It can latch on
@sun seeker.
How it goes is like this:
Unclean - unprepared - people die when you're unprepared...
flashbacks > everyone whose ever died because you (or someone) was unprepared - your family dead - massive anxiety attacks about your family dying because you were unprepared / it's your fault / need to be prepared.
It's a lovely little feedback loop where your brain is making connections and you're looking at spilled juice & can't find your mop... And seeing your kids dead on the floor shot to death because you couldn't find your rifle. And you see all the blown up, shot up, starving little bodies from somewhen else, with your kids faces, and little feet, and flies buzzing around and the horrid gawdawful stench of filth and death. Ugh. Total pain in the ass when the past and present blurs together like that.
Late is another military training thing that latches on in one of a couple different ways (for me...either people die when you're late, or if they're late? It's because they're dead). When I'm bad off, everyone I cannot
actually see in front of me (including when I'm sleeping) is dead. Has kept me awake countless nights watching my son sleep. Because if I close my eyes? He's dead. Not for real, and I know that, but as long as I can see him... I know he's alive.
ETA
One of the things about military training... Most of it exists in order to keep you alive. And then it gets
bone deep once people actually start dying. Some of the things I actively work against ((reverse logic, being one of them... Unprepared = People Die.
However the reverse logic isn't true (prepared = live). People still die, no matter how prepared one is. It's faaaaar too easy to start believing that being prepared will keep my family safe. Nope. Not gonna go there. It doesn't. So I pop that little faulty-logic-bubble whenever I come across it. Nixes the OCD-like must-must-must be prepared and simply leaves the 'don't be unprepared' there. Might not sound like much, but it's actually pretty huge from a quality of life standpoint.)). Other things I let play out. To stick with the cleaning-bug? It's okay to clean. It's okay to seriously bust it out once a week. It's okay to XYZ. I make a whole list of "what's okay" and run with that. But I also draw a line where things are NOT okay. It's not okay to take shit out on others. It's not okay to be angry about it. It's not okay to ABC. By having both spaces? What's okay and what's not? It gives me some wiggle room. I can scratch the itch, that's okay, without making myself bleed, that's not okay. Denying scratching the itch at all? Is as crazy making as scratching until I'm bleeding all over.
