Session the 19th: The Persistence of Memory

Interesting historical note: “The Persistence of Memory” is that melty clocks painting by Salvador Dali. You probably haven’t forgotten, but I have.

Writing from the psychological safety of bed, surrounded by the Overherd and under the duvet cover a friend bought for me because he knew I liked comfortable things. (Even in summer, I sleep on flannel sheets. It’s so much better than the 100-count percale of my youth.)

This session took place a few days ago. I don’t remember when, because I don’t want to think about that time period.

We talked about, well, pretty much what I talk about on the blog these days. That’s definitely a change from the first posts in this series… it used to be the case that I kept everything bottled up and didn’t talk about it at all on the blog until the session in question. Now it’s like I spill all my state secrets or something.

In particular, we talked about flashbacks. In fact, we additionally talked about That One Flashback, and the loss of time. One thing I didn’t talk about on the blog is how much time I must lose, at times. Like I’ll always check clocks to make sure I don’t lose an hour or two when I know I’m not engrossed in something (in which case it’s legit to lose an hour or two). And occasionally, I really will have missed an hour or two for no reason. I remember one time… I was looking at a clock in the kitchen, and then the next thing I remember I was in bed, and it was two hours later. It wasn’t a dream.

My bartender said that this was… sort of normal. Like, literally, one is in too much pain to remember. I always thought that, maybe, just maybe, this was all my fault: I wasn’t strong enough to remember, therefore I can make myself strong enough to remember, and if I make myself strong enough to remember, these episodes won’t happen. Yeah. Doesn’t work that way.

It disturbs me that my flashbacks are, more or less, just facsimiles of real moments of real pain, and yet the full ones are still bad enough that my brain just won’t remember.

Does this mean I also have flashbacks of flashbacks? That seems too meta.

Does this mean that there are points during my years under my parents that I don’t remember? I mean, fuck, I remember being strangled, why couldn’t I have forgotten about that? Why couldn’t I have forgotten about the time my father raped my mother, and I didn’t understand until years later that this was rape? Why couldn’t I have forgotten about the time my father smashed my mother’s head through a wall?

There are so many things I could not remember, why must I remember any of it?

And what don’t I remember?

The questions above I didn’t ask my bartender. I just talked to him about flashbacks themselves.

So yeah. Lots of mental pain and anguish. Duh.

But I just don’t want to think I’m that weak. There are people who’ve been in much worse situations and yet who’ve pulled through taking care of their parents just fine. Am I such a bad person to have been too weak to put up with all that and left?

Well, some people thought so. Enough to bring about situations that would have killed me. But they didn’t care. I was only a sinner to them. I don’t think I was a friend anymore—but who knows? Maybe that’s par for the course for how they treated friends, which would be fucking sad.

People generally have no idea how paranoid I am.

Looking Back on Years Past: PTSD Perspective

… damn, I found a lot of ways in previous years to pretend I didn’t have it. Last year, for instance, I distracted myself with programming, because I’d discovered the world of ebooks and the making thereof and I’d gotten myself my first Kindle. I even found ways to keep being functional and wrote book reviews during this time period. I even read EVERYTHING for the Hugo awards and researched author backgrounds and stuff.

It’s funny, I actually didn’t sleep very much during this time. I’m getting old.

During past periods, I’d either not yet started up a blog, or I was busy being Dory to my friend’s Marlin and never let the side down, sort of thing.

Of all the posts I wrote during this period last year, I only let my guard down a few times on the blog, in the first couple posts of Dancing with Psychologists. My friend had already left for another company several months since, and I started to break down more and more. I guess support networks matter lots.

‘Course, my Stepford Smiler face started going off the rails when I made an enemy of an author who then actually came after me during my trigger period, and the Macmillan legal department had to step in, and it’s probably in SFWA records and probably I’ll never ever join them simply because of this incident but I’d have to actually write enough stuff first which probably means dealing with worst of the PTSD first so what the hell it doesn’t matter, but anyways.

Not really that author’s fault, all this. I was starting to let my guard down more and more, particularly as Dancing with Psychologists became a somewhat regular feature. I didn’t intend it to be, but I was in a bit too much pain. Still am. They sure didn’t help, though.

