Alright, I know the last time we covered traditionally “feminine” topics of dating and what guys want to use my body as a cum rag at that current moment in time versus which ones want to allow themselves to be enamored by intriguing wit, however, I had creativity spark whilst listening to the Nikki Glasser / Hannah Berner discussion on @beingbernz podcast, “Berning in Hell”, and I knew it was the appropriate time to address and confront some of my struggles with c-PTSD, all while listening to John Legend’s melodious voice. Bless Chrissy Teigen. Thank you for being the inspiration behind so much of this music. YOU da real MVP.
Anyways, this is your one and only trigger warning.
I am not notorious for the particularly “delicate” way I confront certain topics.
Growing up in such a military family, I am VERY aware of what PTSD looks like from a military point of view. My grandfather refused to, and probably couldn’t, talk about any of his experiences. He would scream and get irrationally angry at something like a football game–to the point where we couldn’t go visit him. He would drink a handle of gin a day. He bulk ordered gin like his house was a fucking bar or something. Was he happy? I think, yes, he often was very happy. His children, his grandchildren, his animals, the farm–we filled his life with happiness. Was he healed? I would say judging by the length he went to not die, constantly hallucinating and revisiting his life in memories, talking to us as if we were the characters in his stories–like the time he rode camels across Egypt, or when he encountered Agent Orange in Vietnam–his life was on a loop. He progressed, and moved on. He earned accolade after accolade. But he was certainly not healed. He was far, far too scared of death. Too irrationally angry over something as miniscule as to what professional athlete threw a ball into the endzone in time or not. Too obsessed with control, with image, that deviations drove him to chaotic eruption.
Frankly, he needed therapy.
My family still really struggles with the idea that “needing therapy” is an insult. They hear that and recoil and are like “Shh! You shouldn’t say that!” But I honestly think every single person in this world needs to go to regular therapy. My dream world involves a baseline of primary care, mental health, and reproductive healthcare as the public insurance and “free”, government-supported level. It would help address a lot of our issues involving gun violence, school shootings, and substance abuse or suicidal ideology–we could funnel kids into the programs they needed quicker because we’re more aware of what they’re thinking. Or, we could also, literally, as humans, just start fucking paying attention to the people around us and allowing them to share what they need before they feel the urge to freak out and break shit or riot in the streets because they’ve pleaded, year after year, and are still not getting the results.
As a society, we’re slapping a butterfly bandage on a wound that needs multiple layers of sutures.
It’s trying to perform Mohs past stage 3 on a patient on Warfarin.
We’re accepting dodgy, quick-fix solutions instead of addressing the deeper layers of both society and humans.
Our rush in the USA for capitalism and democracy to succeed has created this endless work mentality–which, if its being called out by someone who ABSOLUTELY LOVES to work, in most forms, is problematic. I can go hike twelve mountains in a day if someone challenged me to (and paid for me to) do it. I would go trek the Swiss Alps tomorrow for a few weeks if some guy offered to pay for me to accompany him and I could verify his identity with multiple forms and get 3 references and notify authorities when and where I’d be going and that, if I died, he would be the sole culprit. So if I’m calling out the need to acknowledge that humans cannot always be moving and eventually, you have to slow down, and as a society, we need to acknowledge the flaws in our systems, then maybe we should fucking listen to it.
It’s kind of like how people of color (and women especially) need white men to also take up a stance for it to gain the support it needs to be viewed as “a legitimate issue”, people who are energetic freaks and benefit from the way capitalism endows them with the gift of conveying that somehow side hustle after side hustle will give you the happiness you seek so desperately, need to be the ones addressing the reality is you need to slow things down and meditate every so often and correct your patterns of behavior. For the good of everyone, but, most importantly, yourself.
This is also where I think the decriminalization and legalization of drugs will change medicine moving forward. I’m so excited for this and I, prior to recent changes in medical levels of expertise, public health knowledge, and then my own experience with PTSD, I had never smoked weed until my junior year of college, so 21 years old. I was such a nerd (because of my uptight family and need to only get validation and be the best) my high school peers freaked out over me drinking at senior week. And I’m a real “go big or go home” type of gal, so the first time I smoked, obviously, it had to be like a 2 foot bong in a fraternity house because I need the admiration and disbelief of men to be motivated to do anything in life, but prior to that I had done edibles on two occasions. #420. As a runner, I just didn’t like the idea of “smoking” something. And while I was competing in NCAA circuits, I couldn’t smoke anyways. Hence, my junior year, opportunity finally arose. The general idea of what smoking could do to my lungs just made me uncomfortable, not the plant itself. I grew up in tobacco farm alley. I wonder why.
Outlawing drugs didn’t discontinue them in any way, in case anyone is still “unclear”.
People were still doing them, just illegally, or the research was restricted to private government entities (Hey, shout out to the CIA. If any of your agents are listening, like I said, I would love some validation because I know I talk about a lot of heavy things in society that are typically “taboo” in a way that might get flagged.) Seriously–on my snapchat, I have a group with 2 Indian men who get profiled at the airport like crazy, and an army guy I met in grad school. One of whom happens to be the Indian guy I’m particularly mad at because he claims to be my best friend but then funds the Floridian governor’s campaigns and voted and hosted Trump at the Ocala rally. I can’t deal with the incompetence within my circle anymore, personally. Or the lack of morality and awareness. Even making excuses for finances or your own long-term political goals. Anyways, the four of us have a snapchat group that is called “definitely not terrorists”. Because it’s true. We are definitely not. But saying that makes it look suspicious. And being honest is so scary in this day and age that people don’t trust you when you are.
Being honest is so scary in fact that I don’t even trust it. Me, someone who is both great at manipulation and being incredibly vulnerable. I don’t believe it. I need reassurance, proof. I’m suspicious and analytical to my core so I also distrust things like emotions. And words. But only really in reference to good things, like peace, love, happiness. c-PTSD makes that particularly difficult because it seems fleeting, ever passing, illogical at times, especially given what I know about the world as a whole and my world individually. Disney Pixar’s “Inside Out” started covering it with the idea that you need sadness and joy in harmony. All of our emotions have their place. It’s okay.
And people get uncomfortable with honesty because of the widespread distrust. People in the USA are so used to pretending like we don’t have all of these issues, because we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking the American dream is being #1 in Olympic gold medals and military expenditure, whilst also holding the title for things like prison population, disparity between median and average income, divorce, drug addiction, obesity, rapes, murders. It’s disgusting. And yes, it’s bleak. So particularly suffering through it while you’re struggling with anxiety and depression as is, let alone to the full blown level of either progression into PTSD or a combination of new events that form your PTSD, it can be completely overwhelming.
