Here come the holidays, and I've been doing 'well'. But as always, the holidays intensify what ails me, and here come the mini flashes...the 'what's that? Was that a flashback? Did 'that' really happen?' events. As the days tick by, my insides are turning upside down...and the ride through the season becomes a dizzying roller coaster of feeling this way and that, remembering this and that, sparks of trauma that I try to dodge, like those ones from sparklers on the 4th of July that land on your forearms when you're a child. Hit and miss. Yesterday in the grocery store, I just had to lean my forehead against the freezer case door and close my eyes and steady myself as people around me shuffled around getting their holiday food shopping done. What is especially vivid this time of year is even I am reminded that.....YES...I have post traumatic stress disorder. No more easy grounding, hiding and avoiding like I get by on the rest of the year. Now I will be persued, gifted, called Meemaw, hugged, and loved and have my eyes looked into here and there. I don't do well with any of those things. Not only that, but all of the people doing those things have forgotten about me having post traumatic stress disorder. They can't be expected to think of MY invisible disorder 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives. What WOULD help, is if we could just get each important person in our lives to truly study post traumatic stress disorder and have an 'aha' moment. I have no doubt that not a single one of my loved ones 'truly' knows what it is or how it impacts me daily, and especially this time of year. They don't notice that I USED to love the holidays and now I can't stand them. Do they think I'm just a scrooge? I wish there was some way to help them to GRASP that this is nearly impossible for me. I yearn to love this time of year again. It breaks my heart that my disorder ruins it for others. No matter how much I want to embrace the holidays again, I can't. No matter that I went ahead and bought things to make a dinner for a crowd...just in case, because I can't do it. No matter that I blindly grabbed a pile of greeting and gift cards...I don't even know who gets what or if I chose stupid ones. I can't look in the bag. This is a very hard time for some of us, isn't it?
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