And, Once Again, PTSD Rears Its Ugly Head

It was a bright, sunny morning as the stranger and I left the gym.  I was feeling strong.  I was walking well.  I listened as she retold my story through her eyes - watching me over the years in the gym, seeing me on tv, thinking of and praying for that sweet little girl - and then I drove home.

Something was nagging at me, so I called Little Cuter for a pick me up quickie, bur she was debating taking a long, healing nap beneath her desk, battling a-flu-that's-going-around, and I fell quickly into Mommy mode.  Take yourself home. It's a public safety issue; you are infecting the others.  I never sent you to school when you were sick.... and YES you can have a note from your mommy.  TBG joined in at the tail end, just in time to hear about triumphs in the potty.

We hung up smiling, and though I pouted when I saw that the jump into the pool with my sweaty, worked out, self was thwarted by the pool guys, lovely gentlemen who had just started their weekly maintenance.  I took a shower, but it didn't do much to quell the tempest that was gathering in my brain.  TBG was napping; I came to Lenore the Lenovo to figure out what I was feeling.  I was just beginning to let my fingers do the walking when BLEEEP  BLEEEEP BLEEEEP interrupted my reverie.

We have had issues with both our alarm and our fire detectors; the sounds are the same.  With rising ire, I located the source of the noise, called the alarm company, and was walked through the dismantling of their box.  I unscrewed and unplugged and climbed up and down the ladder and then asked TBG a scheduling question  and all hell broke loose.

All those tears I'd been shedding as I started to write before the bleeping, all the missing Christina-Taylor tears, all the scared to death and cold on the cement tears, all the loss and the sorrow and the unfairness of it all came roaring out of the center of me.

Unfortunately, TBG was the only one around.

One good turn begets another, and soon we were competing for loudest and saddest and then, when he caught up to me and we both realized the cause, we were competing for emptiest soul.

We're fine, now.  Please don't worry, not even a little bit.  Unfortunately, we are getting pretty good at shortening the episodes and acknowledging the chemical reactions behind the metallic taste in my mouth from the adrenaline as the PTSD kicks in and the brain is overtaken but a force stronger than I am, most of the time.

It's not as bad as it could be. It happens ever less frequently.  It still sucks.