when a funk is fear

So I don’t write when I’m in a funk. Not when I’m deep in a funk, anyway.

Then I go into survival mode. And I forget to write. And I get caught up in doing what has to be done to function.

I crochet a little. I do random creative things to distract myself.

I forget to get out my camera when it would be most therapeutic.

And when I get like this, it’s when I really need to be writing the most.

For most of the past 14 years that I have been on SSDI, I have severely glossed over the PTSD bit that was included in my qualifying conditions for SSDI. I spoke of it out loud among friends today. I don’t often do that.

I don’t gloss over it in my own home. That’s pretty much the only place I don’t gloss over it. I don’t gloss over it in the middle of the night when a noise makes me jump and I send Jared running to the living room to check out whatever the random (nonthreatening) noise I heard was.

Nevertheless, Jared goes. Jared goes even when he is exhausted, even when it means he will likely sleep out in the living room instead of with his CPAP on in the bedroom. Jared goes even when he knows what the sound was, and that there is no problem in the house.

I didn’t gloss over it the night that the wind blew open one of the double doors in our living room after dark right next to where I was sitting, and I screamed bloody murder, the most vivid time in my memory that I screamed reminiscent to those awful February nights in 2001, back to back Saturday nights. The boys had never heard me scream like my life depended on it.

I never told them it wasn’t the first time I’d screamed like that.

And PTSD….is it PTSD because of assault? Is it PTSD because I was held captive in the night, begging to be let out? That night that I experienced bonafide legit torture?

If it’s PTSD because of assault, which one? One of the ones I experienced myself, or the one I witnessed at the hands of someone I thought loved me, toward someone else?

Is it PTSD because of actual medical stuff that had to be done to me to save my life, long before any of that?

Is it PTSD because I am afraid of pretty much all men? Including my husband, if I am completely honest?

Is it PTSD because of all that? Or is it something else I don’t even remember?

The why of the diagnosis is less important. I have a difficult time even seeing that I have PTSD. I have a difficult time understanding that not everyone walks through their lives terrified of everything around them. I have a difficult time understanding that something about my neurological wiring is different.

And sometimes, I have a very difficult time remembering that love is not supposed to hurt.

I suppose that is the PTSD, too.

You can read more about me here, to see how I got to where I am today.