Day 59 with the Overherd

Note: Days 55 – 58 were lost in a maelstrom of PTSD.

I must be getting better. I stayed up late last night because, forgetting that I’d been throwing up a lot recently due to anxiety and was going easy on my stomach, at the end of a long day I decided to get a Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki. This played havoc with my digestive system and kind of ruined the day.

However, it wasn’t nausea due to anxiety. It let up some time in the early hours of the morning, and I fell asleep eventually without the Ambien. The Overherd were not arranged in any particular way, except I was hugging the Overcow, and everybody else was on the side of the bed I felt comfortable facing.

My dreams weren’t sweet, but neither did they involve my parents. It was another movie dream, this time a murder mystery in a parallel world where magic was an everyday kind of thing. I don’t remember much, but I know it grafted various time periods in my life together.

For instance, I remember the walking. I did a lot of walking, into strange parts of the town where it became shockingly city-like, back then. I didn’t have a car and was trying to live really cheaply. I was walking this time with someone else, and as always, to a specific destination, even if that destination wasn’t one we’d use in real life. For some reason this person didn’t know how house numbers worked, and I myself only picked up that ability after the Years of Zorn and Tharn, but whatever. It’s a dream.

I remember entering that place (which was like the endless twisting halls of the older kind of University building) and coming across a room containing a series of cubicles set up with really nice paneled wood, not like the flimsy walls of most modern cubicles. We were looking for a cube numbered something like 194.196, but we didn’t find numbers going up that high. We did find a coworker of mine, who didn’t know who I was.

The murderer I can’t tell you, because it would totally spoil one of the Marla Mason books. Actually, come to think of it, two of the Marla Mason books. Um. Hm. Maybe almost all of the Marla Mason books. I’m not sure what he was doing in my dream, but dude, THAT GUY. Haven’t gotten him out of my head, because he’s sure as hell not out of Marla’s yet either. (I’m not sure she’ll ever get to the point where she truly, truly, TRULY lays ghosts of the past to rest. Even… okay, that would spoil another of the books, probably all of the books. But then again, it’s not like I’m any better at it.)

ANYWAYS.

We found out whodunnit, although I spent most of my time in a palatial mansion, playing the role of a would-be murder victim, complete in flowing nightgown and really nice bed with a net blanket layered over the duvet; the net was embedded with pearls and was a very nice cotton fabric. To tell the truth, my companion solved the mystery, but not in time.

The victim’s mother was also Aunt Jemima. No, really. Maple syrup and everything. I don’t even use maple syrup on pancakes except when it was given to me as a gift (because that’s wasting money… no, really, another post), and it wasn’t Aunt Jemima syrup.

Dreams, eh? But I’d count it as a neutral dream. Weird dream, but on the other hand, besides the killer being THAT GUY ((If I ever work up enough money, and I know I will, I’m so going to ask T. A. Pratt to write something that makes this guy GO AWAY, but I’m not sure he can do that.)), nothing much especial.

PTSD B-day: conclusion, not epilogue

Well, the main part seems to be over. Some days might be more trembly than others, but this godsdamned week is almost over anyways, so I’ll get some rest.

Not today, though. Grocery run resulted in bread (now toasted), bananas, applesauce, renewed purpose, and the discovery that losing 6 pounds has done wonders for fitting into skirts.

Ike and I are eventually getting on an incredibly late ferry with breakfast and lunch packed. (Epic fog has been slowing down ferry operations.) And my small GPS unit has missed me.

PTSD B-day #11

I’m still sculling about in calm waters and spent most of yesterday asleep, buried in Mushishi manga, eating quiet things because I got too adventurous at lunch and got a little sick, but not much.

So I’d say it’s over. However, my stomach is still tender for some reason. This makes me worry about work, which has no food located nearby that caters to recovering tummies. It’s fare for working programmers, and you aren’t allowed to toast bread after 10am.

So. Early morning grocery run, and hopefully I can make a later ferry with plenty of unexciting food to eat. The run will also test if I can stand being outside today without going “Aaiigh! A shadow!!” and such.

PTSD B-Day #10

I think the spells of nausea (especially the big one during the early hours of the 28th, what a surprise, not) are gone now. I’ve had some oatmeal and not felt especially nauseous.

