Welcome to PTSD
Sunday, April 17th, 2011
Understanding the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder doesn’t help to alleviate them, but it’s good to know that others have felt as angry, numb, desperate and insane as oneself.
I wish I’d learned about this earlier, thereby to have avoided lashing out at everyone in my path, but oh well, what’s done is done.
I’m reading a book that explains about triggers – things that reignite the original trauma, making you relive it, over and over again. But I can’t avoid the triggers and I don’t even know which traumatic event to begin with.
Meanwhile, I went to my first meeting of a Bereaved Parents group. Cancer, suicide, it’s all the same agony. We are each clinging to our dead child’s mattress. We are all members of an elite group: the walking wounded pariahs whose stories are too awful for civilians.
A nice lady held my hand and gave me her phone number. There are no steps and no Higher power, just the bond of shared grief. I wish the group met more often. I have problems up ahead, like ordering a gravestone and Mother’s Day. Lucky for me, I have a supportive husband who never says to hurry up and Get Over It.
Today I stared at tumblr images for five hours. I’ve stopped caring about Libya, fashion, and Mrs. Palin. Sometimes I sleep in my clothes so I don’t have to get dressed the next day. I even forgot to blog about how I smashed my finger with the trash can and had to have the ENTIRE NAIL REMOVED.
I am still sort of me, though. We watched a new episode of New York Housewives and I cursed at them aloud with the same happy contempt. Is there a German word for that?
*photograph via here.
