I don’t say that lightly. I know how hard it is. Two hours ago I was sobbing my eyeballs out, and an hour ago I was still sure that chucking my sites and everything that I have going on (or should I say, what little I have going on) was the only viable way to move forward.

It took a little time, and it took a lot of chewing and asking questions — of myself and of God. But way deep down, I knew that no matter how upset I got, I wasn’t in charge. What happens to me, and the direction I am supposed to go, is all up to GOD, not me. I can try to engineer everything and everybody, and yet God is still the Master In Command, and He will get me where I’m supposed to be, one way or another. (Kicking and screaming, or willingly — it’s up to me!)

Even as I bawled, I had to concede (begrudgingly at first) that this situation was a matter of faith, and harder still, I had to allow my faith to go to God in search of the answer. Oh man, was that hard! … because what if I didn’t like the answer???

God nudged me through the "coincidental" appearance of an email in my inbox just then.

(I put coincidental in quotes because I don’t really believe much of anything is coincidental.)

It was Pastor Rick Warren’s Daily Hope, "Is your job a mismatch for your gifts?"

What kind of job can I do to make money is exactly what I’ve been wrestling with for the last few months, and especially fervently in the past few days. And tonight’s setback was directly related to it. (It doesn’t even matter what happened; we all have things that go wrong as a result of our condition, and when those things happen, a person feels very small, inept and useless.)

Of course as a PTSDer, I took the setback to mean that everything I was doing was a failure, that nothing was working. My setback, and what it cost monetarily, made my little step forward on Monday seem miniscule and even frivolous. But it was a BIG step forward for me! It was a step OUT of the morasse! And yet the Normal Person measuring stick came along and smacked me upside the head, and it HURT!! :(

The email started out,

"God does not expect you to glorify Him with gifts you don’t have. But He does expect you to glorify Him with gifts you do have."

I don’t know what my gifts are right now, to be honest. I do know I have computer skills — running Linux/cPanel hosting servers, and working with WordPress. Matching those skills up to live websites has been a challenge, but that doesn’t mean the skills aren’t there. The problem is in execution, which is inherent with PTSD.

I kept reading to the end:

"Each of you should go on living according to the Lord’s gift to you …" (1 Corinthians 7:17, TEV) Pray about this – Are you in a job that doesn’t match who God made you to be, or are you exactly where God wants you to be?

What struck me was "or are you exactly where God wants you to be?"

Whoa… Maybe I am! Shortly after I discovered my screw-up, I kept asking myself, "when will this be done already?!" "When can I get back to normal life?" "How much more time do I have to put in before I can move on?" ……. but maybe I am here, going through the struggles of ON PURPOSE, be it for myself or for somebody else!

God is helping (allowing?) me to heal a little bit at a time, but there is so much else in my life that He hasn’t changed, that I’ve had to learn how to "keep on keepin’ on." Judging from my willingness to amplify a failure to justify throwing in the towel on everything, it looks like I need to get better at keeping on. I need to find the strength in keeping on, even when it gets really dark and desperate.

On the spiritual side, even though I am turning to God quickly in a crisis, my faith isn’t where it should be, and I am not serving God as well as I could. This was a test! A test by God? Or a test by Satan? Does it really matter? I failed either way. It showed I have a lot of work to do where my faith and handling of emotions is concerned.

On the clinical side, it is worth mentioning that I was already triggered from a confrontation 2 days ago. I slept 20 hours since then (not a typo — twenty!) and then this Pile of Sh*t spoiled up in front of me a few hours into the new day. And I’m PMSing.

I handled the original confrontation swimmingly :) but have been a pile of slug since then. A tornado could have ripped through, and not only would I not have heard it, but I wouldn’t have cared, either. That loud sucking sound you heard the last 48 hours was the vacuum in my brain as it tried to recuperate what the confrontation & my hormones had taken in just a couple short hours.

I mention this to point out, REMEMBER THE CONTEXT. Give yourself a little credit if you are triggered, if you are fragile, if your circumstances are a mess. Don’t worry, I was completely unwilling to give myself any credit at first. But then after I read the message from Pastor Rick, I realized that that isn’t reasonable. There is always context. Yes, we PTSDers are less capable (or incapable!) in some ways. But we are capable in other ways.

