2008-01-04
PTSD Flare-Up
I was scheduled to go to this event for young Tucsonan professionals this evening.
I cancelled.
I used to not feel an inch of remorse for cancellations but then again, I was cripplingly depressed and suffering from PTSD that resulted from the tragically-timed events led me dub 2005 The Officially The Worst Year of My Life.
I am all healed up now from all that and I no longer cancel things without legitimate reason like illness or funding miscalculations.
Today, I feel some twitchings of the same kind of tense, skin-crawling fear that I felt for most of the year of 2005.
I don't even want to eat, and food is usally my arrogant last stand. I am truly in surrender if I don't want anything to do with the pizza in the boardroom or the Kettle Korn in the printer station by my desk.
I haven't slept in 2 days.
I wish I was more productive when I don't sleep. Like, if I had gone ahead and swept my kitchen floor and mopped it at 3:30 in the morning, I might have been able to deal a little better. or if not, I would still have had a marginally cleaner kitchen floor. Only marginally because I sort of am not that great at cleaning. I dust well but floors, dishes, sinks.... they smell clean when I'm done but they sure don't look clean.
Anyway, if I thought to put myself to work when I can't sleep, I would at least have something to show for my pain and suffering.
I'm exhausted all day and then I lay down and I feel like I am DROWNING.
Every noise I hear out my window might be my cat coming home to me.
I can't turn off the inner critic:
"Why don't you just fucking suck it up?
Why are you SO HARD on yourself?
How are you going to be half the player she is? Your team is going to lose when all they have is you for a big girl. You're 5'3".
You don't know what you're doing.
Really. No, really. Anywhere.
Your DOG won't even sleep in here without the cat.
My cat.
How I can't sleep without my cat. How did I lose my cat? How could I have not been a better steward? How could I fuck up so badly that I lost my cat and she's gone and I love her, I know she's just a cat but I need her - maybe I am being punished for not taking her to the vet for her ear scratch.
Why is this happening to me?
Haven't I paid enough?
Don't I try hard enough?
I HAVE to sleep.
I am not going back to this. I have been here and I will not go back.
I am not pretty-looking if I don't get enough sleep.
Nobody loves me."
Everyone has been there.
I'm there now. It's not an intellectual place and it's not a healthy place. It's also not something that can't or won't be over shortly.
The main thing I have to do is admit that I know my cat may not come home.
I have to go home and face this reality or this will get SO MUCH WORSE before it gets better. I don't want to admit it though.
I want my cat to come home. I don't want another cat. I want Grace. My cat.
I also know I got pretty hurt by someone this week. It's embarrassing, it's unfair, and I feel vengeful.
I said some REALLY nasty things and I meant them. Normally, I would go back and knowck on the door and apologize for my tone or for the pieces that were exagerated and dramtic.
But I'm not going to do that here.
I need go back to trusting what I have to say the first time it comes out, instead of feeling bad for being nasty sometimes.
I don't haul off and say things I don't mean and I never apologize for WHAT I say, only for how I say it.
Empathy is so strong in me that it's a weakness more than it is a strength.
I eventually feel bad for how mean I can be.
I really am starting to think that if I believe what I am saying than there is no reason to apologize for the way I say it.
And in this case, I believe the hell out of what I said.
What happened was not okay.
I would like the matter to be dropped now.
If I don't drop it, it will not end. Dropping it means I don't go back and offer nicer closure.
Dropping it means that I trusted myself to understand what was not okay and then let it go with what I said to him.
I also followed through and regulated on someone else. A guy. Who thinks. Of himself. As being. On. My. Derby team. He is wrong. He creeps me out. My gut feeling on him is not a good feeling and so I am pissed at myself that I lost control and went off because I do not think of this person as stable or safe. At the same time, I needed to say it and he needs to hear it. I just do not want to check MySpace emails ever again since there are like, four of them waiting for me there from this person and I am going to HAVE to excercise some self-control in how I respond and in how I drop Block User on his ass.
I haven't snapped on someone like that since 2005.
What I really want to do is listen to Ani DiFranco and scrub my house until I feel like I am erasing the fuckery that sent my cat from me, that allowed me to get hurt by something silly, and that caused me to lose my temper with one of the very few human beings I ahve ever encountered that I genuinely consider to be dangerous to my person.
I want to make chicken soup from scratch to make my house smell good.
I want to email back and forth sweetly with my friend and forget that some weeks in life are really, awfully hard but that even in those hard weeks, very gentle and adorable things can happen.
Then I will be able to sleep.
Going to a dressy event for Tucson professionals in my age group and marketing demographic feels about as far away as going on a Carnival Cruise to Alaska. I want to see Alaska but I want nothing to do with a Carnival Cruise.
arizonasarah at 12:06 p.m.