Category Archives: PTSD

Who are you?

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You peer into the mirror, and you don’t recognize the person looking back at you. You want to ask, “Who the hell are you?” In your mind, you are still that gal with the long beautiful brown hair, nice olive skin and big brown eyes that will pop with just the right make-up. This could be the reason that you’ve held on to your clothes from that other time: the beautiful and flowy brown skirt with intricately embroidered blue flowers tastefully placed on one side of the skirt, and the matching blue keyhole blouse that hugged your figure perfectly. And let’s not forget the long black formal with strategic cut-outs that garnered the attention of all the queens at the LGBT holiday gala. You were so proud to be loved by the queens!

But, that’s not what you see in the mirror before you. Instead, you see a greasy head of brown hair that is in bad need of a hair cut. Your face is far chubbier than your imagination will allow. It stuns you to even look in the mirror. You have this strange impulse to dive into the mirror, in search of the girl you used to know. Surely, if you dig hard enough, you will find her.

In that other time, you could feel the effortless way that your clothes flowed around you as you walked. You knew that every part of your physical being was perfectly intact, and you knew when you walked into a room you could command attention. But, the perfect physical being on the outside was a shell for the internal deceit taking place inside.

You can only run from yourself for so long, eventually it all catches up with you. In essence, that’s how one can go from belle of the ball to looking like a woman on the edge of falling into the abyss of inpatient psychiatric care. You run into people you knew when you were belle of the ball. They pass you by because they do not recognize you. You know when someone passes you by because they want to pretend they don’t know you, when that happens there’s that nanosecond flicker of recognition in their eyes before they look away. But, these people just look past you as if they’ve never met you. Part of you is glad to forgo the humiliation in front of them, though the humiliation is still there inside of you. You know they don’t recognize you because you look incredibly different from that other time, the faraway other time that feels like a fairy tale that happened to someone else.

Somehow, some part of you knows that your current life is a purer one from the previous belle of the ball sham of a life. But, purity does not mean it is easier, or painless. In fact, it seems the more truth you find the more pain there is to sort through. In those moments when the dissociation and PTSD make you feel heavy enough that you can hardly sit up in your chair, you can’t help but wish that you were still in that blissfully ignorant sham of an existence. At least you looked great.

a dream defunct

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The idiot man who is your colleague means no harm in his intrusion of your personal space. He shoves his head in front of yours while he’s standing beside you. He’s stupidly trying to be funny. But he takes you by surprise, and your body starts shaking, and your head starts racing, and you’re off and gone.

You’re trying to find your way back, but the world is a blur. Desperately, you want to convince yourself that nothing scary is happening now. You tell yourself that right now you are okay. Nothing is awry. You just have a stupid colleague, that is all.

But the message is not delivered from your brain to the rest of your body. Your body rebels against your brain. It fights back, and insists that your brain is wrong. Body insists on never being wrong again. Brain has no chance in this fight.

Somehow, you get home. There’s a part of you that’s hungry, and there’s a part of you that just wants to die or sleep or both. You decide that if you’re going to continue with this life you need to eat something. The walk from your bedroom to your kitchen feels Herculean. You live in 860 square feet. The kitchen is seconds away from your bedroom, but it might as well be in another county.

You stumble your way into the kitchen, and you find baked bbq chips with a December 2013 expiration date. You then find slices of Gouda cheese. Great, a carb and a protein! A balanced meal will have to come another day. The chips are used as if they are crackers with the cheese. It would all be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that this is truly all you could muster for dinner. No lie.

You used to dream of a day when this madness would end.You used to think it was a dream deferred for another day. But, no. It is a dream defunct.

Good-bye, Downtown Diner

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Dear Downtown Diner Owners,

I am officially severing our business relationship. It’s been good … okay, well, it was good. But, recently, things have taken a bad turn. I can no longer ignore it. Admittedly, I’ve been trying to ignore the downward spiral. There’s a bit of shame in my admission that I held on longer than I should have because I really covet your meatloaf panini special. I love how you place meatloaf slices with bacon, caramelized onions, and mozzarella cheese between pita bread and press it all in a panini press. I’m guilty of overlooking your wrongs because of this dish and a few others, but the meatloaf panini is my favorite.

My first clue fell in my lap when I came in on a recent Sunday for breakfast, and business was slow enough that you both had time chat with me. Here’s some advice: Don’t trash talk your wait staff to me. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know. I come to your place to eat because I need a respite from the grind of my day. I come for a bit of an escape, and the comfort of your good food. I don’t want to hear about your HR problems, especially since these same people serve me on a regular basis.

But even worse than trash talking your wait staff is the fact that you trashed one particular person because she has a mental illness. I still shudder at the fact that I didn’t stop patronizing your business the moment this happened. I knew even in the moment when you described her bipolar behavior to me, and subsequently trashed her, that I should have fled the scene. I’ll admit I felt awkward later with all my unsolicited behind-the-scenes knowledge any time I was there. But, I would think back to your dreamy meatloaf, and just shake off my nagging feelings.

You see, you should know better for so many reasons. Let me count the ways … Patrons don’t want to hear bad stuff about your peeps. They want the illusion of a well-oiled machine, whether or not that is the case. Also, you should be careful. You’re an employer, for god’s sake. Trash talking your employee because of her disability puts you in potential hot water. Get a brain about this HR stuff if you want to continue to make your living as an employer.

The other thing to consider is that you never really know who you’re talking to when you’re making chit-chat. You think you may know me well because I told you both I’m in sobriety, and I don’t drink. But that tidbit doesn’t even scratch the surface of who I am. I, myself, have PTSD and dissociative identity disorder. I know that it’s likely you never would have guessed this about me as you know what I do for a living, and you see me with all my colleagues having lunch in your diner. But, I am a person with a mental illness. I work hard to maintain my ability to work, but that’s because I’m fortunate enough that I can afford the treatment that I need. Remember when I asked you if you had suggested to your waitress that she go to the county mental health center? Do you recall how I was trying to tell you how to advise her to access mental health services? If you were smart enough you would have concluded that I’d had a few rodeos myself, and there was a reason I knew how to get “in the system.” Lesson: mentally ill people are sensitive to other mentally ill peers getting trashed simply because they’re mentally ill.

Don’t worry. I won’t trash review you on yelp, or anywhere else. Okay, yes, I’m trashing you here, but no one knows your name here. Your stupidity is safe here. But, really, get a brain, and kiss the meatloaf good-bye for me. We had a good run, me and that meatloaf.

Beatriz