Is what you’re going through now helping to build a new ability? ##

My nightly nightmares/night terrors ended September 20, 2008. There was a major life event in my family that occurred, and it was like someone flipped a switch in my head: Nightly Horrow Show = OFF.

It was not fixed by a pill, a ritual, therapy, controlled breathing, visualization, none of that. One of my major external influences changed, and apparently that made the ol’ amygdala calm down a little bit. Or something.

But tonight was night #4 of Nightmares & Disturbing Crap, and dammit, I’ve had enough of it. Nobody’s getting burned up or blown up, but it’s just shy of that. I wake up totally worn out and upset. I sit on the side of my bed trying to manually process them, "it was just a dream, it was just a dream, it isn’t real."

The "not real" part is a tough sell. My brain reallllly thinks…

it’s gotta be real — at least an element of it, in that psychic foreboding kinda way. It was just a dream I keep repeating to myself, rubbing my eyes, massaging forehead muscles that have been sore for days now, the subconscious tension squeezing my head in a constant never-easing vice. Just like the old days.

Oh hell, I don’t need to describe what they’re like, do I? When you’ve got The Nightmares, you know it. You know what they are.

They haven’t popped up out of the blue. I’ve been triggered. A firefighter was killed and 8 injured in an explosion downstate several days ago. I was already fragile due to the abnormally early arrival of my period, and ta-da, we had the Perfect Storm of body chemistry. The dumpster blew in St. Anna and the Shit cascaded in my head.

I’m craving carbs like crazy. Not like PMS-craving (any woman knows what that’s about, LOL) but brain chemistry craving… it’s like a brain drive. Sustenance, survival… not just "I want I want I want." I’m sleeping weird hours around-the-clock and exhausted all the time. When I wake from a 2-hr nap I feel good, and rested, then 35 minutes later I’m sinking into deep core tiredness and needing to sleep again. Somehow I can take 2- and 3-hr naps all day long and then go right back to sleep for the night at bedtime.

I’m obsessed with every movement outside my window, "who’s here? who’s here?" even though nobody’s here. Every blink of a headlight through the trees from the road makes my heart race. I stare. I watch. I hold my breath. Nobody comes after a couple of minutes so I let myself start to breathe again — really shallowly, so they can’t see me move. *sigh*

Tonight was a fun addition. Every time I slipped into REM sleep, I heard thunder. Really LOUD thunder, so loud it shakes the house & wakes me up, every time. FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. Oh, right… I did mention it’s a clear, bitterly cold moonlit January night in Wisconsin, right? The closest thunder is over 2,500 miles away. *snicker*

This time I just stayed awake, it was time to feed the cats anyway and obviously I wasn’t going to make any decent headway on the sleep front so long as my brain is stuck in Thunder Mode. (LOL!) But I am so tiiiiiirrrrrred……. what I would give for some real rest. *sigh*

I don’t know what the "answer" will be. I haven’t been triggered this bad since moving, and I think the only reason it isn’t worse is because of where I live now. (My new home is a "safe place," where my previous home was very much not safe. As in PTSD-safe, you guys know what I mean.) If I was living at the old place, I’d be a lump wadded up in a ball on the floor, rocking like a baby, glassy-eyed from the exhaustion of the constant panic, cowering from every little sound like a wild animal in the corner. Living in a safe place at least gives me some limited function, if only for the regular simple routines of the day, the mindless maintenance. The clock tells me what to do. As long as I don’t have to move much, I’m okay. I don’t have energy for much more than peeing or cooking noodles.

I am 3.5 yrs post-trauma. In some ways I have healed. When I’m not triggered, there are sweet, calm lights of hope shimmering through. But in other ways the injury is still a gaping lesion in my head that has only been covered by a very thin layer of skin. If something tears that skin open, there is the lesion again, festering and sensitive and sore and still very much broken underneath. It’s like the skin that gives the illusion of healing is just covering up what still lies broken underneath.

