Notes from the Black Diary: PTSD
If I name it, I may yet control it.
It's been, what, six years? And now I start drinking to assuage the PTSD. It never got me, even when I spent months alternating between half conscious hallucination and screaming into my sodden bedding. Why now? I'm a diabetic with liver cirrhosis; it can't end well. PTSD really is the gift that keeps giving in new and unpleasant ways1. Must Not Drink.
21 Jan 2024
Notes:
The best description I ever heard of PTSD was from the wife of a soldier with it. She said, not that it is a black dog that follows you, but rather that it is a wolf that someone has tied to your chest to carry around, despite it continually thrashing about and eating into you. I know that wolf, and, sweet gods, I'm tired of carrying it.