I’m Fine

I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

I choose to go back to see Charlie, using the Medicare sessions I have hoarded because I had a feeling I would need them… it had to come to a point like this eventually.

Where life starts to feel normal again. Where I’m no longer in a spinning vortex of disbelief every day… where I’m living back in a semi reality.

That should be a good thing, right…? So why doesn’t it feel like one?

The post traumatic stress disorder kicks my arse over and over again. I’ve discovered a way to deal with it, to stop the rolling waves of panic and fear and disassociation that comes with it.

I just stop being around people…. and there is no one to hurt me, or let me down, or inadvertently do something or say something that sets me off. And that means I’m fine, just fine.

I am losing my fucking mind.

Isn’t this what I said I wouldn’t do; shut down, shut off, take myself away from the world? “You need people, love, people don’t need you”, my Nan would say, and she was always right– no one will come knocking down your door to keep you company. You have to find them.

There actually is an app for everything, yes. Even emo-sising.

But I can’t be bothered, I’m too afraid, I’m too pissed off, and people shit me. I talk to my mum, daily; and I spend more time with my kids than I was a few months ago. But I don’t socialize, even though I’m lonely. I miss the best friend I had not long ago. I miss having someone who understands me.

I miss being surrounded by people who love me.

But it feels so necessary, when I can’t have normal relationships with anyone… I am so intense. It’s either this ice queen, backed off away from the world and living in her TinyTrainTown bubble; or some kind of crazy woman who is emotionally unpredictable and too shattered to have a connection with someone that doesn’t drain them completely.

I am apathy disguised as contentment. I run two steps behind life, always trying to keep up- I’m always late, frazzled, slightly flustered, and I no longer posses enough sparkly energy to impress on that alone. I am insular and introverted, only barely keeping check of boundless panic attacks. The anxiety I feel as my children grow older while I seem to watch on from the outsides of a bubble made of solid perspex is a mounting tidal wave that rolls upward from my abdomen, still small enough to swallow back down for now. Days rush past before I take stock that they have begun, and reminding myself to get going and keep going is exhausting.               

My tattered, grinding sleep is filled with strange dreams that are so light and slick I remember them only when my subconscious mind is peaked by an image the next day. As I grind my teeth and sweat through slumber; I see my chickens laying dozens of eggs that slip through my fingers as I try to catch them and prevent them breaking on the coop floor. Dark dirty water runs downs the inside walls of my Tiny Train House in small rivers that concern no one but me. I dream of running through the house down the road, emptied of all it’s furniture, marveling at how light and clean it feels in there- then looking down and seeing the floorboards are gone, too, and I’m floating in thin, dust-smoted air.

And on remember these dreams, threads of them pulled into the front of mine when I’m collecting the eggs, or driving my kids to daycare; I’m not surprised by them all. Not even for a second, not a heartbeat.               

I’ve lost my bearings on what’s normal. From the outside, I’m fine, just fine… but this feels all kind of wrong and dangerous. I’m not sure if that’s just because normality is such a warped concept to me now, or if it’s that PTSD identifying danger in a situation where there is none; or if I’m on the verge of developing some kind of promiscuous split personality…

But none of those options are particularly healthy. I need someone to attach a barometer to my brain.