I have known this all along, I suppose, because I’ve backslid in recovery the last few months. The net gain has actually been a loss. But I am so wanting to be done with this already. I am so ready to move on, move forward. And then I get hit with a rough spot like this, and it’s all the more frustrating.

Despite my rational brain assuring me this is temporary, I don’t feel like it might be temporary. I fear that it’s permanent and I am back on the road of nightly night terrors with no end in sight — no end, because there was no magic pill, therapy, exercise, nothing I did to make them go away the first time. All I have is hope, prayer and faith. (And a person could reasonably argue I am pretty thin on those.)

Calm night music on now (Celtic Woman, Enya, and some piano solos by David Lanz and Wayne Gratz — the latter some favorites from happy college days 20 yrs ago) I’m going to roll over and try to catch a couple peaceful, recuperative hours of sleep………. ##

They were soooo nice. :)

We met in the food court actually (isn’t that where you meet all your internet friends for the first time?! LOL) where I got a pile of Chinese food for $5.46 … I mean like, a mountain of food. It was obscene. And incredibly beautiful. Mom and I picked at the doggone thing for over an hour — and there was still food left over!!

(There are times I seriously miss living in the city — and that was one of those moments… we have zero variety up here. It’s boring little grocery store fare, or "fancy" grocery store fare for $45 + your first-born, or it sucks to be you.)

I then struggled through 2+ hours of shoe shopping. This is the eternal ritual: finding a pair of shoes that fits right. It’s always been like climbing Mt. Rushmore in a straight-jacket. My feet are picky as hell. Now that I have these excellent arch supports from the Good Feet Store, life is better …….. but I soon discovered you can’t just chuck your arch supports in any old shoe and be able to wear it. Some were too wide, some too narrow, some too tight, one rolled outward really badly, several rolled inward really badly … and WTF is with Reebok gluing their insoles in their damn shoes anyway?! Hello?? Dear Reebok: you’ve lost a longtime loyal customer (20+ years!), because you glue in your insoles! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nobody else glues their insoles in. Just Reebok. Apparently they’re special. *roll eyes* Yeah … special enough to be left on the shelf!

So, given that I lost my hiking boots a few months ago (I think while changing out of my fire gear on the highway ……….. but I don’t know for sure??), I did at least find a pair of mens’ athletic shoes that will sufficiently substitute as hiking shoes. Didn’t find a single pair of womens’ shoes that were workable *roll eyes* but the mens’ shoes were a hit-it-out-of-the-park home run.

So the hunt for everyday shoes continues. *sigh*

I then screwed together all the bits of courage I had as we went to pick up our kitty at the vet. Our dead kitty, who’d been cremated. I was okay ’til we pulled in the parking lot. As we pulled up to the place, exactly 1 hour before the time we’d walked out when he died that night in September, those God-awful feelings all came flooding back. That horrible weekend, that horrible night. The worry, anxiousness, desperation, concern, love for my baby, frustration … and utter suffocating helplessness. The helplessness, that’s what really ripped me up. There wasn’t a single thing we could do to fix him, he just looked up at me with those sweet soul-filled eyes, trusting and loving me, looking to me for answers and security, clinging to me desperately as I held him as close as I could… broken. And I couldn’t fix him. It broke my heart. What do you do with that???? He could not be fixed. He was broken forever. As was my heart.

We had him put to sleep. It was the right thing to do, but an absolutely horrible thing to do. Even though we saved him from massive pain and suffering, I still wrestle with the simple act of taking a life — and a life I loved with all my heart, no less. I know he is happier now (I mean, I know this) but there is something in my soul that rages and reels at taking a life. Taking a life! There is no greater, purer Power that we can see with our own eyes, than life. To kill that life … that core part of me *rebukes* it. Who am I to take such a thing from someone else??? Yes, even an animal. To me, it means no less, it is no less, if it has four legs or two.

He was tucked in a little black-and-white kitty-shaped tin, in a paper bag with ribbons tied to the handle. The bag had been carefully labeled with his name. And tucked inside was a pawprint. A little print of his sweet little paw … a paw I couldn’t have back. A little paw I would never kiss again, or play with, or tickle, or gently touch. A paw that would never reach out to touch my hand again, nor cling to my shoulder for dear life as his eyes implored me to protect and love him forever. Seeing that, that’s when I really came unglued.

