{"id":7471,"date":"2011-04-17T01:29:16","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T09:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=7471"},"modified":"2011-04-17T01:29:16","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T09:29:16","slug":"welcome-to-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/welcome-to-ptsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Understanding the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder doesn’t help to alleviate them, but it’s good to know that others have felt as angry, numb, desperate and insane as oneself.<\/p>\n

I wish I’d learned about this earlier, thereby to have avoided lashing out at everyone in my path, but oh well, what’s done is done.<\/p>\n

I’m reading a book that explains about triggers – things that reignite the original trauma, making you relive it, over and over again. But I can’t avoid the triggers and I don’t even know which traumatic event to begin with.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I went to my first meeting of a Bereaved Parents group. Cancer, suicide, it’s all the same agony. We are \u00a0each \u00a0clinging to our dead child’s mattress. We are all members of an elite group: the walking wounded pariahs whose stories are too awful for civilians.<\/p>\n

A nice lady held my hand and gave me her phone number. There are no steps and no Higher power, just the bond of shared grief. I wish the group met more often. \u00a0I have problems up ahead, like ordering a gravestone and Mother’s Day. Lucky for me, I have a supportive husband who never says to hurry up and Get Over It.<\/p>\n

Today I stared at tumblr images for five hours. I’ve stopped caring about Libya, fashion, and Mrs. Palin. \u00a0Sometimes \u00a0I sleep in my clothes so I don’t have to get dressed the next day. I even forgot to blog about how I smashed my finger with the trash can and had to have the ENTIRE NAIL REMOVED.<\/p>\n

I am still sort of me, though. We watched a new episode of New York Housewives and I cursed at them aloud with the same happy contempt. Is there a German word for that?<\/p>\n

*photograph via here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"