Some fine motor detail is still kinda lacking; I need a sharp knife to cut butter pats of appropriate amount for the baking (which I always do in precise amounts), and I’m a little too shaky for that. I haven’t handled a non-butter knife during recovery since a couple months into the Years of Zorn and Tharn, when I didn’t know that what I called waking nightmares were really PTSD episodes. I didn’t hurt anybody, I just sliced the tippy-tip-tip of my finger off. (It grew back, amazingly, but I suspect my fingerprint is no longer the same.) So, no bread. Yet.

Typing is back, though not at full speed, it’s also not disappearing on me much.

I tried making a shake (“Better than Milk” soy milk, although I think I’m sticking to almond milk in the future), but my fingers being what they are, splat.

I can walk for the most part without depending on guidance from the walls.

The acute memory of pain is gone. I don’t even know how the hell to explain that, and am rather afraid of the idea that even if I never have flashbacks again, they will never stop coming back.

I think I’ve stopped getting startled by sunlight and shadows, or at least, as much. Enough to keep control of a car, so I might buy some food later today, if I’m not still resting.

Nightmares have receded. My dreams aren’t exactly fluffy clouds and ice cream sundaes, but neither are they bad: they’re just very boring.

Boring is excellent.

PTSD B-day #9

My boss will not let me rip myself to shreds and told me to rest.

Anyways, there’s a 50% chance the team we’re in conflict with will, ah, leave the rest of us at the altar, so to speak.

I should rest. After I tell breadmaker to make very simple bread. I feel like throwing up… will try soy or almond milk so as not to collapse.

Will be taking my Xanax in peace. I’ll probably fall asleep. My dreams have surfed back into weird boringness, so it looks like the Overherd have finished eating the enormous backlog of nightmares.

PTSD B-day #8

It’s really unfortunate that my birthday was on a Wednesday this year. PTSD screws with me 2 days before and 2 days after, in a sort of bell curve of pain and then recovery.

I can sometimes work on the edge days of the bell curve. But the days framing the triggering day, and obviously the trigger day itself, are bad. Whether the PTSD is escalating or I’m in recovery mode, I’m not… all that operational I guess.

Problem is that the bulk of my work occurs in the middle of the week.

I want to cry because not only could I not help my team during two crisises on Tuesday, I don’t have enough spoons to get to work and eat breakfast and eat lunch and do some necessary, fuck up production if I miss items, and get home, and eat dinner. It’s partly physical, because PTSD episodes drain me via the high demand on fight-or-flight resources. It’s of course emotional, because I’m tired and the all-consuming fear haven’t completely relinquished their hold. And I hate this, it’s intellectual because it’s hard to make good decisions when the above are in effect.

The operation I’m involved in is very delicate. Needs coordination between three different teams in three entirely different departments, one of which we’re constantly in conflict with. In it’s way, it’s also a diplomatic… thingummy. I don’t even have the spoons for that. And it can’t be done on Friday.

The thing is, if this is really required at this time, I will rip myself to shreds in order to do it. Loyalty and duty are buggers sometimes. It’s not a question if I can; it’s a question of if I can do it safely. The answer is sometimes “You’ll probably die in a car crash coming home.” (Or, in Lord Peter Wimsey’s case, “You’ll probably stumble into a marsh and drown.”)

Well, it’s not like a coworker is going to go to jail accused of murder if I don’t make it.

Sigh. This next part is very hard. I have to tell the boss.

PTSD B-Day #7

Tentatively, I’d say that I’m feeling better right now. That kind of statement has a way of hitting me in the mouth later in the night, or at least, screaming in my dreams or inside my head or something.

I get a bit breathless if I don’t keep my mind on something else. I’m not sure if passivity (reading a book or a comic) is better than activity (programming and trying to make decisions that will not upend our part of the back end). I don’t feel like I can make very good decisions right now.

And yeah, the startle reflex is pretty bad right now. Imagine if I had that when I was driving. This morning the reflection of sunlight off a car moving in someone else’s garage freaked me out.

Hopefully tomorrow is normal, better, and tonight is not Revenge of the PTSD Episode.