It all flooded back so vividly, so wholly, the emotion of it just swallowing me up. We climbed back in the car and I just sat there and cried.

But I held on. Because something I’ve learned the last few weeks, is that I can feel pain, but it won’t kill me. I can hang on and endure it, ride the wave, and push through, and it will in the very least dump me washed-up on some sh*tty abandoned shore somewhere. But it won’t carry me away forever, and it won’t kill me. It does end (or at least ebb), and I then I can crawl up to higher ground and brush myself off.

Sitting in the dark car, the parking lot illuminated by the yellowed glow of a magnesium streetlight, the same scene of that fateful night swirling and awash in my tears, I knew that I had to feel the pain and ride its wave, in order to deal with it. This part of the ride had to be ridden in order to process it and put it to rest. The rational side of me recognized that this was a normal way to feel, and so it was okay to ride it out and feel it for what it was. I didn’t die on the trail. This wouldn’t kill, or even mortally maim me, here in the car. I would be okay.

And I was. It took awhile. We shed our tears, we voiced our regrets, we mopped up our faces with paper towels, took a deep breath and pulled out of the parking lot. We had our boy back. And we brought him home where he belonged. Our baby is back home by his Mamas.

##

A month ago my Dad had a heart attack and spent about a week in the hospital. He actually died 3 times. Died. Flat-ass coded. Luckily his mistress was there the one time to do CPR, otherwise he would have been found really dead some unknown time later in the bathroom. (Nice. *roll eyes*)

The best place to sort this unexpected turn of events out was on a trail.

And somewhere out in the woods, sitting on a rock, beneath the bluff, watching the sunshine glitter and sparkle between the green leaves on the trees, I realized … I’m letting life pass me on by. And even worse yet, I’m letting life pass me by WHILE I’M UGLY.

No, no, no, no, no …….. that is not okay with me. It’s bad enough to be mentally semi-broken. But I realized I am putting things in my mouth that are making (or keeping) me fat, and that when I look in the mirror, the girl who looks back at me is UGLY. And I hate that. I HATE that.

So I decided, I was thin and pretty once upon a time. In fact, I don’t even recognize myself in pictures from college *blush* that girl looks nothing like I look today. And I want to be the pretty girl again. I want to be a Trophy Wife! And to become a Trophy Wife ………. I must lose weight.

(Never mind the getting married part. I have a feeling once I fix the things that are broken inside of me, the rest of the outside stuff will fall into place.)

So I cut my calories to 600-700/day (it would be more if I wasn’t so freaking unnerved by feeling hungry). Ideally I am eating no white sugar and no white flour. I say "ideally" because in practice, I end up making a 1/2 batch of cookie dough every other week :) usually as a result of hormone cravings. And I am discovering if I just make the damn cookie dough and eat it, then I actually feel much better emotionally, all the way around. And when I feel better, I don’t want to eat, period. Not even crap food. :)

(Who ever knew the secret to success was cookie dough?! LOL)

So far I’ve lost 11 lbs. in the past month. I was hoping for 20 lbs at this point :\ but between my period and some serious over-eating/cheating, my weight has plateaued the past 2 weeks. It sucks though … I was losing 0.5-2 lbs per day for the first 2 weeks. And then the hormones hit, and it STOPPED. *grumble* Dammit anyway!! I’ve got like 80 more lbs. to go (to get to Trophy Wife weight) and I want to lose them NOW!!

Lest people wonder and worry, I am not being stupid about this; I’m not trying to exist on Cheerios and lettuce. *wink* My diet is indeed simple though …

• Water. Lots and lots and lots of unlimited, clean, refreshing, stomach-filling water.
• 1 protein a day (either 3 eggs over-easy, or a palm-sized serving of other protein like chicken, fish or beef),
• Unlimited fresh veggies – usually onions and tomato (but really, how much onion and tomato can a person eat?! – not that much … "unlimited" just sounds good.)
• 1-2 cups all-natural unsweetened applesauce with lots of cinnamon (apples vs. applesauce – whatever you like, doesn’t matter)
• 1/4 cup cheese with anything else hot (sharp cheddar is my cheese of choice, melted on the eggs or melted on a big mountain of broccoli)
• unlimited broccoli, if I have it in the house :) — love the broc! (Apparently it’s pretty kick-ass for blood pressure, too.)
• and, 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese

