I'm doped on percocet, for the first time in about three weeks. Yesterday I overdid it. Not only did I teach a class last night, but the bus I needed to take to get to work has a time change in the afternoon, and I had to rush to get to it.
In the first place, I can lurch along at a pace about as fast as jogging. Grace, I have none. Wind I have none. Stamina... well I have force of will, but 150 meters was as much as I could do without slowing down to use the crutch again, and when I got to the stop (about a 1/4 of a mile) after another session of lurching, well I've been more winded after running two miles for time, but that's what it felt like.
Also, I broke a toe yesterday. Silly, I know, but I am not as ept in movement as I might like, and I kicked a chair while trying to move through the dining room.
So I hurt.
About two weeks ago one of my classes had a bit of lecture on PTSD. There was an interview with an EMT who responded to the WTC on That Tuesday. She had a really shitty day (in addition to the sights, sounds, smells, she was buried twice). I think that was catalytic for me, and not in the best of ways.
A recap:
I have some (so far as I can tell) very minor PTSD. It's not crippling. I don't panic, or hurt myself, or lash out. I get very reserved, and lose some affect, and am a bit brittle. It makes me both more intense, and less involved. I am a bit more snappish and defensive.
It's made me, as a rule, more emotional, and a bit more moody.
I got from being in a combat zone. I got it from spending a chunk of time where people were allowed to try to kill me. Some of those people did. For Iraq/Afghanistan vets it's a bit worse than it was for Korea/WW2/WW1/Civil War vets. Vietnam vets are probably in the middle.
Why? Because the first set had a defined enemy. Vietnam vets might, and might not have had that.
Not so for us. We never really had an enemy in uniform. After the first month, or so, it was all fedayeen, and insurgents, all the time.
David Drake, in the intro to on of his collections said the essence of war is fear. It's not fear like that of an impending tornado. It's not fear like that of being robbed. It's hard to explain the nature of that fear.
The closest analogy I can make is parental love, when one is a toddler. It's just there. It's not tangible, but it's everpresent. Even when nothing else is going on, the existence of parents makes things better. It defines the world.
War is like that, only it's fear that suffuses everything. One learns to live with it, to not notice it. The mortar round that might fall in the middle of the night? Might happen, might not. Nothing to do about it.
An IED on MSR Tampa? Might be there, might not. Nothing to do about it. You name it, there is nothing to be done about it. Pulling picket duty one can see all the things which might be there, or might not. You stare into the night, and look for nothing.
I mean that, you are staring at the darkness, an abyss of potential, and what you want to find in it is nothing, and the darkness, and the nothingness stare back. You absorb some of it. There is a place one can retreat to, where there is less, and that bit of reduced personality makes it easier to deal with all the rest of it. The smells, the stenches, the food, the way the mail doesn't work; and the phone doesn't exist and a two-week old Stars and Stripes is "current" and the bleak, unchanging view.
And the fear.
All of it is easier to bear, when on is a little less present.
I got sick. My feet stopped working right, and my knees, and my hips, and my back. I got painless, scabrous, lesions. Sleep wasn't really surcease.
Skip ahead seven years. I'm pretty much readjusted to life in a rational world again. I'm planning to get married. I am going to be moving. There is some uncertainty (what if this engagement falls through? What if the place we're getting is a disaster? What if I can't find work? How will the three of us manage to deal with the frictions of learning to live, each with the other? How will I feel, apart from Calif., and building a new support network), but it's all stuff I think I/we can manage.
Then I break my foot. I am a gimp again. I am, once again, not able to completely fend for myself. About two weeks ago I got my foot back (they cut the cast off). I am able to get around on my own, in a way I wasn't. The foot is getting better. It aches now, more than it hurts.
And then I saw the film. I think the real kicker was the shelf in the display cabinet in the background. I asked my psych prof if he'd noticed what was on it. He hadn't. No one else seemed to either. They were all so focused on the speaker,and her story, and whatever else they were doing that they didn't see the jumbled piles in the background, the only spot of less than perfect order in the frame... was somewhere between 20-30 carved skulls.
And my foot feels like it did 7 years ago.
This morning, as we were making preparations for a King Cake Party tonight![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenacious_snail mentioned something which was bothering her. First she asked if she could have a hug, and tell me something. I said I certainly hoped so. The something, which she wanted the hug to make easier to say, was that she had been having the irrational sense that I might blow up at any time.
She was wrong, twice. I don't think, as I parse out why she might have gotten that sense was irrational. I think I have been a bit removed.the_ogre noticed a bit of it Sunday. On the up side, I am not likely to blow up. Our relationship isn't such that it touches the insecurities which make me snappish and defensive in ways that lead to yelling, etc.
I suspect (though I don't know) that spotting this seems to be happening, will make it fade more quickly (the sense that I need the level of detachment that I had in 2003/2004 is a lot less. There are not vast numbers of people who feel they have every right to kill me wandering about Mountain View and Palo Alto).