Living on the edge is exhausting. It’s the only way I’ve ever known, so I almost feel like I have an advantage in that sense. I know, I can’t even let down my competitive nature enough to be like “I HAVE THE BEST ABILITY TO OVERCOME C-PTSD. I face a problem that requires harsh acceptance of the reality of your situation and things, events, or experiences that are now, and maybe always were, out of your control with a mentality of wanting to handle it the “best”. As if there is a “right” way to do so. “What is wrong with me? The list is never ending. But it’s that confidence that also enables me to navigate it so freely, like a river. I am a woman, so even though I’ve typically been a “masculine” energy and involved in these cultures and communities that I don’t belong in, So I’m USED to not fitting in as is, I’m allowed to express this emotion more openly and with a sense of respect commanded because I do understand what it takes to operate on those levels of performance and to have all of this insane pressure building up around you.
Does it make it easy? No. Absolutely not.
Part of my issues stem from having experienced SO MANY THINGS. Most of which I just never addressed or processed with any sense of “severity” or understanding of just how inappropriate they were. I’ve been held up at gunpoint as a “joke” by an ex boyfriend. I was sexually assaulted. Once in a club by a random dude while I was walking. Once by the maintenance guy of my apartment complex whose ability to enter my house the management team wouldn’t revoke without a formal police report or restraining order. For that, I thank them in a way. They pushed me to hold him accountable by law. Once by my former best female friend–who I don’t think realizes I remember, as she still tries to contact me without apologizing for why we aren’t speaking. And once by my ex-boyfriend while I was sleeping. Because I was “his” property. He was born before marital rape in the USA was illegal and I hadn’t had sex with him in a few months, to be fair. Insert eye roll emoji here. There is literally no excuse. Kid is a piece of shit. I’ve been threatened with a gun by a coked out ex-hook up after I sent a girl who he was with and lived next to me the text messages he sent me asking me not to tell her the TRUTH. To tell you how mentally fucked up the white women in Florida who voted for Trump are, I want you to understand this Mid-20’s, college-educated (granted, it was Alabama) white, Blonde girl knew that another woman, matching her “type”, working in a similar, overlapping masters program in healthcare, took this man to court, took out a formal restraining order for gun violence, and sent her excessive proof of him lying directly to her. And she went on to date this piece of shit for over a year. While he was going to court-mandated anger management and probation. Which, I thought, was being a lot fucking nicer than pursuing jail, because I had to “be the bigger person” realistically if I thought there was any hope for change for him. And I couldn’t allow a life where he vindictively fixated on revenge for thinking I ruined his life as if he’s not the one who berated me for hours, choked me and screamed about how worthless I was, how he was going to shoot me, then spent several days that I didn’t address him or interact physically intimidating me, going out of his way to park himself right next to me at the pool, making sure I knew I wasn’t the alpha. Guess what bitch, I’m always the alpha. I will win even when I have to use the fucking system that I hate to do so. You deserved everything you got. Frankly, you deserved more. It wasn’t enough to make you a better person, but hopefully you didn’t fuck up that poor idiotic girl who thought I was somehow jealous of the leftward sloping Captain Hook 5” dick like I can’t get a better endowed or more properly fitting dildo that vibrates on 10 settings, actually makes me cum instead of me putting in ALL the effort, and doesn’t put me through mental or physical abuse. As I’ve said on my instagram, white women in the USA straight up have stockholm syndrome over the blind faith and trust placed in white, male saviors that remind us, even subconsciously, of Jesus Christ.
I’ve been mocked by the man I loved most of all for crying and having feelings, and loving him, like that was some bad thing?? In these text messages, because he used texting of all methods to pick a fight with me after 8 years on and off together about our “status”, so that should say what a coward he is, he legitimately was like “I bet you’re crying” and I was like “so what? I’ve been crying… there is nothing wrong with that” like loving him and being hurt by his decisions, even if I understood they weren’t made about me, they were made about him, was something to be ashamed of? Or, having been in an incredibly abusive relationship most of high school, such that the kid threatened my male friends with knives and stalked me so the only friends I could have were in other counties I met through sports he wasn’t capable of being apart of, ones that he had no way of knowing about–and my parents just never intervened because they thought he would kill me. Or (more likely) because admitting why my relationship was bad would reiterate flaws in their own and the example they set for what marriage and relationships and love should resemble.
Or almost dropping out of university over (different) heartbreak my junior year–I had every single class with this man and thought I was going to spend my life with him and it was derailed after we spent an entire evening at his Valentine’s Day cocktail because I found tinder on his phone. In my drunken state, I straight up punched this man in the face. I feel bad about it. I was obviously VERY intoxicated. And wanted him to feel a small portion of what emotional pain I felt in that moment. Obviously, I’ve been on the other side of domestic abuse. And would be on it years after. But it was literally just this physical reaction I had no ability to control. Mind you, I had just been voted Sweetheart of his fraternity and took the photos that week. I flew out to Kansas for New Years. Who the fuck willingly goes to KANSAS for anything, let alone New Years? Love makes you do some stupid fucking things. I had to go to therapy 3 days a week, go on SSRIs and anxiety medication, slept almost every hour of the day, watched Frozen about 53 days in a row, and was just depressed. Like full body, mind, and soul depressed. To this day, I don’t know if it’s even possible for me to get back to that state again, and I hope I never do, because it was AWFUL. I tried going out with my girl friends when they pressured me to, and I saw him in the bar, acting completely fine, laughing with his friends just a few days later because we had our school conveniently shut down for an 8 inch snow storm for like a week. Which, conveniently, occurred the night before we broke up and we were staying at his fraternity, 2 miles from my home. I did not have transportation in the snow. When I saw him happy in that bar, I just broke down in tears SOBBING. I ran out of it, I think it was Fitzgerald’s at the time but its now Might As Well I believe, pre-pandemic. I jumped over the fucking fence of that funeral home in the parking lot that used to be near He’s Not, and just ran home, at like 1 am, by myself, completely ditching my friends when there was 8 inches of snow on the ground. At one point, I just laid down in the snow in someone’s front yard and just stared up at the trees. I just didn’t know what to think and needed to make sense of things. Then, I asked a cop for a ride home because I was honestly so dead inside by the time, and I only had like half a mile left. I didn’t mentally care whether I made it home or not, but I knew he could get me there safest and easiest. He said no, which was pretty rude, but again, I just didn’t care. I’ll have to dedicate entire episodes to my love stories themselves, because they are beautifully tragic.
I expose a lot of my feelings now, because I don’t think there’s any other way to live. Particularly not after so many near death experiences, physically and mentally. We’ll get to those. They are not the aforementioned.