The applesauce and cottage cheese, quite frankly, are what tide me through the day. I can snack on the applesauce off-and-on all day, and it doesn’t jack up my blood sugar. It gives my stomach something productive to do and has greater nutritional value than like, celery. ;) The rest of the food – protein + veggie + cheese are one meal, period …….. and I don’t eat great huge quantities, I’ve cut my portion sizes down to about 1/3 what I used to eat. Cripes, no wonder I was constantly gaining weight …….. :-P

I still eat carbs. There’s carbs in dairy. There’s all kinds of carbs in applesauce. There’s carbs in barley and whole grain rice, too. I have a "wild rice"/seed-like mix I like, and frankly I really like slow-cook barley, too. Melt a little butter on it, and OMG! :) It’s just that the carbs I eat are either not processed sugar, or they’re complex carbs. No more white sugar. (The only caveat being, of course, the cookie dough. *giggle*)

So, 11 lbs.

My next goal is to vacuum the living room floor, put down the high-density foam squares and plug in the DVD player ………. so I can start doing my Beach Body DVDs. It’s no-impact and seems to focus on core muscles, which is perfect for me – exactly what I need.

The weather is supposed to be gorgeous for the most of the next week (even if all the leaves have fallen off the trees – bleh) so I want to get out and walk every day I possibly can. My knee is probably 90% so I need to break this new bad stay-off-my-feet-and-rest-my-knee habit and GET BACK WALKING !!!

Too bad I can’t safely hike the park at night. I mean, I can, it’s not like I’ll get mugged :-P but I’m worried about getting lost. I’m not a big fan of the whole getting lost in the woods at night thing. ;)

11 lbs! Anybody wanna race me? Maybe that will break my plateau. *giggle*

The car turned off in Ellison Bay. Wanting to get a good look at the (crab-fisherman-looking) driver, I knew I would have to go around the block so that our vehicles would meet driver-to-driver, and then I could get a good look at the fellow and see if it was anybody I knew.

This required I drive down The Road past the (now rebuilt) exploded duplex. However, at the chance to see Sig (LOL) or another crab fisherman that I dearly admire, I decided it was worth it. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not everybody has “AK CRAB” license plates, you know.

So I turned in at the next road, then turned left on The Road, and approached The Place where the buildings Blew Up. Every time I go through there, I view it through the lens of that night … I see trees standing in the same place they stood That Night …. I see the outdoor fireplace standing where it stood That Night … the road curves exactly like it did That Night … everything is seen through the sights burned in my brain from That Night. I don’t see it free-standing as today; I see it in comparison to That Night.

Anyway.

First I drove past the blown-up building, but I looked at the water and the boats in the harbor instead.

Next came the building next door, the one that the siding melted off of. On the far half of the duplex, a middle-aged man laid out on one of the front porch benches. He was bald, tanned, wearing just swim trunks. And he was just laying there, out on the bench.

My breath caught in my throat. Oh my God! I thought. My eyes were big and I was gaping at this guy. Doesn’t he know the danger? Doesn’t he know how he could get hurt there???

I was floored. Absolutely boggled. How could he just lay there out in the open, in the blast zone? Like nothing was going on? *blink*

Of course, the beach towels and flip-flops on all four front porches suggested that nothing was going on. People were “around” these buildings and apparently they were all blissfully unaware. But I knew what they didn’t know. I knew the danger was real, because I had seen the evidence — I had seen it exploded. For real.

* * *

Still reeling at people just milling around unprotected in the blast zone (un-freakin’-real) I rounded the corner to find Alaska crab fisherman car, and a 30-ish man had gotten out, with a cute little boy in tow. On the other side his very pretty wife was walking with an adorable little girl. I did not recognize the man as anybody from Deadliest Catch. I even tried to envision the fellow in full-length rain gear… still no dice.

