Post-Trump Stress Disorder

Some writers (see here) express the notion that there is a post-traumatic stress disorder prevalent in the US which has comes from living in the country under Trump. I can believe it, given the daily spew of vitriol and lies, the call to violence and bullying, and the inability to escape.

Certainly, our citizens are facing the PTSD symptom of arousal — a constant vigilance against future harm. This seems appropriate as a response to the grinding down of our psyches. This will not go away immediately as Biden takes office, because PTSD takes months, if not years, to go away. Biden is taking over a shell-shocked country.

I anticipate a year where Americans are wary of what the government will do, a pessimism about government, a feeling of a heavy weight on our hunched shoulders.

Doubled by the burden of COVID, we in the US are grouchy and protective of ourselves. We need to find a way to take care of ourselves, by taking time to ourselves, finding an absorbing activity, spending time with our roommates and pets, and thinking outside ourselves.

We need to be good and merciful to ourselves, and to others. The long nightmare will fade away.

Day 44 Reflection: Pain

Pain has a way of blinding us to everything else. It screams at us to stop everything and tend to us. As it should; pain exists to alert us to damage. The damage can be physical, such as torn muscle or damaged cartilage or advanced cancer, or it can be emotional such as the death of a loved one or the predations of an abuser.

Sometimes pain lasts beyond the original insult. Chronic physical pain such as arthritis lasts beyond the wear and tear that caused it. Chronic emotional pain in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder lasts far beyond the instigating factors. The time elapsed doesn’t lessen the pain in these instances.

We are taught to be stoic about our pain. We are told nobody wants to hear about our problems. We are told to tough it out, that no pain equals no gain. We ignore that very valuable alarm until we’ve lost sleep, damaged our bodies, break down, find ourselves with a gun in our hands pointed at ourselves.

Pain is an alarm. We must heed it for our own survival.

Me Too

My books were in the empty gym.
I had to retrieve them —
I couldn’t just leave them.
I slid back the door.
The sound of dark and silent
sang back to me,
and chilled me to the core.
I asked the darkness
if anyone was home;
there was no answer save the echoes.
I wanted to shout,
let my voice ring above the rafters
in mighty trumpet tones!
I grabbed my books and scuttled out,
alone.

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I wrote this my freshman year in high school; a year after an event that left a hole in my memory for ten years. This poem is about the hole in my memory, and about PTSD.