But if I don’t actually date you, I don’t open up in the same sense. Or you’re not around me to be privy to that information. And with PTSD, you tend to isolate more, mentally, if not physically. So I realized there were a lot of people in my life, friends and family included, that I wasn’t necessarily scared to open up to, but chose not to. In part because I felt like a burden. The stuff I have been through is heavy, I’m aware of that. I didn’t think it was anyone else’s job to be concerned for it. I didn’t want them to be. Concern often meant judgment, as far as I was aware. Allowing myself to think about those instances was giving life to the negativity again. Like when Frodo looks into the Dead Marshes and is horrified but can’t peel his eyes away, risking his own demise by his curiosity.
But also partly because MY c-PTSD is related to my family. My family has a long history of substance abuse and mental health disorders, largely due to the line of service. Though, in true military fashion, they are functioning alcoholics, or functioning cokeheads, or functioning people in society with a whole graveyard of skeletons in their closets. I was raised to face situations stoically, like the military does. To hide your crazy and never mention it again. Lest it be used against you.
Emotions were a weakness in my house.
Vulnerability was a weakness.
Having complicated family issues, especially in the USA, is difficult to address as is. How do you convey the fact that the large black man who was Vice Chancellor of UNC for 31 years, the man who happened to be the “dad” of your random roommate freshman year (he’s really her biological dad’s cousin, but that’s not my story to tell) is more of a father figure to you than your biological. How do you explain to people with happy, functional families, whose dynamics you admire and enjoy being a part of as their partner, that your own is fragmented. It deteriorated like a bomb when our maternal matriarch died in her own bedroom of the farm house, everyone expecting my grandfather to go first, especially with Agent Orange, but cancer is a bitch. With her, the cohesion of our unit became dismantled. My uncle, loveable, but, ultimately, a drunk chain smoker. My siblings, and our tumultuous relationship because they both went to the same college, and my little sister tagged along with my brother often, so they never lost the dominant-older-brother, submissive-younger-sister tactic and she played into that when it benefitted her with drinking locally and tailgate options. However, I went to a very different school to study some very different subjects because, honestly, I’m just a very different sibling. Though I appear to be a carbon copied duplicate. We all look identical. My sister is more frequently just assumed to be my twin.
They both had to live up to the expectations of me. And I was surreal. I still am, in a lot of ways, adulthood just doesn’t “reward” you in the same way when you’re into weirder things. Comparisons bred competition. And competition bred hatred. My brother never got the spotlight. Even when he was winning his National Championship (either the second or third year they went to the finals in Omaha), I was getting award after award in academic excellence, half a million dollars of scholarships. I was somehow proof that my family was “doing something right”. I had hated my biological dad since I was old enough to recognize I did not like the way he treated me, I did not like the way he treated women, and I did not like feeling like a “trophy”, hiding the reality of our relationship from the public eye. To this day, I do not have a relationship with him. Instead of telling people this in honesty, he creates these lies about my life that he’s heard through the grapevine and repeats to others and acts like he heard it first hand. He’s the type of guy who name drops, which is also why I almost feel guilt or shame for talking about all of my cool experiences because it seems like “bragging”. But he’ll name drop in a way that, if he meets Cal Ripken on a plane and introduces himself, he’ll brag about it. I go on vacation with these people. We are not the same.
The people who have known me the best were my friends. Not my family. Same goes for the ones who accept me and see me for the good that I am.
My best friend Molly left my house sobbing after seeing a relatively mild fight between my parents. A fight that didn’t even affect me at that moment. I used to run away multiple times a week to get away from the fighting. I hated my parents being together. They were shells of themselves as individuals and as caregivers. My relationship with my dad in particular is probably never going to be “healthy” or “positive” because he is physically incapable of connecting emotionally. And emotionally, I needed a father. He was not there. Or handled everything, especially his interactions with me, disgustingly engrained with misogyny but refusing to see or not having the resources to understand the implications of his actions at the time. And the reality of the world is that he still can’t see outside of his own perspective, so that might be impossible for him. He can see it, rationalize it, but he doesn’t empathize with it. He’s the type of guy who starts facebook debates and should’ve been in politics because he has the ruthless mentality for it and doesn’t care who he hurts or how he’s affecting his interactions. My baseline for what was healthy in this life was so fucking skewed that it’s pathetic. And acknowledging that does not discount the phenomenal opportunities that my childhood afforded. Or the gifts that I have because of my biological parents.
It’s really hard to balance growing from situations and seeing the benefits to you long-term, or somehow feeling grateful for experiencing them, because they’ve made you the person you are today, and you LOVE that person you are now, with seeing just how messed up they were at the same time. Or with what boundaries you’ve had to establish in your own adult life, because of the way you recognize him, and the rest of your family, continuously make you feel. And that realization only comes with reflection.
I now see my weaknesses as room for growth.
I see vulnerability, particularly our mindset towards it, as room for growth.
I see the cultural mentality of NOT talking about it, as having room for growth.
I also didn’t realize just how unhealthy my family’s dynamic was until I started babysitting for families in Chapel Hill that were well-educated generation after generation and, most importantly, financially secure. Seriously, I babysit for a former Ambassador to China. A former Democratic governor of North Carolina. A man who worked on Obama’s housing administration. Their family dynamics were so healthy, so loving, so secure. It has truly been the biggest honor of my life to be allowed and happily included as a part of those. Summer after summer. Included on family vacations to Europe, school trips, just day-to-day, “real” life. I’ve gotten to grow up and protect some of the most wonderful children, who I cannot wait to see what they do in the world. I got to actually be in a family, be appreciated, loved, and included. Often without expectation–I talk to all of those families constantly, whether I am working for them or in the area or not, just to get updates. And more importantly, they reach out to me, unprompted.
In fact, one of the families I babysit for was going through a particularly nasty divorce (they’ll come back up when I eventually get into my experience with shrooms and dive into alternative medical treatments) in such a way that, like my own home life, her husband was bipolar, unmedicated, and abusive. I had to be present at “child exchanges” so he wouldn’t “misbehave” around the kids. And you can bet your ass I made myself available. I had decided to take the year off, walking dogs and babysitting in Chapel Hill after graduating because entry biochem degrees paid the same amount, especially after taxes, as freelance dog walking. (Had I made it an official business, dog walking would have been more financially rewarding and happier, to be honest. Much better quality of life. Which is pathetic for USA working culture.) That flexibility allowed me to be there when her nanny cancelled on her and she was already 3 hours away on Bald Head Island and her kids were back in Chapel Hill, during an issue of exchange with their father. I was there to be the person who picked up her car at her house (also in Chapel Hill), picked up her kids, drove 3 hours to BHI to bring them to her for the week, and then drove 3 hours back in a rented car. She paid me well. Better than most jobs would at the time. And I felt appreciated. Necessary. I can’t say I’ve felt the same at any corporate or institution-based job as of late, even my medical ones. The mom will STILL, years later, send me holiday cards, letters, and text messages or snapchats of her kids and how much it helped them that I could provide that stability for them when they had none from the other aspects of their lives. And they provided that stability for me too, and emotional support, and above all, love.