Later, at home, it finally dawned on me that that man sunbathing on the porch was so relaxed and unprotected because now, today, in 2008, there is no danger there. It is safe. Nothing is exploded and nothing is going to explode. He could lay out on that bench nearly buck-naked and not worry about getting hit by flying debris, because there is no debris.

However, I have a complete and total disconnect with that concept.

I still feel acute danger — tangible, present, run-for-cover danger. I see the blast zone. I know how building parts can fly and where people would get hit (depending on where they were standing). And I get the hell out of there anytime I am anywhere near it. I’m not stupid. It blew once, I know it could blow again, at any time. With no warning. Just like last time. When it did happen.

###

I’m already taking Paxil 20 mg/day and Metoprolol 25 mg/day. The metoprolol is probably going to be increased to 50 mg/day due to my increased weight… and hopefully will be decreased again as I lose weight. But that’s another topic entirely. ;)

The effects I’ve observed so far:

• Dry mouth: this was really bad on Days 1 and 2. It has lessened considerably on Days 3 and 4. In fact, I am not even noticing it today (day 4). It was really prevalent when I first woke up, after sleeping. Drinking some water fixed it.
• Dry eyes: my eyes were very dry, like bad antihistamine-dry, on Days 2 and 3. Today they are still a little dry, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. I haven’t used eye drops at all. (And I probably should have) If I was faithful about contact lens removal and cleaning, this seriously would not have been a big deal at all.
• Increased feelings of inherent self worth: I didn’t feel it on Day 1, but Days 2, 3 and 4 I have been feeling increasingly more deserving of basic rights. It’s been a steady improvement. Not in a self-righteous or snarky kind of way… just that yes, I do have a right to be respected. Simple stuff.
• Difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep: Before Wellbutrin, I was sleeping 10 hours/day, solid, deeply, and some days I was taking a nap too. Now, I am sleeping 5-6 hours/day, lightly, and broken up. I did finally get one solid REM yesterday (Day 3). I am not getting all twisted out of shape about this yet, as I do not feel overly tired, either. As long as I get one solid REM, I seem to be good to go. This is a complete 180° from pre-Wellbutrin. Before, I needed that 9-10 hours solid, good deep REMs, in order to function.
• Increased Energy: Energy is definitely up! No question there. Dovetails with Difficulty Falling Asleep, above ^^^^.
• Not Groggy Upon Awakening: Prior to taking Wellbutrin, waking up was like slowly coming out of a fog. After a good night’s sleep, I felt happily rested, but the process of getting the brain and body awake took a couple of hours. (!!) Seriously, my brain was just not in gear. Contrast that with Day 3, when I woke up after 5 hours’ sleep, and I was AWAKE! Hello world! Awake, functioning, thinking, engaged. I’ve never snapped-to to that extent, not even when I was young. Will report if this is a trend, an occasional thing, or what ??
• Increased "Can-Do" Feelings: I feel like I have the energy/ability to get up out of bed and do things. My body does not feel as heavy, or maybe it is that I do not recognize the heavyness of my body so much? Before it was so much work just to get up and move around. Two nights ago I found myself hopping over a hose. Hopping. :-P I hadn’t hopped in eons……..
• Less Cravings for Carbohydrates: I don’t know if it’s coincidence or Wellbutrin related. I’m just not looking for junk in the fridge and cabinets. When I think food, now I’m thinking proteins. Monday all I could think about was cupcakes. ???
• Tinnitus: This developed early on Day 4. It’s not super-loud nor is it expressly distracting, but I definitely hear that high-pitched brain whine significantly more loudly today. I’ll keep you updated if it stays or goes.

Overall, I have experienced significant and steady improvement in mood over the past 4 days. It was a slow start, I didn’t feel much of anything besides the dry mouth/eyes on Day 1. Day 2 there were minor improvements. But Day 3, I felt way better, way more positive… and Day 4 is more of the same.

Now if I could just slow down enough to get a REM today, I’d be a happy chick. I’m unrested, overtired, madly punching away at my keyboard to try to burn some of this energy so maybe I can go to sleep??? :-P I can see where this is going to get maddening if it doesn’t resolve… ###