Essays from The Shadows
Volume Two
A comment was made in my hearing recently: “The thing is, they don’t realise that PTSD never goes away. It just carries on.”
I have C-PTSD, which is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I would argue that, as complex is defined as “consisting of many different and connected parts“, all PTSD is complex. Making it complex to understand and complex to resolve. I have said ‘complex’ too many times now.
Because it doesn’t go away, I am very old and I still have it. So that’s something for you to look forward to. It is a very hard thing to discuss with others because it has this broad portfolio. I am sure if a group of survivors — what is the collective noun?a splodge? — were sat comparing notes, they would find some things in common, but like all the foibles we deal with, they are bespoke and very much defined by our circumstances and details.
One of mine is what my brain does when I am trying to deal with something stressful. In recent weeks, I have had a series of situations where, I suppose you could say, I was waiting to hear. All different. Every one of them caused chaos in my head.
I thought it would be fun to try and describe what happens. I say fun, it might be the document my wife has been waiting for to finally have me committed.
1. Friend goes missing, presumed dead. Only presumed dead by me, every 15 minutes. It takes 15 minutes for me to spiral down and through all the possibilities. He was not where he would usually be for a pre-arranged meeting, his phone was dead, or broken, or stolen, or he had gone out and left it behind, or he lost it on a walk and it was, as we speak, ringing unheard on a distant hill. Marauding burglars had broken into his home and shot him in the head and taken all his worldly goods. He was probably just asleep or in the shower. Well, it’s only been 15 minutes. Repeat. On a rinse cycle all day long.
The contrasting loop playing alongside that one, as to whether I do anything about it, and what, if anything I do about it, and is it down to me to inform someone or is there a better, more connected person than I, and what if they are not as concerned as me and see no harm in him disappearing, what then? What indeed.
2. I am waiting to hear about something. It is an offer to do something and it might be a good thing to do, but then again there are probably far better people than myself to be considered, and what makes me think I am even likely to get close, let alone actually be offered the role? It has been quite a while and that can’t be good, not a good sign at all, maybe they have already decided and just haven’t got around to writing rejection emails yet. Or perhaps they are still debating and my name is already in a pile of “never even came close”, and there is a raging debate over two far better qualified candidates than myself and oh this is hopeless and I may as well just call them and withdraw my name from the list, at least that way I can stop feeling like this. Why haven’t I heard anything yet? It will be tomorrow now. Today is nearly over.
3. A friend is heading to his first therapy session and he is scared and upset and has big things to talk about and I promised I would be around when he finished and then we can talk about it and discuss how it felt and whether he thinks it helped and how difficult it was and did he manage to say the three things he wanted to say or was it all too much and now he is going to have to go through the whole thing again next week until he summons up the courage to say the words out loud to a real live therapist.
He should be there by now. He will be doing that awkward introduction, first five minutes thing, trying to work out what he is like and whether he thinks he can trust him and why does he keep fiddling with that pen and does that mean he is nervous and should a therapist be nervous, surely they know how to deal with nerves.
I wonder how long he will be. Breathe… and again.
Now the thing is, all three of these scenarios happened in the same week, so on a particular day all three were spinning around my head at the same time, rolling across each other, chafing and stinging, each one urgent and intense and ceaseless in it’s need to be heard and sorted and examined. Then round once more, for luck.
He was found and was ok. The therapy went well and he went back the following week. I got the job.
I felt it was important to tell you that, otherwise, if you also have PTSD, you would be stuck with all that for days on end.
‘They’ don’t know how it is. Because that goes on in my head and nobody knows.