part 37

So I apparently have brain damage. I mean, it’s not a big shocker or anything, but really thinking about exactly what that means – and then accepting that – has been digging at me lately.

SIDE NOTE: ONCE AGAIN I MAY BE WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN ABOUT IN THIS BLOG. I DON’T REMEMBER. I’M OFFICIALLY NOT GOING TO STRESS ABOUT IT ANY MORE. AT ALL.

There is also going to be the addition of “complex” to the diagnostic criteria of post-traumatic stress disorder in the DSM-V. It seems as though the “complex” part of my PTSD is what has likely caused the brain damage.

The reason for the addition of “complex” to the PTSD thing is because there is a difference in the effects of being traumatized within one event and of being traumatized repeatedly over an extended amount of time, particularly if that trauma occurs as a young child.

There are all kinds of theories and explanations and descriptions of how trauma can change your brain. I have quite an aversion to the entire concept of neuropsychology, so I’m not going to go into any technical details. That’s what Wikipedia is for.

Anyway! Sometimes I catch myself standing in one place, staring off into space. My conscious and deliberate awareness gets interrupted. The process of going to get a snack or to take something to the post office or to brush my teeth gets a hiccup. It usually takes about ten seconds (sometimes less, sometimes more) for the present train of thought to reconnect to the previous train of thought that was interrupted by the hiccup, and to continue doing whatever it was I was doing.

Sometimes this happens when I am driving. That used to really scare the shit out of me, but then I figured out I just needed to allow that reconnection process to occur and then I know where I am and everything is okay. Well, usually it is okay. I never get into wrecks or anything like that, but I do sometimes miss important things like my exit off of the interstate.

Sometimes I miss that I am going the wrong way on the interstate, and once have actually ended up in Tennessee before figuring it out. Most of the time, though, this stuff happens close to home. I start out of my neighborhood by going toward the store when I meant to be going toward the gas station, and that is easily corrected by a U-turn or slight re-route.

This spacing out thing is apparently also related to the whole dissociation condition. I don’t know if it is another form of dissociating, or if it is just something that happens as a result of the same things dissociation happens as a result of.

Regardless, it can be frustrating, but it is one more thing I have been able to integrate into my life as just another of the extended side effects of the abuse I experienced.

As part of accepting that there is damage to my brain, I have accepted that it is most likely a result of trauma. I KNOW I’ve said this before, but I’m saying it again anyway: what may seem logical to those unaffected by trauma can often be distorted in a way that all of the information needed to come to a logical conclusion does not cohere all at the same time for someone who has been affected by trauma.

For example, I could see a plastic bag on a road, and then I could see a car drive over the bag, and then I could see the bag tossing and reeling after being run over by the car, and then I can see the bag settling again on the road. This is a sequence of events that can be logically integrated into one seamless event – a plastic bag gets run over by a car.

From the description of the seamless event, it is easy to make the connection that a bag getting run over by a car was likely somewhere a car would also be. There would probably not be a mental image of a bag on top of a skyscraper getting run over by a car; the image would most likely be that the bag was in the path of an area where cars usually frequent, like a road.

It may be easy to also automatically conclude from the description of the seamless event that the bag would get blown around after getting run over by the car. From there, the image of a plastic bag settling down on a roadway would follow.

If the bag getting run over by a car was a traumatic event for me (which, by the way, it is not – don’t forget this is just an example), the logical progression and anticipation and expectation of the sequence of the individual events would not necessarily integrate into that one seamless event. My conception of the event might start with the bag flying all around chaotically in the air. I may find myself being very upset by the bag flying around in the air, but not have anything to connect that with.

It’s just a bag. Flying around in the air. But the thought of the bag flying around in the air keeps popping into my head, and I feel physical and mental distress whenever that happens. I may start shaking, or get really nauseous or bitchy, or feel a sharp tightness in my chest, or all or none of those things in response to the image of that stupid bag flying around in the air.

Because the flying bag is all I can think about (it is an unwanted, intrusive thought), I am also constantly experiencing the negative stressors in response to that thought. Suddenly it is not a simple thing for me to walk out of my house and get the mail. How am I supposed to walk out of my house and get the mail when my mind and body are being completely occupied by this horrendous plastic bag?

Getting the mail becomes a huge task and a low priority at the same time, so I don’t get the mail. I just stay in my house, stuck on the damn bag. The more I try to not think about the bag, the more difficult it gets to think of anything else. Before all of my therapy and whatnot, I would spend a significant amount of time and energy trying to get that bag out of my head.

But now I know the bag is not going away until I let the memory of it play out in my mind. First I might recognize that the bag is flying over a hard surface. Then I might realize that there was a moving car involved. Then I may conclude that the hard surface is a road, and that the motion of the car has gotten this bag flying around in the air.

Then I might be able to comprehend that, theoretically, the bag was not always in motion and may not have become in motion without the car. Then I think about a time I have seen a bag flying around over a road in the vicinity of a moving car. That might be when I finally make all of the connections: a bag was in the road and a car ran over it and now the bag is flying around in the air.

It might take me a bit longer to realize that the bag will most likely settle down again once it gets blown out of the road, or cars are no longer driving on the road. This is a problem because I am still getting upset by the bag blowing around in the air above a road (in my head). How am I going to stop the distress that I am feeling?

Am I going to get shitfaced, and be all like, “fuck you, ya stupid bag – whoo hoo?” Am I going to get an extra thick pizza with extra cheese and eat the whole thing, and be all like, “this is the best pizza ever, and I am no longer feeling the distress about the bag because I am focusing on getting into the pleasure of eating the pizza?” Am I going to go strike up a superficial relationship with a guy I hardly know and have sex with him, and before I even get my clothes back on think about what kind of wonderful future me and the guy and our kids and grandkids are going to have, and be all like, “what bag?”

I’m not going to lie – these methods have served me well in the past. Not only do they help me stop thinking about the stupid bag, they are injecting my mind and body with some sort of pleasure, regardless of how temporary that pleasure may be or of how permanent the residual damage of that pleasure may be. But it doesn’t take long for me to realize (well, sometimes it does not take me long to realize) what a big fat drunken slut I have become, all because of that bag flying around in my head.

On top of all that, being a big fat drunken slut does nothing to improve the function of my brain. In fact, it makes it a lot worse.  And then I am also distressed over my inability to just get through a day, or even an hour, without imagining myself as the central character in a really cheesy slapstick made for TV movie.

I’m a fat drunken slut who can’t remember to bring her wallet to the gas station to pay for the gas that needs to go into the very empty gas tank, and also who bangs the shit out of her forehead on the door of the car when she goes to get back in it and then hopes and prays there is enough gas to get home and get her wallet and then get back to the gas station to fill up the tank and then gets a phone call as she pulls into the driveway and completely forgets about the empty gas tank until it’s time to pick up the kids from school and REALLY hopes and prays that the car has enough fumes to make it to the school AND to the gas station and for fuck’s sake don’t forget your goddamn wallet again.

What was I even talking about? Oh yeah – the stupid fucking bag flying around.

OH. MY. GOD.

It gets to be quite maddening, like torture that never ends because it is all in my head and my head follows me wherever I go.

I’m getting pretty distressed just thinking about it in such great detail. I’m actually nauseous. So I’m going to stop writing about it now.

Except to say that my life is not stuck in that hole anymore and things are pretty good – even with the brain damage.