"I Have Choices. I Can Walk Away."

Having cPTSD sucks. When you are in a state of fear (this is rational or not so rational), you don't act like other people. I don't act like I think I should. It is so damn hard to navigate people when so much is not in your control and the very act of establishing what all the books and videos call "healthy boundaries" is met with shit chaos and vile words.

Add trying to find people to trust. People I can talk to about my fears and navigating the impossible. People who say they are there for you and brutally are not. People who's whole body language says they are not there, yet they say they are. Add to that a colleague who gets you to do their work and then asks if it is ok for them to take most of the tips. Add to that a parental figure who is now stealing tools and blocking or moving things I am working with on top of the cyclical mean she is doing.

What is the right thing to do?

I take all the advice. I know I sound dismissive when some of the advice comes up that I tried, sometimes more than once, sometimes with bigger negative responses than I am dealing with right now. I know I process things after a conversation, overthink, maybe come back again for reassurance or clarification, but I do actively try to take advice.

So many books, podcasts, videos, guru's of fixing the broken, only not the really broken, and really is is just and ego thing to get you to pay for their paid programming or book and in the end it is all to get you to more calmly deal with the shitholery, not to feel safe or healed. It is exhausting and I don't know what part of this is really helpful anymore.

The "you should try doing something nice" when nice has been my default for 53-years and when I try that it is seen as a win for them and the response is another loop of this dance I am begging to stop. I am begging to learn how to stop. Is there a word I don't know? A tool for this damn toolkit everyone says I am filling. I say that, but they left the conversation already. I say it again to myself because I am the only one listening.

I am jumpy as fuck at the moment and almost screaming "help me," "notice me," "stop hurting me" while whispering "friend or foe?" to every person I interact with. I know where it started, this flicking on of a switch. It was a confirmation that they are not going to be there to help navigate this shit like they keep saying and I keep not believing.

This time, instead of warping into logistics overdrive (a default setting for breaking connections), I did the thing that shoves them further away. I told them I noticed and don't understand. Only we did not talk about it and the whole body movement, slapping down of the notebook (or folder), tone of voice, tardiness, everything... it was not safe and I was vulnerable as fuck and needed to be alone.

How to explain the physical need to not be in the space with any human is difficult and I keep trying to think about it. I needed to walk. I needed the dog with me so I did not push it too far. I did walk until the feeling was more manageable. I was so physically and emotionally exhausted for physical therapy after. I then went for another walk. That was stupid in ways, but I still was not able to get out of my head that I was being cornered and all alone.

Walking was my go to for management of this trauma in the beginning of the divorce. This was way before I learned the alphabet soup of being broken. I lost 54# and it was a bit obsessive, but it is the only thing that helps me calm this coil of nerves that comes from being in absolute shit fear. From navigating this never ending one after another layers upon layers of shit alone.

Walking is back in the toolbox and I can do it alone. I am finally able to walk without significant pain. Without the multiple times a day industrial bottle of Tylenol consumption pre-surgery. I get fatigued in a different way. I am learning what is the post infection fatigue and what was because of the hip. I am so grateful it is no longer the hip and the last three days my gate looks almost normal (according to this health app). Not long or where I was, but for the first time it is more normal.

This week I decided that if I purposefully keep walking, the layers of shit will not stick. Not so much maybe.

Next week, a creative piece inspired by the poems "Hope" by Emily Dickenson and "Hope is Not a Bird Emily, It's a Sewer Rat" by Caitlin Seida.