Flashing Back

Warning: language and subject matter for adults. Trigger warning.

It just doesn’t stop. I’ll be outside smoking and if I’m not careful to be observant, to stay alert,

it’s 1967 or 1970 or 1972. I mean, I’m really there, back in that cursed House of Pain in Pasadena. I don’t know, it just happens. The reality is crystal clear, I’m back there, reliving nightmares that actually played out in real life.

It could be a particular lashing with a thin leather belt; my mother atop me, moving up and down with no expression, like a robot; my sexual desire for girls my age because I had been “trained and indoctrinated” for sexuality while other guys in 3rd grade thought of nothing but toys, baseball and TV.

Going back hard always makes me sick. If I can’t pull myself out of it, I’m going to spend days recovering. And recovering is just the word I use; it’s really nothing of the sort.

Why does PTSD remain so powerful all these years later?

What I mean is, why me?

And the technical answer is, trauma changes the brain. The damage even shows up on MRI scans. But the other answer to this question is, nothing is fair.

I never imagined that I would live this long. God knows that I didn’t want to. I courted Death for decades. Almost 5 of them. Too much of a “pussy” to kill myself and just hard-headed enough to live through heart attacks, open heart surgery, strokes, 35 or more traffic accidents, having a .357 held to my temple and refusing to surrender, 3 bouts of covid-19, industrial accidents, being shot at with a Machine gun, falls, being knocked out and thrown down stairs, and, I’m sure, more.

When I finally got round to suicide, 3 times in two months, I screwed even that up. Failed romances? Shit. Girls laughed at me, called me names, gossipped. By the time my one and only marriage was over, I knew I was going to be alone until death. It was not all my fault, but I certainly screwed up my fair share. Then, the two people who mattered most, my children, died.

It’s been a real shit show and I’m sick of it.

But I ain’t quitting.

I have faith that God has a reason for interfering in my death. He’ll send for me in his own good time.

I hope that someone like me has read my posts, and in so doing, learned enough that they have sought help and intend to keep fighting the unfairness of life.

If you are reading this and you have been troubled and afraid, or know someone else who has, I want to reassure you that there’s hope. That maybe you will never heal, but bits of sunlight will come to you, that your life, horrible though it may be or has been, is still precious and of a value nobody can put a price on, and that your experience can help others. You have a story to tell, and people need to hear it. So many survivors think that they are alone; yet there are more of us than can ever truly be known.

PTSD is often a disabling mental illness and it can cause a lot of bad things to happen. Do whatever you need to in order to stabilize the symptoms. Familiarize yourself with the different effects of it, seek out competent proffesionals for treatment and remember, there will be days when you won’t even want to get out of bed. That’s okay. I worked 30 years until one day it became unbearable. In that time I had so many jobs I’d be hard put-upon to remember them all.

The bad days, with treatment and faith, will always give way to better ones. Until we draw our final breath, God can be called on to forgive us. There’s no better reason for hope.

If you, or anyone you know is suicidal, please call the suicide hotline at 988, text SMS to 988, or go to the website and chat.

Once the thought of suicide enters someone’s mind, they’re a third of the to doing it. The next part is making a plan, and the last is the act itself. Sometimes it is done on impulse and all that’s needed is time to think. People dying by their own hands often regret it afterwards. Sometimes they pull through. Sometimes they don’t. Take time to catch your breath and calm down. You are worthy of that. Believe it.

God bless you.