So that's what's going on. I'll close on a happier note.
Yes
In the first place, I can lurch along at a pace about as fast as jogging. Grace, I have none. Wind I have none. Stamina... well I have force of will, but 150 meters was as much as I could do without slowing down to use the crutch again, and when I got to the stop (about a 1/4 of a mile) after another session of lurching, well I've been more winded after running two miles for time, but that's what it felt like.
Also, I broke a toe yesterday. Silly, I know, but I am not as ept in movement as I might like, and I kicked a chair while trying to move through the dining room.
So I hurt.
About two weeks ago one of my classes had a bit of lecture on PTSD. There was an interview with an EMT who responded to the WTC on That Tuesday. She had a really shitty day (in addition to the sights, sounds, smells, she was buried twice). I think that was catalytic for me, and not in the best of ways.
A recap:
I have some (so far as I can tell) very minor PTSD. It's not crippling. I don't panic, or hurt myself, or lash out. I get very reserved, and lose some affect, and am a bit brittle. It makes me both more intense, and less involved. I am a bit more snappish and defensive.
It's made me, as a rule, more emotional, and a bit more moody.
I got from being in a combat zone. I got it from spending a chunk of time where people were allowed to try to kill me. Some of those people did. For Iraq/Afghanistan vets it's a bit worse than it was for Korea/WW2/WW1/Civil War vets. Vietnam vets are probably in the middle.
Why? Because the first set had a defined enemy. Vietnam vets might, and might not have had that.
Not so for us. We never really had an enemy in uniform. After the first month, or so, it was all fedayeen, and insurgents, all the time.
David Drake, in the intro to on of his collections said the essence of war is fear. It's not fear like that of an impending tornado. It's not fear like that of being robbed. It's hard to explain the nature of that fear.
The closest analogy I can make is parental love, when one is a toddler. It's just there. It's not tangible, but it's everpresent. Even when nothing else is going on, the existence of parents makes things better. It defines the world.
War is like that, only it's fear that suffuses everything. One learns to live with it, to not notice it. The mortar round that might fall in the middle of the night? Might happen, might not. Nothing to do about it.
An IED on MSR Tampa? Might be there, might not. Nothing to do about it. You name it, there is nothing to be done about it. Pulling picket duty one can see all the things which might be there, or might not. You stare into the night, and look for nothing.
I mean that, you are staring at the darkness, an abyss of potential, and what you want to find in it is nothing, and the darkness, and the nothingness stare back. You absorb some of it. There is a place one can retreat to, where there is less, and that bit of reduced personality makes it easier to deal with all the rest of it. The smells, the stenches, the food, the way the mail doesn't work; and the phone doesn't exist and a two-week old Stars and Stripes is "current" and the bleak, unchanging view.
And the fear.
All of it is easier to bear, when on is a little less present.
I got sick. My feet stopped working right, and my knees, and my hips, and my back. I got painless, scabrous, lesions. Sleep wasn't really surcease.
Skip ahead seven years. I'm pretty much readjusted to life in a rational world again. I'm planning to get married. I am going to be moving. There is some uncertainty (what if this engagement falls through? What if the place we're getting is a disaster? What if I can't find work? How will the three of us manage to deal with the frictions of learning to live, each with the other? How will I feel, apart from Calif., and building a new support network), but it's all stuff I think I/we can manage.
Then I break my foot. I am a gimp again. I am, once again, not able to completely fend for myself. About two weeks ago I got my foot back (they cut the cast off). I am able to get around on my own, in a way I wasn't. The foot is getting better. It aches now, more than it hurts.
And then I saw the film. I think the real kicker was the shelf in the display cabinet in the background. I asked my psych prof if he'd noticed what was on it. He hadn't. No one else seemed to either. They were all so focused on the speaker,and her story, and whatever else they were doing that they didn't see the jumbled piles in the background, the only spot of less than perfect order in the frame... was somewhere between 20-30 carved skulls.
And my foot feels like it did 7 years ago.
This morning, as we were making preparations for a King Cake Party tonight
tenacious_snail mentioned something which was bothering her. First she asked if she could have a hug, and tell me something. I said I certainly hoped so. The something, which she wanted the hug to make easier to say, was that she had been having the irrational sense that I might blow up at any time.She was wrong, twice. I don't think, as I parse out why she might have gotten that sense was irrational. I think I have been a bit removed.
the_ogre noticed a bit of it Sunday. On the up side, I am not likely to blow up. Our relationship isn't such that it touches the insecurities which make me snappish and defensive in ways that lead to yelling, etc.I suspect (though I don't know) that spotting this seems to be happening, will make it fade more quickly (the sense that I need the level of detachment that I had in 2003/2004 is a lot less. There are not vast numbers of people who feel they have every right to kill me wandering about Mountain View and Palo Alto).
So that's what's going on. I'll close on a happier note.
Yes