And I do not like “kids”. Although I am PHENOMENAL with them. The kind of phenomenal where, at my best friend’s mom’s second wedding, I had a gaggle of children running around with me into the photo booth, dancing, whatever. I saw it as my best opportunity for fun. Most of the guests were old and boring to talk to or only talking to each other. There were no single men. People asked if the Bride’s Daughter’s Fiance was my date. (I went solo.) The kids, however, had a BLAST. It’s kind of like how that baby just latched on to Maleficent. Something about children and animals just know that they can pull that sliver of goodness out of me and that is exactly why I avoid them. Kids, I have to answer to. Animals, I don’t avoid because they just sit in your presence and, while they can definitely smell your emotions and sense things with concerning clarity, they don’t expect anything of you.
I do not have a lot of patience, particularly not for “feelings” over “logic”, so being a part of those family dynamics was something I thought was unattainable to me. It’s also something that scares me about the realities of living with PTSD and how, even when everything is going perfect in my life, I might just be reminded of an instance I hadn’t thought of in years and be brought to a screeching halt on my progress. I always said I couldn’t imagine having kids, not just because I just truly cannot picture my life that far in the future. I might not even BE alive. I might not even be able to HAVE kids. There’s too many factors that are beyond recognition or control for me to even begin thinking about predicting that stuff. But also because I cannot imagine having to raise children and be responsible for being that empathetic ALL THE TIME. And I would WANT to be a stay-at-home-mom. …But ONLY if I could also travel the US with them constantly, especially over the summers, and raise them with a lot of the outdoors. Because let’s be real, I’m such an ENTJ that nobody will do a better job raising my own kids than me. I even have to win at THAT. And I am not rich, and currently am on track to take on yet again more debt because I have nothing else to do with my life that warrants a change in focus, and will, like I said in “Animal Behavior”, be more like someone’s ideal SECOND wife. The person these men marry AFTER they finally know who they are. Because, again, what men of worth are going to be like George Clooney and wait, particularly when they are ALSO of significant value and have choice after choice at their disposal, to take a chance on me, a higher risk.
But to me, particularly as a woman, raised so conservatively. Motherhood was the one identity I was expected to have. It was my “duty” to this Earth. It somehow surpasses all of my intellectual achievements, no matter how far I take them. No matter how influential my art, knowledge, or science becomes. But it is also the one identity that I am expected to be undeniably selfless, above all. But giving yourself to others is hard. Especially others that don’t reciprocate or understand your love. I didn’t used to think I’d be good at it. Now, I know I would be, and I still feel the same confusion. So how about let’s stop putting that pressure on women and allow people to have expectations and goals in life that we ask them about and care about that might not align with “financial” success, or might not align with “traditional” values but align with values of “humanity”.
That’s just tip of the iceberg into the dating and familial trauma too. (You can tell, I am GREAT at parties. Story for EVERYTHING. It’s knowing when to pick and choose telling the story, derailing the conversation, or knowing the place for complacency and listening that is the harder part.)
My PTSD ultimately stems from totaling my car at 80 miles per hour on I-95 (it was a 70 mph zone) in August of 2018, when I was on my way to take my national certification in public health and move to North Carolina to start a new chapter of my life. I’ll get into that at a later date, but I even stopped at a gas station, checked my tires, and called my best friend 5-10 minutes earlier saying I had a creepy unexplainable feeling (seriously, it defies logic) and made an appointment to get my car checked all-over, just as “precautionary” with a different dad I babysat for in Chapel Hill who owns Chapel Hill Car & Tire. Only a few minutes later, I was texting him saying “nevermind. My car is totaled.” as I waited for the police to shut down the intersection and cut my car out from where it was lodged 20-30 yards into the treeline. My tire just popped. Just like that. And instead of spinning under the tractor trailer to my right, I hit trees at every angle and ultimately came to rest with one on my driver’s side that just happened to hit the support beam perfectly dead-center. Inches from my face. Apart from the muscle fatigue, I just wanted to get up and get back to that life I had planned for myself. I borrowed my mom’s second car for a few months, moved there, got a job, started living in the same city as the man I loved, lived with my best friends upon her request–things were getting back to normal.
All I was doing was distracting myself, though. I kept myself so busy that I never sat with my thoughts. I didn’t want to face or think about the reality of what I had just lived through, or how I felt about it, because doing so would change the way I lived my life and I just wanted it to continue according to my plan.
I’m not a religious person. Normally, I think people tend to revert to faith to help them in times like these. I did, however, start going to hot yoga regularly. This was usually 60-75 minutes to sit and flow, letting the warmth of the sauna heat stretch my fairly inflexible muscles. Because, as all gymnasts know, strength and flexibility often do not mix. You have to stretch SO MUCH for every ounce of power you gain. You sit, in the heat, and listen to the thoughts of the day. Taking what resonates, distancing yourself from what doesn’t. It’s very similar to church, except you might be wearing a sports bra and spandex and dripping sweat from every crevice of your body. However you choose to show up on that day is worthy of being loved and appreciated. Even days where most of the time I would just lay down, in child’s pose, physically exhausted once I actually had the time to recognize that I was. Even the days that I rested and DIDN’T show up were important. Your body needs rest. You need to refuel it. You need to nourish your soul in the same way you nourish your body. You need to be able to know how to balance that in a healthy, sustainable way. In reference to all aspects of your life.
Over time, my yoga practice changed. Before and after the accident. Some days, whether it was the class, what time I arrived, or whether I was with someone, where I sat was altered. The teachers were often different, and each one had an incredibly unique style. I had my favorites, sure, but none except maybe Anita, who I also babysat for, was close to my Spanish hot yoga teacher in Houston, Texas. (I would finish a 14 hour day at MD Anderson working on terminal head & neck and thoracic cancer, some of the most severe cases, just soaking up as much information as I could) and go to the yoga studio on the way home, then go home, make dinner, and sleep. Every day. In part because the teachers were so excellent but also because they had a $30 unlimited month of yoga and as a broke undergraduate student who wasn’t allowed to have a job by my parents growing up but was expected to cater to their demands for what I wanted to spend my money on or what they were willing to pay for, I was gonna get my money’s worth.
