PTSD and Menopause don’t mix.
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In order to make it through the holiday season I have to detach from reality. I have to cut myself off from emotion and just fake being human for awhile. The people around me seem to benefit from this decapitation but I don’t. The act of decapitation slowly works itself into this sort of High Definition hypochondria mixed with, an albeit, vague melancholy.
It started around 11 a.m. of the 26th of December. I was trying to psych myself up for round 2 of fake human me when I heard myself say I was done and needed to shut down. It didn’t happen. I faked my ass off with the help of some really dirty martinis. The day left me feeling like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, were I actually able to access my emotions.
A certain amount of respite came the following day when my roommate signed up for Netflix and I watched season 1 of Hoarders twice in succession and then went on to season 1 and 2 or River Monsters. There was something about the monsters though that tweaked another part of my brain…. The part that can’t actually deal with the abject anguish I detached from.
It‘s so hard to explain how or why this happens but I ended up watching season 7 of Intervention over the 30th and 31st. I was watched myself do this and wondering if it was sado-masochistic or me trying to reattach with a good cry. Just before leaving for some knosh and a few ciders at my best friend’s house I sat with Jordan who was crying beside me watching Intervention and I knew, at the very least, I was in some sort of metaphysical trouble.
January 1st I spent with the Roloff family by watching season 1 of Little People, Big Planet (whatever happened to TLC, BTW) and Sunday I managed to fake a little more humanity and spend a day with the family ending it off with my favourite noodle bowl at my favourite Vietnamese restaurant.. Before going to bed I realized that I had been plagued the whole holiday season with undisclosed ailments: sore joints, a burning ovary breathing problems that may well be panic and not the bronchitis from last month, shooting stomach pains, rubbery knee cartilage, insomnia, night sweats, cramping tendon that felt like a blood clot, arthritic hands obtuse headaches and mild bouts of nausea.
In the middle of the night I got up to turn the heat down because I felt sick.. Jordan and woke and asked what was up and I said I felt sick. Jordan decided he wanted to have sex which has not been the case since the 17th of December and thought it a good idea to wake my insomniac ass up for said reason. I tried, lord, I tried to get into it but all I got was vicious. I curbed it, the viciousness and his sexual initiation, in an effort to fall back asleep and not further screw up my sleep patterns.
I woke up this morning at a more than reasonable time but before I could even get the coffee started I was deep inside a grief attack that I was not awake enough to stop. The memory of telling my girls, while they were giggling and laughing on my bed, to settle down so I could tell them their brother had died came flooding back to me. What mostly flooded back was the way their beautiful faces crumbled and the lights in their eyes blew out like birthday candles.
I am now alone and frantic and trying desperately to ignore the way I would feel if I weren’t detached, decapitated and merely faking my own humanity.