PTSD and Me

March 6, 2025

I have suffered from cPTSD for most of my teenage and adult life.

But from 2021-2025, and more so concentrated to the past two years, the experiences I’ve had have given me a more acute form of PTSD that I’ve never experienced before.

The day I was in that filthy room, that filthy small shoebox and my cat was on my bed, looking super scared… I was going to be going inpatient, to a psych hospital compound about 45 minutes from me. I am standing there, I can barely stand, I am filthy, and I am unable to stop crying. My arms are flailing…

I was in my friend’s car losing my mind. I wanted to hit things, I wanted to break the car window with my skull. I am screaming, out loud, and grunting from the anger and despair I was feeling.

And

My friend walks me into the ER, and they call me to the window to get my information and I cannot stop crying. I have never experienced a time in my life where I couldn’t stop crying. Ever.

I cry in the room with just a mattress and a sheet.

I cry at the hospital. I have PTSD and the notes on my condition from the nurses say I have a blunt affect, I show no emotion, and do not interact with the other patients.

Before

I had agoraphobia. And it was extremely bad. I still suffer from it but it is not nearly as bad as it was just five months ago.

My uncle took me to get my photo ID renewed some time in October. I had put it off for years but I needed it to actually live my life. So we went.

I walked into the DMV and I shook. I was shaking so goddamn bad, in public. It was something I do not do, did not do, in my entire godforsaken life and here I am shaking like a leaf and trying not to have a breakdown.

I had the woman my money while my hand shakes and I am fighting back tears.

I wanted nothing more than to die.

I got back in my uncle’s truck and I have a breakdown; I could not stop crying. He asked me what was wrong and I didn’t have the heart to tell him and even if I did I don’t think I understood it much myself.

The Room

There’s much to talk about about where me and Catte were living. It was small. I was agoraphobic. The house at the time was a hoarding situation. I barely ate after a while. Cooking in that kitchen was something I wasn’t going to do as the kitchen was gross. Sometimes when my roommate would cook it was spoiled. So I ended up buying microwave meals.

There was a ton of centipedes and moths. And I kept bringing stuff in, creature comforts that I didn’t have room for. I tried to bring in things to organize things but it never worked. I had no door on my bedroom and that bedroom is where I stayed, pretty much all the time. After a while I stopped taking care of myself completely; I didn’t shower, my bladder stopped working. I had no clean clothes because doing all that laundry at the laundry mat is expensive and her washer and dryer didn’t work.

Catte stopped playing and running around. She started to have problems with her skin.

I would lay in bed, a filthy fucking bed and bang my head against the wall, literally. I’d grab my skin and just like take my fingernails to my skin. I was so angry. I wanted to break everything, everything I owned I wanted to break it.

Every night I was fighting my surrounding filth, my own filth, my cat not knowing what to do but loving me anyway.

Without my bedroom door, I heard Fox News 24/7 which. I mean it’s Fox okay.

My roommate rescued me from certain homelessness, but by the end, I didn’t pay enough and her son came back home. He cleaned the entire house and I was still a filthy, delusional, psychotic fucking mess of a human being and I needed to leave. They were going to call the sheriff on me and I committed no crime.

The day I watched Catte crawl to the corner of the bed with her big eyes looking to me for comfort still haunts me. I miss that cat so I will stop writing about her now. She is still at the house, last time I checked. They are taking her to the vet, she is having her run of the house and it hurts me to no end that I could not provide that for her like I used to. Anyway…

After the ward

I was able to move to where I am now, an extended stay motel. It’s the cheapest nice place you can get in this area when you have no available credit, as all my cards are maxed out after losing my job in '22 and trying to stay in that beautiful townhouse I lived in.

I moved here and I remember going to bed and waking up in the middle of the night not knowing where I was. I was still at my roommate’s house; I’d wake up and think I was still living there. I was disoriented and couldn’t stay asleep, at all.

I was going to group therapy and it wasn’t until the one group where I started talking about the experiences of the last four or so years that I began to disassociate and realize just how fucked up the past two years have made me. I cried in that group, or, I tried to not cry but the tears kept falling without me making a sound.

American

I tried to not rely on subsidies and handouts. I fought like hell to be a taxpaying American so that I didn’t have to palm my EBT card when I went to the grocery store and lost everything along the way.

I lost my home, I lost my jobs, I lost my mother, I lost my therapist, I lost my mobility, I lost my sanity, I lost my cat, and I lost myself, and that’s the one thing I will never get back.

I used to have phobias. I do not have them anymore. Things that I used to fear I no longer do. I fear almost nothing at all. I suppose that’s a perk of acute PTSD.

However I am super hypervigilant, I have a collection of knives and sometimes the pain is so overwhelming I try to find a place that will allow me to buy a way to suck on a 🔫.

It’s the thing where I can’t promise any of my friends and loved ones that I won’t end my life, but as I said at my time at the ward and in group therapy I don’t have anything to live for and I have zero hope for anything to ever bring me joy again.

Soundtrack to the end of last year

Lyrics

When will we die? This life isn’t fair
I miss the high, I live a lie
And one day we’ll die, no one will care
Take me inside, I’ll meet you there

Am I alive? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Am I aware? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Do you get high? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Are we prepared? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Then one day we’ll die (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
No one will care (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Do you get high? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
We will survive (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Who do you think you are?
Young man? Young man?
Yeah

Man, I think you went too far
You can’t stop the dance
Don’t ever let ‘em stop the dance, yeah
Are we all numb? Where are we goin’?
What have we become? It all keeps on rollin’
A little bit of light lets the hope grow
A lot goes on that they don’t know
Just give me a sign, to show me somethin’
Is it my time? Can I stop runnin’?
Lost in the night and it’s so cold
Forget the things that we don’t know
I made my peace, can I go home?

Am I alive? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Am I aware? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Do you get high? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Are we prepared? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Then one day we’ll die (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
No one will care (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Do you get high? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
We will survive (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)

To the girl named danger, so good to see you
Don’t be a stranger, it’s clear I need you
The angels will fall, not a saint after all
Back to the wall, let me free you
Protect me from evil, give me a reason
Where are the good people? Give us our freedom
Where are the dreamers?
Can you show me the dreamers?
And we are the creatures, prophets and teachers
We are believers, lost in amnesia
Will you let me fade away? I wanna fade away