Even with the teachers, studios, and scenery differences, the messages and mentality don’t change. That parallels exactly how I approach life. Clutching opportunity as it benefits me, powering through a very strange trek of self acceptance, physical and mental finessing, and educating myself incessantly. And I had to be open to the changes that were outside of my control. The days my clinic ran long because the guy’s entire facial reconstruction grafted from his thigh for his stage 4 squamous cell cancer deep in the tissues of his face would prolong his life for a few extra months–for what? And did I really need to punish myself, or him, for that in any way?
My struggle with c-PTSD often mimics the discussion between palliative care and pursuing more aggressive western medical treatment. Could I be jumping back into routine, content to live the rest of my life on the same Westworld loop, knowing that my mind and life has been changed because of what I’ve experienced, but being too scared to acknowledge that change because it means letting down others or deviating from the path I’ve known my whole life? The one that was scripted for me? For all the John Muir books you read, you sure don’t seem to pay attention to the words you’re so drawn to. The paths less traveled. Those intertwine with mine.
So like palliative, or more holistic care, do we try something new as a nation, as a workforce, as a species? Accept things that have ample anecdotal evidence, easily explainable through simple science interwoven with psychology, but maybe not seen worthy of “institutional” research, and thus, not being funded or financially viable in a capitalist economy to study, though not necessarily being less “worthy” of a treatment regimen. Set limits for ourselves. When to stop treatment. How many things to try. Knowing what our options are, what is feasible, and trying things outside the box–if nothing else but for our own enjoyment. Our own quality of life.
Recognizing the struggling nature of even our “manliest men”, particularly our own veterans, committing suicide over the reality of former versions of themselves and not being able to reintegrate into society because they don’t know where their place now lies, or it just seems downright futile, or unimportant, is a necessity. It’s not unlike the struggles I often face either, at least mentality wise, though I make no attempts to discount the realities of active combat compared to however the fuck you would describe my own life. I have witnessed death. I have contemplated death in many forms (my own, my friends, family, loved ones, the people who abused me that I wished in certain moments would die.) I haven’t had to take life at the direction of someone else, though, for reasons I’m unaware of. Why do we just accept that we shouldn’t address this? Especially when we have as a nation condemned ourselves to inevitable warfare for generations to come because you really think these authoritarian regimes in the world give a fuck about our sanctions and aren’t just waiting for the prime opportunity to strike? Ya. Give me a break.
I once talked to my stepdad, a career Navy man whose meetings on the development of new naval craft I often overhear. We were talking about how he used to fly drones in the Gulf War and now creates his own pyrotechnics and fireworks, still likes to shoot his guns, tends to his farm, and exists as most military men do, preparing for a “doomsday” scenario. It was great for quarantine, gotta say. I, playing lots of Call of Duty, often gravitate towards sniping. I was great at the “sweeper” position in soccer, which, for those who don’t know, is the last line of defense, because I’m good at reading the game. Of anticipating the movements of my enemies. Of understanding the support at my disposal but also having a clearer read of the direct situation, though from further away. So one day I mentioned I was curious about learning how to shoot a sniper, out of nothing more than “fun”. I’d been reading about Lyudmila Pavlichenko, one of the deadliest snipers of WWII, who racked up 309 kills, 36 of them being enemy snipers. I think I would be particularly talented at it. I have a knack for putting myself at risk, and the only reason I don’t, or haven’t, joined the army or some military force is because my Granddaddy KNEW what awaited women in military service AND I question authority just a LITTLE too much.
Once you lose that respect, it is done.
You are gone.
I am cut-and-dry.
You can earn it back, sure, but few people have ever tried to go that route because it often requires something people are incapable of: honesty.
Particularly when it’s pointed out by a subordinate, however intelligent, who threatens to drop you down in the ranks and sidestep you on her own way to the top. In reality, maybe being honest prevents you and others from living a life of unhappiness. It’s like how euphoric it is for people who identify as LGBTQ (I’m one of them, queer as fuckkkkk or just weird, i’m not quite sure what the difference is at this point) to come out of the closet. Or, for those of us who never really “formally” announce but just decide that being “pansexual” is probably the progressive choice because, realistically, I find women fucking beautiful and intriguing and maybe I will meet one I want to be intimate with. Maybe it’ll be a man who USED to be a woman but now has the bodily mechanisms I am particularly drawn to in men. Win-win. The mentality of a female and knowledge of emotions in the body of a man? This is why I’m drawn to the energy of male creatives, even those who are intellectual and brilliant and “appear” macho, but are actually very “feminine”. Basically, I’m pretty sure between my PTSD and being so deprived of love and affection for so long, coupled with my nature of science, genetic abnormalities, chromosomal locations for genes, and the implications of modern medicine such that, you may never be able to “tell” in the future what gender someone was born as, has forced me to re-visit my own sexual identity and be like “Alright, not as heteronormative as I thought. Good to know. Let’s move forward.”
It reaches a point though, particularly with being honest with yourself, and ESPECIALLY with those of you listening who may also have depression, anxiety, or even PTSD like I do, where you no longer have a choice, you need to address your mind.
It’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done, but it’s necessary.
And you are capable of doing it, no matter who has somehow convinced you that you aren’t–even if that person is yourself.
Mine was a delayed reaction. And, I imagine with quarantine, a lot of people are struggling with delayed reactions of their own. Being at home, with your own thoughts, with the life you might’ve had to escape before, may be terrifying. Or it might not be safe. It might be more triggering. And you might feel like there isn’t an escape, from anything, but particularly not from your own mind. The only thing keeping you holding on might be the effect you have on other’s lives. But then, those same people may also remind you of the darkest times in your life and the shame and guilt that has been indoctrinated into you that you feel the need to apologize for, so it’s as hurtful as it is calming to be around them and you worry that they’ll disappear from the good moments too, so you just don’t allow them to be included. Or you worry they won’t appreciate your good moments, because they’re really not that special. They aren’t unique. It’s something like a pretty sunset. The way your dog snuggled against you longer than usual. Your coffee tasted a little more perfect. You’re happy at work and enjoy the project you’re a group member on and your contribution. Nothing like the accolades and admiration you used to receive. The life-or-death struggle and “risking it all” you were told meant devaluing your own life compared to those around you, and forgetting you’re really taught to depend on each other in those life-or-death moments. Mulan’s scene with the Huns should’ve been enough Disney magic to make it more clear how easy it is, even for authority, to be wrong. Blinded by their rage. Consumed in their system. Doing everything by-the-book and under the direction of authority, when a novel idea pops up and, had Mulan given a damn to any of them, would not have tried, worked, or saved them.
