So I don’t make a ton of personal posts. But. I don’t really know what to do.
Here’s the deal, kiddies. I have issues (anger issues, ADHD that’s been undiagnosed and sometimes penalized for…eh, going on 19 years–that public school system, though–some sensory issues, some other stuff). And some of them have been causing me trouble lately, specifically the ones pertaining to my extended family (more fun than a goddamn barrel of monkeys) and my delightful history with folks of the male gender (sometime I should tell the story about when I punched a boy in the fourth grade and got put in detention for it) and another incident that happened when I was eight that I’m not going to go into because I don’t want to upset anyone (if you want to know, you can ask, but…like…love thyself, it’s not a nice story). It’s particularly that last one that’s causing me trouble, though.
I’ve always been what my parents and I politely call ‘wary’ and less politely call ‘fucking wired,’ and I’ve always had more nightmares than peaceful dreams, and when I’m having a bad week I’ve been known to kind of freak out when someone opens a door and takes me by surprise. And from time to time I get flashbacks–not the full technicolor things you see on TV, just physical sensations and the occasional visual image, but trust me, I’ve tried really hard to come up with another phrase and there just isn’t one–and I get those anywhere from once every couple months to…more, depending on if I’m around the appropriate triggers (dentist’s equipment and anything else medical that comes toward my face, sometimes a handful of other things like being restrained or held down with a weight on my chest). And, you know, I’m a medical person, and furthermore I had the revelatory experience a few years back that I think a lot of people do after they leave an abusive situation (see previous re: my extended family) where I was like ‘oh, right, most people don’t have stories about the time they had to be rescued from their grandparent by their mother because that’s not normal’, so I’ve spent the last five years or so collating a mental list of the things that make people look concerned when I mention them. And it’s come to my attention that the flashbacks and the extreme startle reflex and the nightmares/distressed sleep-talking and the not-ever-sitting-with-my-back-to-the-door-and-always-knowing-my-exits-cold (fun fact: it’s called hypervigilance) are…not normal. (You’ve got to understand that they’re normal for me, though, okay, it took me almost 20 years because I’ve been like this almost my whole life, so cut me some slack for being dense.) And so I did some research and then I took an abnormal psychology class (as you do, because no one can ever say I’m not really really thorough) and…yeah, I have managed to drag myself, 11 years late, to the fucking blindingly obvious conclusion that I have some PTSD issues in addition to those listed above, pertaining to both the incident when I was eight and the other stuff with my extended family/men. Like, I am a fucking sparkling diagnostic example of post-traumatic stress disorder.
And I just. Feel so fucking broken about it. And before you jump down my throat, look, I have given the lecture about PTSD not being a sign of weakness, etc, etc, to several people, with extreme conviction and emphasis and I’ve been convincing as shit, okay, I convinced my dad to attend therapy and I talk to my mom about our mutual issues (her family is worse than Dad’s and fucked us up in some of the same ways, or at least relatable ways) and I get it, okay?
But.
I feel like the second I decide to live with that, all the really goddamn hard work I did over the last however-long to build the person I wanted to be after my extended family wrecked me will just fucking evaporate. Because they will have been right all along about how fucking weak and fragile I am, how I obsess over the little stuff and take things too much to heart, how I can’t just get over it. And I worked so fucking hard to be strong and to be able to protect people and take care of them and to not be this scared eight-year-old anymore, and…Christ. Am I making any sense here? I doubt it. I mean, good God, if you’re still reading I goddamn salute you. I wouldn’t be listening to me bitch about my relatively minor issues anymore.
Just. How do I even start to deal with that part of myself?
