Before And After

[Bill Dickerson]

I was reading The Evil Hours or just got started and came across a section referring to Before PTSD/Trauma and After. There is the you before and after. I feel this way. Although several years are missing in there.

I knew who I was before but I don't know who I am now. I'm not sure I like who I am now. For that matter who I was before intrudes into who I am now. I had to deter someone from acting out recently and it felt like before and now I can't get it to leave who I am now.

I'm not sure the last paragraph even makes sense. I'm a different person now but the old me keeps creeping in and disturbs who I am know.

Does this make sense to anyone? Anyone else feel this way?

 

[Sideways]

Sometimes I feel like therapy is like forcing me to learn to write with my left hand. Everyone's telling me "No, you're left-handed. You were taught you were right-handed, but you're not, not at all. Stick with it, you'll see that life is so much better if you let yourself be the the true left-handed person that you really are..."

Keep talkin'. I'm right-handed. I know it. It's easier sticking with the old right-handed routine. I can do it quicker, smoother. Trying to be left-handed, when I've been right-handed all these years, it feels completely foreign.

I think I get what you're saying, but good luck trying to comprehend what I was trying to say!

 

[Friday]

Yes.

I've lived too many lives. Sometimes those worlds collide. It isn't pretty.

For a long time I was able to compartmentalize shit. The past was the past, and forward was all that mattered. That all came crashing down a few years back. Been trying to clean up the mess ever since.

The only way I can see through, at the moment anyway, is to f*ck compartmentalizing. I'm not good at that. It's what I've got to work with, though.

 

[Nevermore]

Yes! I many ways I feel like I'm almost the opposite of who I was before - and the me who I'd been for 40 odd years would not like or approve of the me now.
I used to go right out to people to make them comfortable, I used to give give give, I used to welcome all and sundry into my life and mostly saw others as good or at least not truly evil.
I can't believe I was like that now but I know I was, and people from the past sometimes make contAct again wanting me to be that.
But I'm not that any more.
I don't want to say I'm less but I'm very different. I don't trust people like I used to, and I think I kinda think maybe most people are actually not that good.
I dont like the way I think and feel - but it came from real experiences of human cruelty - mainly emotional - and from some I trusted previously. I can't wipe the memory of that.
so maybe I am the same person, but a sadder wiser one.
IVe seen the dark side!

 

[Bill Dickerson]

Trying to be left-handed, when I've been right-handed all these years, it feels completely foreign.

I understand ....All those years writing with your right hand.... training it work in a certain way and suddenly your right hand is crippled. You can learn to write with your left hand but it doesn't feel the same ....it's not natural.

To me it feels like pitching right handed and catching.with your left. One day you can't do it that way anymore and you have to learn to reverse it. The problem is reflexes foul it up and you catch that line drive with your bare hand and it does feel very good.

 

[Neverthesame]

I know I do this myself as well. There was the guy who was for the most part happy. The guy who had ambition and drive entering a career he was passionate about. That guy died on the side of a highway, over a decade ago.

What I have now become. A bitter, angry, depressed, shell of a man, who's afraid of everything.

Just last week someone had been feeling faint, then collapsed on the floor. Someone else pages for anyone who has any medical training for assistance. Just like every other time this happened, I immediately become nervous, then spend the next minute or two literally arguing with myself about whether or not I should go to help.

It goes something like this:
DM= Dead me.
CM= Current me.

(Page goes out for injured colleague)

CM - Oh, f*ck. No. I'm not going. Forget it, it's probably nothing anyway.

DM - No. You are going, you have a duty of care.

CM - No, you had a duty of care. Look where that got you. I am a f*cking shipping clerk.

DM - You are going to ignore this? What if it's actually serious? These people have a stupid first aid course, you were an EMT. Bit of a skill gap there don't ya' think?

CM - Yeah, were, as in was, past tense. Just like you "were" me. Now your dead, and I'm a f*cking mess. No.

DM - Duty of care. Go, do you want another one on your conscience?

CM - No, I f*cking don't. Speaking of dead people, remember last time? That was a real f*cking doozy. Good job. Going now won't make that better. The dead can't be made ammends with. Why can't you let me forget it? I don't want to remember that anymore. You f*cked up. Haven't you done enough?

DM - Just walk by, if it's not bad, leave.

CM - Fine.

That's what I did. Turned out to be nothing. Quickest fainting spell in history. It was hours before my hands stopped shaking.

Not sure if that's what you meant Bill. But that's what I do. Though it's more of an internal monologue, not a disembodied voice. I don't have anyone else in my head but me, it's a dialogue based on the way I was, to the way I am now. But how even long dead ideals have a of coming back to haunt you. No matter how hard you try to change.

I got the impression that you are talking about a sense of self, not multiple personalities. Correct?

 

[Bill Dickerson]

No multiple personalities just a damaged single one. Like you I was motivated and a hard charger but now I can't get motivated to do much of anything.

The old me still haunts...keeping reactionary gaps, watching peoples hands, keeping my back to a wall. Those are the muscle memories I suppose. Having to take some kind of overt action to stop someone brings back those adrenaline rush stressful feelings. Me before it wasn't a big deal move on to the next call. Me now I can't turn the adrenaline off and my reaction frightens me....days or weeks later that feeling overwhelms me for really stupid stuff. I guess my glass got full and those feelings come back it overflows again.

Like someone throwing a baseball unexpectedly to you the muscle memory causes you to catch it. Someone acts out towards me and that muscle memory takes over.