Living with PTSD means being on high alert to details. It means existing in a fight-or-flight state much longer than you should. I looked death in the face, let my arms fall slack (easy with years of horse back riding and gymnastics teaching me to fall without hurting myself), fully expecting the warm embrace of death and being okay with it, then blinked my eyes, scrambled out of the passenger seat (a necessity because my key being warped in the ignition and the engine being stuck on while the car was damaged beyond recognition and crunched around my frame made it a fire hazard amongst the pine needles, grabbed my dog, and then was just perfectly okay. I had a few scratches, I was sore, but I was alive. And physically, fine.
Only I didn’t really know how to be alive again. The world seemed slower, but faster, at the same time. Life felt meaningless, complicated, and futile. I remain motivated, but if I don’t see the bigger picture or how something benefits me, I just don’t have the energy to do it any longer. Maybe it’s more of my ADHD, which, as an adult, I’m pretty sure is just related to my inability to prioritize things that I don’t actually see value in prioritizing. I have extreme hyperfocus towards anything of worth. So much so that it becomes neurotic fascination to a degree. And that’s not intended to be in a selfish way, but in a “I am mentally tired of the fight. And I need to rest and pick and choose my battles.”
PTSD, particularly coupled with the mental complexity of an ENTJ, offers me a unique perspective to society. I can see, navigate, the uncertainty. It is familiar, not murky territory like “The Upside Down” in Stranger Things. Existing in survival mode has allowed me to be excessively perceptive of my surroundings. Of the factors at work in the cultural environment around me. Of the details below the surface that might explain or predict certain responses.
Yet I struggle with WHY I’m still here, against all odds.
What about me was worth saving time and time again?
What purpose am I supposed to bring to this earth?
Surely, it’s much more than simply attending to other’s desires for 8 hours a day?
I imagine introspection for me is a lot like how people read the Bible. It’s similar to how I used to study it in private school, but again, that’s just me. I don’t really “Read books” or “do anything” the way “normal” people do, apparently. Only, instead of confession in darkened closets, I think for the sake of accountability in our nation, and being able to actually treat these issues as public health and more importantly, mental health issues, we have to stop shaming them into obscurity. And people have to see symbols of beauty, of grace, of attraction, of power, of respect as those whose opinions they admire. So there’s something to be said for pandering to an audience to gain attraction.
But, I’ve just watched way too many people die because of preventable things, be unhappy because of unreasonable expectations or the fear of change, and then not knowing or seeing that ever represented and I realized that openness is hard to come across. Or, it’s in people who are either traditionally introverted, so they’re less likely to share it, or are now susceptible to the realities of the world and revert to the dark recesses of their lairs and solitude because they know the community isn’t actually on their side. It’s why men love Reddit so much–they can actually exist as who they want to be, online. That’s why every “Ask Men” thread on reddit that gains popularity is “hey men, what are some feelings you’re too scared to share?” They’re almost always issues about not being able to express emotion. Yet, threads all those same channels over also have blatant misogyny and are straight up rude to commenters that they perceive as being women. We have a serious “identity” issue in the USA where vulnerability is an incredibly rare cultural trait because it’s weaponized against us, as is the military and patriarchal way, and we need another educational and artistic revolution of sorts, based around the love of science and logic and reality of life as humans.
All that sticking to that patriarchal mentality has gotten us in the USA is substance abuse issues, suicide rates (particularly for those under 35 and men of all ages), violence towards women that is unaddressed, sexualization of everything feminine (in such a way that a child’s collarbones being exposed may be disruptive of learning somehow), divorce, and widespread discontent that benefits nobody in the long run, and then demands of “how are we going to pay for it” like we don’t, as a society, set arbitrary values to everything we fucking sell based on what kind of profit we think we can make from it. Maybe, just maybe, we just need to shift some of our values.
Do we really think a whole bunch of these white men LOVED Star Wars, went absolutely fucking nuts over the internal debate between the light and dark side, and CHAMPIONED the struggle with it, because they weren’t feeling a little mentally repressed? Or like they had no out in their own lives but could suffer vicariously living through others who were braver who graced their screens and did what had to be done, what they, ultimately, couldn’t do for themselves? No. They just didn’t realize their expression of emotion solely existed in creative outlets or sports or anything other than expression of themselves. Because emotion is restricted for drama. It’s theatrical. Anything similar to that in real life is just “too difficult”. Some of our real lives resembled movies, though. Or we all have moments of recognition that flash across our memory, like Amy Poehler’s character in Inside Out when she brings up a core memory, or sometimes just sends the random ones to the front. Things we can pick out, relate to, and empathize with in rewatching other’s situations. Only, it seems we can only find empathy when we also understand and have access to the reality, when we can relate. When we’re thrust into witnessing the full effect of its consequences. We don’t believe it, or don’t care, until we see it in our own neighborhoods. We can’t keep doing that. And we can’t keep demanding people to relive these horrifying ordeals just to justify or validate their struggles in this world.
Removing the humanity from our workforce, instilling corporate, patriarchal culture towards everything, but especially “professionalism”, making your body a physical representation of anything other than yourself as a person and tying your financial, health, and general security in life to one thing that determines your value on our soil (and is solely based in productivity) is disgusting. It’s creating far too many problems and we cannot keep letting it go unaddressed or silenced just because it’s “uncomfortable” for the conservatives who “respect their bodies and faith so much more than we supposedly do, but still let child rapists and shame lead them in prayer while publicly condemning it blindly on a national scale based on people whose lives they have no insight to and hypocritical logic that defies reason”. All because they’re scared of confronting reality. So they want to trust in blind faith. Because you won’t always have the answers, and we as a universe, still don’t have all the answers and likely never will. So you get through it through prayer.
As an aside: “Prayer” is really just a form of meditation. Only “self-reflection” is meditation towards yourself. “Prayer” is literally hoping someone else fixes things for you as long as you “just stay on track”. Ya’ll are living like socialists but condemn it. You are accepting handouts of faith and putting your trust in someone else but then condemn the people in government who have the means and ability to solve the same things, to make life a little easier and not such a rat race, to get back to what it actually means to be human and a valuable society, to provide TANGIBLE help, knowledgeable, clear help through ACTUAL programs instead of blind faith, but Fox News or Candace Owens throws a blank “Marxism” sticker to it, tells you that it’s “unrealistic” (it’s not), and keeps you uneducated and stuck in such bleak despair that you don’t even know where to start looking for help and just cling to your safety net as it drains you of your resources.
My hometown had an F5 tornado rip a half-mile wide hole through our town, it touched down on my farm, took all the trees in my yard, but left my house. Took my neighbors down the road, though. We were shut down, constantly, for the DC Sniper, doing active shooter drills early into the 2000’s. We had parents in the Pentagon on 9/11. I had family in NYC who worked amongst the Twin Towers. Anthrax attacks, being warned not to open our MAIL, of all things. At times, bomb threats and concern over suspicious packages.
