The title sounds ominous, doesn’t it? The Great Downgrade. *shiver*

We’ve been taught all our lives to move up, up, UP! in life. Society measures success by accomplishment. If you’re not moving onward and upward, you’re a failure!

Pretty hard-core, eh?

And UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. As young idealistic people we idolize these measuring sticks… and we think nothing of looking down on anyone who doesn’t measure up. When we’re young, so full of vigor and life and potential, we haven’t experienced enough to have the necessary perspective to know those measuring sticks are pure bullshit. But we know what we have seen, and we believe that makes us experts, so we march right along not even realizing how utterly stupid we look. :)

I decided to make a Great Downgrade a few weeks ago.

I am an EMT. I developed PTSD as a result of a bad call in July 2006. I didn’t even have patient contact that night; I was the fire dept. photographer. It was that bad. Since then, I’ve been unable to go on medical calls.

This bothered me terribly every single freaking day since July 21, 2006, but there wasn’t a doggone thing I could do about it. I was trying to fix my head. But my head wasn’t listening to me, and there was no way in hell that I could go on calls.

I’ve loved being an EMT and wanted to be out there, doing my thing, making a difference. Helping other people is what I get out of bed for. It is my purpose. And EMS has been my calling for as long as I remember. I’ve been certified for over 17 years.

But now I couldn’t do it. I won’t go into the painful scenarios here, but bottom line, every call I did try wound up badly in my head. It was obvious I was best served staying home.

I forced my utterly broken PTSD brain through EMT recert in January 2008. One word: HELL. Ugh.

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On October 29th I posted about having lost 11 lbs. I was so stinkin’ proud of how quick that first 10 had come off, and frustrated with (at that point) a 1-2 week plateau… but I thought I’d be able to get right back on the Fast Drop Train.

Didn’t happen.

I spent the next 7 days, ’til about Nov. 6th, gaining weight. I actually gained 4 lbs. back total (so I was at a net loss of 7). Essentially, I wasted/lost a month on a plateau, then 4 lb. gain. Urrrghhh!! That was seriously maddening.

It was all food-related, of course, I was eating too much and too much of the wrong thing. Even complex carbs just stick to me if I don’t eat them at about 1:10 with protein.

I finally figured this carb thing out though. It’s not just that I "love carbs" or am a "Carbohydrate Addict" or even that I’m "pre-diabetic" (the last being my mother’s explanation for the panoply of odd symptoms).

I’m Sugar Sensitive. Sugar is a drug to my brain. Literally. This is a brain chemistry thing… low baseline serotonin and beta-endorphins, leading to more serotonin and beta-endorphin receptors in each synapse, which creates an extra-big "hit" of serotonin and its partner beta-endorphin when I eat sugar or simple carbs. I am an addict. Physically, addicted. Because of how my brain has been built from the start …….. structure which incidentally also causes depression (check), anxiety (check), and clearly contributes to my PTSD.

So now that I understand my tempestuous relationship with sugar, I’m finding it much easier not only to not eat it (I don’t want it), but when I do crave it, I’m listening to my body and just eating a little. No drama, no resisting, no struggle … just up and eat some. *shrug* This is a long-term battle, and I’m not going to be able to cut it out 100% right now. But I can slowly work in that direction. :)

Since that discovery, I’ve dropped 6 lbs in 10 days. For a net total of 13 GONE.

And I’m not hungry, and I’m not eating much at all. :) Now if I could just get rid of this damn migraine (hormones again, *sigh*) I’d be golden.

We went to The Big City yesterday (a 90-odd mile trek from Boonieville) to meet some internet friends for the first time. They, too, had driven to The Big City – from Boonieburgh :) – and were doing their Big City shopping (Super-Walmart, Sam’s Club, Menards, Home Depot, Fleet Farm, etc.; all the stores we don’t have in the sticks). We needed to do some Big City shopping too, so we met them at a mall.

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.

##

Today I was following a car with interesting plates, “AK CRAB” … as I am the nation’s absolute #1 fan of Deadliest Catch :) I thought, gosh, maybe it’s Sig! (OK, I knew it wasn’t Sig, but maybe it was someone else? You never know.)

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.

###

Just when I think I have things under control … I’m learning that I’m still learning where my limits are. And it’s sort of like a game of whack-a-mole. The limit is constantly jumping around. One day it’s right close to where I’m sitting, and I swear, 5 minutes later, it’s 2 miles out and below the horizon, I can’t even see it. Lordy is that frustrating. I mean, sit still so I know what to count on!

I’ve been triggered several times while on Wellbutrin, but this was the first time that I’d been triggered by old family issues. I didn’t know I wasn’t King of that mountain emotionally, and I didn’t know the Same Old Crap™ could trigger me. So now I know.

The fact that it triggered me through the Wellbutrin, tells me that it is a pretty strong trigger, and I need to treat all the classic Same Old Crap™ family issues with a good dose of distance. The farther away I can stay from that B.S., the better.

The fact that it triggered me through the Wellbutrin is also another big fat sign on the wall that MY PTSD IS ALIVE AND WELL. Dammit. Why won’t it just freakin’ go away already?!?!?!?

Stupid thing.

Tonight on 20/20 was a piece about a storm chaser, Jim Reed (you can apparently find his work at UltimateChase.com) who together with his chase partner, actively seeks out crazy weather of all kinds… hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, flooding, winter storms, etc.

He has, as you might expect, accumulated quite a collection of breathtaking video and still photos.

He has also developed PTSD, and is “receiving treatment” for it. The news piece cited some heart-wrenching circumstances as being difficult for him — hearing people trapped and crying for help when he physically could not help them, for instance. Completely and totally understandable; that’d screw anybody in the head for a while.

What I find odd though, is that he keeps going back.

The first tenet of treating PTSD is to remove yourself from the source. Read the rest of this entry