Category Archives: trauma

What the heart wants, the head can’t have

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One of my supervisors, Dena, reminds me so much of the me before I became so broken by PTSD. She even has my old body style, as she can rock A-line dresses. I look at her wistfully as she bounces into my office cube to ask me a question with that girl-next door charm of hers.

Meanwhile, the A-line dresses I have no longer fit me very well, and I seriously doubt that I exude much charm these days. While Dena confidently glides around the office, I sit in my cube with a cardigan wrapped around me as I twitch with anxiety.

Today I struggled with intense headaches, and I am not sure if they were caused by yesterday’s neurofeedback. Interestingly, I didn’t have a lot of anxiety and triggers today. Those were traded in for headaches, unbeknownst to me until they took over my head in pain.

I wanted to cook today, but I was too tired and in too much pain to do so. So, with a refrigerator full of food to cook, I picked up a sub to eat instead. Ugh, what a waste.

I miss doing investigations in my last job. The work was so fun that it didn’t feel like work. Today I found myself holding my head in pain as I struggled to edit a voluminous policy document. I have a good job, but it’s not the job my heart wants. My heart wants to go back to human resources doing employee misconduct investigations, but my head isn’t ready to do that work again. The heart gets impatient with this predicament. It didn’t help that I received a canvass letter for a promotional position doing the kind of work I used to do. With a heavy, heavy heart here’s the reply I sent in:

Yep, I declined being considered for the position. It was in my own agency, and the secretary in human resources only sits four office cubes down from me. Before I could change my mind I filled it out, and rushed it over to her desk. I even made myself rush back to my desk so that I would have less chance of changing the form.

I have to hang on with the off chance that I may get to do what I love again some day. If that’s not the case, I would rather not know because I don’t know if I can bear that knowledge.

Cate called …

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I heard from my sister,Cate, unexpectedly. Previously, I wrote about how we had lost our connection. It turns out that she has been struggling herself with personal issues. All this time, Cindy, my therapist had advised me that Cate not speaking to me was not about me, that it was about the fact that I reminded her of the trauma we went through, and that my PTSD further reminded her of that trauma. She tried to convince me that Cate’s absence in my life was not a reflection of how she felt about me. No matter how hard she tried to convince me of this, I still was left feeling like my sister had had enough of me.

All of this made sense, but I couldn’t buy the entire theory. I just felt hurt, and abandoned by Cate. I thought I was an annoyance in her life. It turns out that Cindy was right. Cindy is usually right. One would think I would have figured this out by now since I’ve been seeing her for a few years.

Cindy has tried to convince me that trauma survivors often think that a sudden absence of a person in our lives is because of us, or something we’ve done. She’s tried to teach me that sometimes people absent themselves from our lives for reasons that have little or nothing to do with us. I think I’m finally starting to get the concept that she’s been talking to me about for a few years. I’m a slow learner. 🙂

gone, here, and gone again

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They’re arguing again, Mom and Dad, yelling at each other, speaking over each other. “God dammit, Momma! What’s the matter with you?” You wish they would stop, just stop. You’re floaty, and you can’t hear very well. Everyone starts to sound muffled, and far, far away.

But then someone’s calling your name …” Beatriz … Beatriz, can you answer Bob’s question?”

You realize you’re in a meeting, Crap! How long were you not here? What did you miss? But then the arguing starts again, and you’re gone …