During my childhood, I was the last person to talk to and watch my friend Cliff, who I knew from pick up soccer over the summers, crash his motorcycle into the back of a black suv parked on the shoulder. The combination of his speed, illegal driving maneuver, and darkness of the night all inevitably panning out to his death. The logic didn’t make it any less jarring.
I took my pony to his chemotherapy treatments, watched him slowly go blind, the pain becoming more visible, but not diminishing his love for me. And I felt the gap in my heart from his loss. I still feel it, even though I can also feel his spirit with me, if just in memory.
I was with my Grandma when she took her last breaths, in her own bed, with my horses out the window, the American flag flying valiantly in the front yard, the rest of my family in a semicircle around her bed.
I was on facetime at university when my Grandfather passed, the rest of my family by his side.
I sat through funeral after funeral for my friends, or their siblings, or their parents. The hangings. The opioid overdoses. The heroin injections. The car wrecks from reckless driving. The drunk drivers. Shooting themselves.
I witnessed, and felt, the pain of all of those.
I helped in the aftermath.
I was, and often remain, responsible for the clean up.
I see the patterns in behavior easily. It’s what makes me a good scientist. The analytical nature. Deconstructing what we know from what we think we know and how to bridge the gap between them. What actual risk is. What makes things subjectively “good” and “bad”? What patterns in our society brought about certain trends? It’s also why our treatment of emotion in this country infuriates me.
And, because of that military upbringing, there was no other option apart from compartmentalizing. Through all of the reality of life– that the longer you live, the more of your loved ones you’ll watch die around you. The more “close calls” medically you’ll have. The more “narrow escapes” with automotive events you’ll have. You have to compartmentalize your emotions to be aware of that and continue. That’s why depression and anxiety and intellect is so correlated. It’s obvious that ignorance is bliss, so it’s hard to condemn the uneducated. And the older you are, the more opportunities to learn, to be knowledgeable, to experience these difficulties in life. Protecting people from it in a desperate facade instead of changing the system and working towards addressing it has obviously not been working. Pretending that’s the appropriate solution just simply can’t go on.
None of those former experiences derailed me in the way that acknowledging my c-PTSD and the car accident that ultimately started it have had. As many near-death experiences as I had before, I never TRULY had contemplated death. I was aware that I wanted to live, yes, but I didn’t have the ability to choose or alter what was happening to me in that scenario in particular. And that reflection on life, however brief, and acceptance of my death, even if just for a few moments, spurred this emotional flashback series that is unrelated to my photographic memory.
I have a visual memory, it’s why it’s particularly difficult for me to not hold partners, family, friends, and the general public accountable. I am like an elephant. I do not forget things, I hold grudges, which I think are more “accountability to a higher standard of acknowledgement” than “grudges”, but I digress. I remember odd details about life and interactions with such inexplicable clarity that it is why I haven’t had to really study for my success in school. If I write something myself, I can then picture the words recreated on the page. The muscle memory of creating them. Or drawing the structure and understanding the mechanisms of its use. Which cycles of the body interact. I have a knack for seeing how interwoven and complicated systems function, because my body is its own. My mind, and world in general, is its own. Vastly more complex and deviant from anything I could have predicted. But even that, as confusing as it is, is a gift.
As dark, or heavy, of a topic PTSD is, particularly c-PTSD is, I actually often find nothing lighter.
Now, do I have recurrent nightmares that are completely fucked up with no logical explanation and resemble something from a horror film that would make Jordan Peele a LOT of money? Yes.
Is it difficult to date because the reality of revealing the extent of near death experiences, domestic abuse, familial interaction and dynamic, the gravity and complexity of your childhood with also the ways you benefited from it, the boundaries you’ve established as an adult? Also yes.
As a hot girl, I clearly have plenty of options. Dick gets thrown into my inbox like it’s the paperboy delivering the newspaper in the 1980’s. But do you think I have the energy to give a fuck about what man wants to procreate with me without taking the time to learn who I am? To learn who he is? To figure out why I intimidate him or why he perceives the neutral things I say, even as an engineer, as a negative? No. Please stop asking me to.
It seems an impossible task. I’m not here to tell you PTSD is easy, at all. Like I said, it’s never something you “recover” from. It’s something you “treat”. Something you will live with, though learn to healthily cope with, for the rest of your life.
It’s especially scary to reflect on other memories, on separate, unrelated memories, and recognize how your actions in unrelated scenarios stemmed from your inability to accept or confront the things you are running from. The reality you’ve been running from for a while. That you don’t like what’s happened to you. That you don’t know where to go from here. That you aren’t sure you even trust your direction any more. When you reach that point, you usually face the option of accepting the need to confront your feelings or not wanting to be on this earth any longer. Some people, particularly men, who are not safe to express emotion in society (because I, as an attractive woman, am even criticized for expressing emotion. How do we think the men are going to be revered?)
Our presidential candidate was mocked on a huge national news network for having a son with a substance abuse disorder. By our current president. In a country suffering from an opioid epidemic because of the state of healthcare in our country and big pharma financial pushes of drugs, despite KNOWING the addictive quality. Of looking for the quick, easy solution to all of our pain in this country. Of looking for the greatest financial reward and refusing to address it because it might be a “little difficult”. Or of not holding the people responsible accountable in any legitimate way. Because it’s “white crime” and they didn’t directly pull the triggers, or fill the prescriptions. Meanwhile, I’ve had probably at least ten people from my small graduating high school class of 330 who have died from these issues. In under ten years. They weren’t “problem kids”. Our greatest “problem kid” who had to have his own instructional assistant so he wouldn’t have to go to the school for “problem kids” is now a police officer, so either way we can just let that little assumption that the only people who are affected to this fall into that category. They were people from families who just lacked direction in life, didn’t know how to get to where they wanted to go, didn’t know where they fit in with the world, and didn’t have anyone looking out for them to take them away from it.
Because how do we look after anyone else in a society that doesn’t even afford us to look after ourselves correctly?
That thinks healthcare is a luxury? In a “developed” world?
I have PTSD. I am, by all means, on paper, undeniably successful. Even with all of the situations I witnessed or was a part of, many of which are not even included here or being touched on in any way, though are equally as grim, I kept my shit together. I graduated with 41 college course credits from 14 A.P. classes, Salutatorian in part because I took extra, unweighted classes. I graduated in one of the most difficult majors (shoutout biochem. Worth every torturous organic chemistry equation. Which, it turns out, are not actually torturous when you have the time to focus on the subject and approach it like a puzzle) from a top 5 public university. I earned my masters in epidemiology from a top 6 public university, paying for it myself, taking out loans. I have been all over Europe, the United States to a degree. Maybe not as much as others, whose families had the means to travel and leave a farm, 10 horses, and bring 3 children on vacation growing up, but regularly enough since I went to college, and tied purely to curiosity instead of sports. I have sat in on, been witness to some of the most significant, meaningful conversations. The Paris Agreement. Various litigation. I stayed in the apartment one street away from the Louvre in Paris right across from the el Jardin des Luxembourgs, that was owned by the guy almost single-handedly responsible for bailing out Puerto Rico and doing us a favor.
