmares; now with the new healthy release technique she expects these nightmares to diminish considerably.
The nights went by and Lauren found more and more comfort in the strokes she drew with her brush.
A year, many therapy sessions and hundreds of paintings later, she finally managed to sleep without any nightmares, and her mental health improved significantly.
Today she is still studying at the university, but she no longer works at the bookstore, she is now a partner in an art gallery where her paintings are exhibited and sell in an impressive way.
Lauren is finally at peace with herself, she was able to heal the wounds of her past and in the process she found something else that fills her heart with happiness...
The passion for her art.
This is my first time posting in this community, I hope you like my story and can grasp the message I want to convey.
The photos used are from Pixabay