When I can’t find my keys, that really sets it
off.
I’d love to learn someday if other people
with PTSD have this same experience.
If I can’t find my keys, it's okay for maybe
thirty seconds. But if after that I still
can’t find my keys, I start having a physical reaction: increased heart beat,
shortness of breath, panic, and THEN body pain.
Every step I take from one room to the other while I'm looking for my keys sends pain shooting
from my feet all the way up my body. So
the longer I look the worse the pain is, to the point I'm crawling sometimes, crawling and panting and pulling myself
around the room, throwing stuff on the floor, breaking things, sweeping clutter
off a tabletop in one swoop, all the stuff crashing to the floor, then I'm crawling to the
next table to do it again. It can get pretty bad if I can’t find my keys, still it all comes to a stop and everything returns to normal, as soon as I find the keys.
Triggers. Living with PTSD.
And panic.
Some people call them panic attacks, I don't know how to describe how
awful this is when I'm in the middle of it.
An actress would have to have exceptional skills to portray it. Maybe I could describe one of these search-induced
panics with a looooong paragraph someday, if when I'm in the middle of one I can
maintain enough presence of mind to write it down and document it.
For a long time I thought there was some connection
between the pedophile priest rape and this panic when I lose things. Like maybe there was an incident connected to
the molestation that involved not being able to find something. Or maybe the panic at losing keys is just a
general malaise about my entire lost life, about all the things my entire family
lost as a result of the pedophile priest crimes in our lives.
But it also could be a characteristic of PTSD in
general, and maybe war veterans, other crime victims, even accident trauma survivors
experience the same thing, I don't know.
It seems to involve a need to keep everything in
its place, a need to know that if I need the keys they will be right there in
the little holder on the table. If the
keys aren't there, something happens to me- physiologically, a sense of oh no,
now things are out of place.
Oh no things are not where they should be.
Oh no I've lost control and now the chaos can
start up again.
So if I have to keep looking for the keys, the
simple act of rifling through clutter and looking under papers turns into a
major emotional event. My daughter used
to hate it when this happened, and it may be the reason she tells people her
mother is crazy to this day, when I'm not crazy, I'm really a very sane person.
I just have PTSD, so I have these episodes.
And misplaced keys are a trigger, mysteriously
so, because the reaction I have to misplaced keys is way out of balance with
the real difficulty of not finding ones keys.
I mean, what difference
does it make if I can’t find my keys, except I may have to leave the door unlocked for
a few minutes. Hmm. I mean, I hardly ever go anywhere.
It's true.
I've arranged my life so I don't leave my apartment complex. I have almost all my groceries and supplies
delivered and once a week I hobble three blocks up the street to the Thursday farmers
market. When
I lived in Chicago the winter of 2012-13, I did not go outside
my apartment building from November through April, about
five months, except to go down the hall and throw out trash, or go get mail, and I'd do that in the middle of the night when no one was around.
I know this is a mania in development, but to be
honest, the way the world is, agoraphobia makes sense these days.
*****
I Could Get Away With Murder
I feel like, hey, considering everything I've been through, a little quirkiness in my old age is okay.
But then I also wonder if a little quirkiness is
all it is.
Because just now, after yet another day of triggers
and panic attacks fed by rage that I can’t find a doctor who understands what I'm
going through so I have no medical attention happening at all right now, no doctor
or nurse to call, nothing, no prescription for Valium to refill and make it all
easier, so added to the rage and whatever that thing is I experience from triggers is this frustration that I can’t find medical help when
I obviously need it so bad.
Walking back in my door just now, I thought,
after everything I've been through, I could probably commit one hellacious
crime and get away with it, claim insanity, say I was triggered by my rage, an out
of control reaction to how totally unfair it all has been, and it just got to
me.
I could get away with, what, see that's the problem,
I can’t think of any crime I want to commit.
I'm not violent, so as much as it might seem like fun to, oh, let’s say,
kidnap a priest and tie him to a chair while I stuck his skin with prickly
things, it might make a good scene for
Holly Hunter on a cable series, but it's not me. I’d feel sorry for the guy. I’d end up helping him out.
But it's still an idea. I could commit some crime and if I got
caught, considering all the stuff I've been through that has never been
justifiably resolved, I could probably get away with- with- whatever.
I just can’t think of what crime to commit, but it's
food for thought.
-by Kay Ebeling
.