Nobody would know the intimate details of my life if I didn’t want them to. I overlap enough circles, with relative anonymity and purely through chance, that sharing my successes often comes off as “bragging”. I should know, because the last time I visited my sister in Baltimore, I spent 3 hours crying to her about how exhausting it is to have to repeat myself and revisit my experiences just to get her to validate my emotions and understand my struggles in life. She didn’t understand because my life “wasn’t hard”. Because I seem to carry them with ease. Stoically, unemotionally, cold, effortless. Success comes easily to me.
For all of those insane highs, though, the lows have been just as miserable. And experiencing event after event after event like the Baudelaire orphans in “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, which the rest of the world just collectively calls “2020”, it can be hard to live with that knowledge and feel so dissociative. You resort to avoidance strategies, feel like you’re permanently damaged in some way just because you hear the words “chronic condition” and there is no easy western medical fix addressing the problem. This isn’t chlamydia, you can’t take a pill and one week later, BOOM! Back and ready for business.
You can be “back and ready for business”, to be clear, if you absolutely have to. You can pull it together, grin it and bear it for the “greater good”, because you see it as the only solution available to you in that moment.
You don’t have to be.
And that solution doesn’t have to be the only one.
And suicide, doesn’t even have to be on the table.
But we have to start talking about it. And we have to stop pretending like it isn’t affecting every community across America, even in our most “manly” veterans. The people we have, collectively, revered above all else because they let us focus on topics like mental health on our shores and treatment of women instead of direct warfare within our own land. Although, I will also make a point that we have also chosen to intertwine ourselves unnecessarily so on an international level with completely obvious and inexcusable reasons, whether it’s “establishing democracy” or “modern day colonization” because we pick apart a LOT of other people’s behaviors in other countries without addressing overlying themes within our own land. We have to stop excusing the “military” as a system because criticizing the patriarchy is somehow conflated with criticizing every individual man, or every individual soldier, and their lack of knowledge at the time and participation in such systems, or even maybe the problematic behavior in question, causes them to be defensive rather than to learn from experience.
It’s HARD to be wrong. And it’s especially hard to be wrong when doing so is going to cause you to open a floodgate of maybe even self-loathing, or disdain because all of the signs were there and you couldn’t see it for what it was. Or you “should’ve known better.” So you think not being honest is doing the right thing, saving everybody the trouble. On little things, it is. The trouble is, its now so rampant through our society that we excuse things like cheating, misleading others when it comes to sex, or worse, a RELATIONSHIP, liability over safety, reality, or practicality, profit over consumers. We think it’s capable to just rebuild without establishing a stronger foundation.
We have created a world that denatures human interaction while simultaneously creating unfathomable ways for humans to interact.
That is our purpose in a society.
It is the reason we live together in cities, in groups, big or small. It is the reason I do not fuck off to the Appalachian Trail and live as a recluse, how I’m arguably meant to.
Human. Interaction.
Let’s please make it healthier. Let’s make it EASIER for those interactions to be healthier. Let’s stop increasing the hurdles people who are now knowledgeably predisposed to be more hostile, distrustful towards the world have to face. Do we want to create groups of citizens that resemble rabid dogs? I think “I am Legend” kind of forewarned us of that. Especially when these people may very well hold the keys to reality, but are afraid of turning the lock because how it is perceived–by themselves, their friends, their families, their occupations, creates such a cognitive dissonance when who they are is just different from what they thought they were going to be. What they had planned to be. Instead of starting fresh, we cling to what we know as humans. Then yell at others to “if you don’t like it, leave!” all while complaining about the same concepts and accepting, and voting, for complacency instead of the often, very simple changes that, little by little, make a collectively large difference.
We have to start being okay with our emotions, as men, women, non-binary beings, animals, creatures of the night, gremlins, witches, whatever. We have to learn from the world around us, study everything constantly. Reflect. Treat life on this Earth like the experience it’s meant to be. The future, starting with now, that we NEED to work towards for actual progress. Some of us don’t get a choice with what we’ve experienced, or had to. Taking away the opportunity for us to talk about it is just conservative society’s way of further depersonalizing those experiences. Of further avoidance. Of not addressing the hopelessness, of feeling different from others around us. We aren’t so different. We can all relate to each other, in a lot of ways.
Mental wounds are a lot like the physical. They might look fine during a wound check, then have completely changed direction the next day, rampant and overrun with infection. Treatment might work “best” or “most commonly” one way, and by chance, you happen to find something a little better tailored for YOUR needs. You can switch. We can prescribe antibiotics when needed, because sometimes your body’s natural system just can’t provide you with the defense you need. And we can recognize when we’re overprescribing, when the practices and standards need to change. Some need to be covered, protected from the light. Others flourish when open to air. We just need to start allowing our wounds to heal before picking at our scabs and stop allowing our scar tissue to be the predominant fixture in our minds, because it’s what is obvious, when the important thing is the healing process is progressing. However slowly, with however many deviations, derailments, changes of course.
Healing is not linear. Other experiences will share similarities but also drastically differ from mine. Is it weird to share it? Undeniably. It never gets easier. But PTSD affects 7-8% of all Americans at some point. About 17 veterans a day die by suicide. People who fought defending the reality we live in. Who then returned to this reality and realized maybe everything was better if they had died in war. And took it upon themselves to change that trajectory. I get why you don’t want to share, or focus, on that. But if we’re going to splash the horrific news of the world on our front pages, we need to also start working on solutions. Highlighting solutions with the same ferocity we highlight the issues. Acknowledging the growth. The positivity in the stories. The lights that bloom in darkness.
Sharing is a means to an end for me. I don’t like to do it. Particularly not about something like my FEELINGS. It makes me uncomfortable beyond belief. My entire life, I have always loved validation, I seek comfort in success of all forms, but I expect it. I don’t think it needs to be “rewarded” or “coddled”. I prefer to let others be the emotional ones, seeking the spotlight for positions of authority. I lead best through example, not direction.
But I see no hope of a future I want to live in without it.
And I see no light in the distance.
So I will forge ahead with my own.
And mark the path behind me for others to follow me.
RESOURCES:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322886#what-is-complex-ptsd