From my perspective -ptsd, I struggle with dates and remembering things. Somethings go in I have always known the date my father died because it is 3 days before my brothers birthday and it has other notable points also for the date... but anything new on this sifts out of my brain easily.
I forget to take things out with me, bills etc, and I often have to come back to retrieve things and then after all the effort it has taken me to get out I cant face going out again. Let alone the repurcussions of self loathing etc.
I forget to eat, this is sometihng I am trying to work into a routine I am trying to get going, and it was a friend that helped me become interested in eating again or I would probably not be doing that at all well.
I struggle to remember how to do things, somethings that seem straightforward and thatcan be hit and miss also. I set up for instance sometihng for IM and another friend showed me how to do something on my laptop and and I lost the im thingy and I just have no idea how to get that back.
simple things like brushing my teeth -still makes me gag, and so I find it difficult to accept that some memories are so in grained into me that I will be able to let them go even if I have let them go...so to speak.
The hardest things have been my concentration, and depending if I am triggered or not this is in some way coming back but having said this it does also depend on my feelings about what it is also that I am trying to concentrate on. Love helps me remember things, my son my friends people that genuinely seem to care for me help me remember them and how I feel about some stuff.
Spelling used to be something that I was good at at on etime... I struggle with this now for some reason and it is important to me ... but I couldnt tell you why.- maybe something to do with communication and maybe pride..but I dont know.
I have to write so much down and if I loose the prompt I am lost also.
Of course so much of this is also apt to change but I think it might be possible to understand hopefully what it is I am starting to try to say on somethings.
I used to love figuring things out and I know I had a keen mind once, it just seems so beyond me now...so much.
I have missed being creative so much and yet that has been coming back to me in fits and starts but again it is almost driven in me by something outside of me... generally a sense of affection or love.
This is terribly isolating to be ptsd. It can be a difficult way to discover who your friends are and also it can lead to abuse. Something si have less difficulty with and yet trying to explain to someone that doesnt understand why because I have been TOLD some of the things I should apparently have an issue with... and yet I don't. Some warnings are wasted on me also because in ptsd flight mode I may have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
I am panic ed by the fear of hurting others, I am panic ed by feeling trapped and frightened. And as I am becoming less numb I am able to connect some feelings and emotions better to me, and yet I may look like a little girl in some ways as to how I struggle to apply these feelings and thoughts.
I know the parts of me that have been unlocked by people and I think in some ways I am able to know what is important in those ways to me and what is not as important .. it is just hard to know aometimes and recognise that aspects of the attraction I feel are not always how I perceive them to be in others.
I come back again and again to I can only be responsible for how I react and respond. I may have and am sure perhaps I still do appear flakey, ditzy, flighty and I guess irresponsible with my heart, I could go on.... The point is I am able to identify things somehow that attract me and I find important in someone else... and I am able to accept things in others because of the love I have for them whether it is friendship or life love.
I know I have the capacity to forgive without it ever even getting to the forgiveness part because somethings just dont need to forgiven, somethings are just what they are, and the person to me is more important than whatever the thing has been. I tend almost to remember the things that are important in other ways than dates specific, usually images and memories and music. Smell and touch and passion feature in my memory, fear and loathing and acceptance and generosity of spirit feature. Kindness and loyalty and love and respect feature. I may well forget a card on the right day... the odds are though I have made the card or spent days choosing it and I just forget to give it to the person, it is not malice or intentional. I struggle with the daily memory stuff and so it comes down to significance .. is it more important that you feel accepted and loved or more important that you get a card from me?
I dont know what the answer here is, I also know that all of the above changes too in how I able to remember. My core beliefs have always I think remained in some tact, which is why I find it also hard to think anyone could ever love me or want me. When I truy to reason and logic about someone elses feelings on me I can almost come very unstuck because I fear taking on their logic and emotional responses also.
So for me to remain psychologically intact I believe I have to keep focussing on the possitives and let go as much as I can on the negatives.
I hope that this can maybe help you better in uderstanding... of course we are all different so we will all have our own reasons for behaving and reacting differently. And also in the choices we make... I always try to see the good in people before the bad and maybe that is whay somethings have happened to me that perhaps could have been avoided, maybe if when I wasnt sure I had accepted that I am able to know when something is bad may well have helped me aviod it, instead of listening to others who alway esposed the good qualities of for instance my attackers (before I was attacked) I know that even they have good qualities (I do not believe that anyone is inherantly completely evil or bad)... just depends now for me if I am in the firing line.
I could tell you when mothers day is better than fathers day because my father didnt try to kill me and my mother did. I could also tell you when my ex husband did some bad stuff to me because he did it on dates like my mothers birthday and again I could tell you when that day is because she tried killing me, and so it was important that I knew as much as possible about trying to make her happy because my life depended on it sometimes... of course I am possibly talking out of my ass now, but it seemed to make sense to me as I have written this here.
Maybe if you could help your husband switch the tv off it might help him remember, television was a distraction for me... I would just switch off and take very little of what I watched in... so it is unlikely that your husband or partner (Im sorry I cant remember now) but it is possible that he does the same thing and takes in very little of what he watches on the television. It takes less calories to watch tv than to sleep. We can switch off when watching it also.
Take care and be kind to yourself also, his forgetting the date etc is not a true reflection of the person you are either.
~fin