PTSD B-day #6 and save point and urban fantasy

I remember everything I felt, physically and emotionally, earlier this morning and all evening. The GM of life was not merciful enough to take those memories away, so they’ll haunt me a while. Sometimes the GM does. Sometimes the GM does not. I’m not sure which is better. In a way, remembering them now means I know I got through them.

On the other hand, I remember them. So I didn’t have flashbacks. I think.

I’m sculling about in the waters past the waterfall and rapids of my very prolonged PTSD episode. I’m very tired. I fell asleep at 5am, it’s now 9:20am, I just stayed up until I got too tired and the tiredness took over the nausea. It’s the only way to get through, I think, though I didn’t exactly remember that the last other times. I have to get really tired. Is it possible for tired to cause pain? I think so, but then again, I wasn’t completely sane last night.

But I didn’t overdose on the pepto bismol even in the middle of all that. I counted the pills this morning to make sure. I just remember trying to take more and more and reaching the point in the directions that say “stop doing that” and stopped. *is proud*

As for T. A. Pratt’s Marla Mason series, which I either re-read and read for the first time Monday and Tuesday and hanging over the puke bucket this early morning, I really like it. Why do I do this… well, it’s an interesting thingy. Sometimes if I get really, really into a series, and it has a strong main character, that character will show up briefly in my dreams. It has to be a little on the level of obsession, and I think, it has to be timed correctly in order for it to work for these episodes. I didn’t always remember this fucking stuff climaxed, like a plot does.

The first protector was Warren Ellis’ Spider Jerusalem, some years ago. Before the Years of Zorn and Tharn, and I didn’t make the connection. Spider did it twice. When I eventually made the connection, well, there’s a reason I took my current nom de plume. That was the last time he did it.

The second was Sherlock Holmes. There is a reason he has, basically, a little bloggy shrine I constructed. But he never came back. They didn’t after Spider.

The third was Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, one year ago? or so. See, I don’t time it right a lot. But sometimes I do. Huh. Not often. There has to be a lot of series to burn through, to feed the obsession. A couple of books won’t work. I don’t get to do this very often, but since the paranormal urban romance stuff started, a lot of material suddenly showed up.

The fourth was T. A. Pratt’s Marla Mason. I didn’t get to see Rondeau, I like him, but it got a bit confusing on what he looked like after Spell Games, maybe that’s why I didn’t see him. Anyways, after she showed up, I don’t remember any nightmares. Possibly the cows cleaned up after her. I do remember that Echo Bazaar and Safeway merged for a bit, and I tried out my high level qualities in Persuasive. Not that I remember what happened when I did, but I think I was happy.

If this was Marla Mason’s world, I’d say this is a very rare magic I don’t get to do often. And it doesn’t last for very long, more’s the pity. Just a single dream, each time. Sometimes it’s the dream I really need, and sometimes I fuck up the timing and that just means Spider sits down with me on girders in an unfinished tower in his city and talks to me about things. It sounds a little crazy but Spider is why I didn’t lose some huge amounts of money to a minor betrayal. His talk made me actually listen to another friend who was warning me. I was young and knew everything, even though thinking one knows everything during that kind of time in one’s life is a recipe for disaster. ((And so it turned out. I’m sorry it took the Years of Zorn and Tharn to work through it all.))

Don’t ask me why Spider helped. I’m sure I’m talking to myself during these times. I sure as hell wasn’t listening to sense from elsewhere at the time.

I think these guys have to come from cities. Fantasy countries don’t work. I hate cities, so am not sure why this is.

Doesn’t that all sound insane? Yes, I’m sure it’s insane. But hey. I’ve blogged about my other insanity. Why not this one.

There’s almost enough material for Liz Williams’ Detective Inspector Chen to do it next time. Or sooner. The Iron Khan can’t come out fast enough for me, because the next time a big whack comes, it’ll be Christmas.

If my birthday is horrible, Christmas is likely worse. My father was an evil man, in his way. If only he never loved me. Then maybe I wouldn’t have so many issues.

I’m going to go back to sleep. Maybe it’ll work twice. One can hope. Or maybe I’ll figure out what happens in Echo Bazaar/Safeway when I try out Shadowy. Maybe I won’t dream. Or maybe I’ll see my parents again, and it’ll be bad.

On the other hand, I could always just drink a lotta really black tea.

Thank you for the well wishes.