Slowly I'm learning to distinguish between "don't want to" and "want to or not I'm terrified". I found it frustratingly subtle at first but oh what a shift in perspective and awareness it has been. ...

At my lowest, my most desperate and miserable -- sobered up, slowly dying, I was ready to give up everything. My job, my family . . . everything because nothing brought me any joy. He would ask what, in a perfect world, I wanted. What did I imagine things could look like? I had no idea how to answer the question. I sobbed on my mother's shoulder, "Why can't I just be happy?" as I recounted children I loved, a wife I adored, a job that was my dream job. What I did not understand at the time w...

When I felt hopeless, I was in a constant fight with unknowable and unsolvable depression and anxiety. They're still there, but not as the oppressive fog they were. They're just symptoms. Noise. More tinitus. Now the battle is in the present, in the moment, facing the past as it comes rolling in in waves. 🪨🌊 🏝️ ...

[ ] 💊 Meds [ ] 😮‍💨 Breathe [ ] 🎧 Tools [ ] 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Communicate [ ] 🚰 Drink water [ ] 🍔 Eat food [ ] 😱 Scream [ ] 🎒 Leave prepared ⌚️📱🪪🎧🧤🧃🥦 [ ] watch [ ] phone [ ] wallet [ ] headphones [ ] gloves [ ] hydrate 🚨 Negative inputs weigh 7x positive inputs PTSD = Heavy starting deficit 🥊 Stay positive, be kind to yourself 🥹 ...

Pain is objective Flashbacks are strange memories. They're fresh, unfiltered, untempered by time. Powerful wounds conveying the moment. ...

🏝️🫡 i don't want to be that old veteran who gets triggered and has to go hide under a rock 🪨📱 🏡🧑 Mayyybe you are... and it's okay? 🤔😊 🪨  ...

It is day 7? Seven. oO(I feel like a wire, bent back and forth and back and forth, I grow weaker and bending becomes easier. . . then it pauses, or at least slows. feeling better then? they observe. 📎 Oh no it's bending back and forth and oh no oh I am almost certain I am going to break 🪦) ...

I walked With Luna. 🌚 I saw myself in the rabbit, gone in a flash at our first sound. 🐇 I wanted to see myself in the opossum, sitting calmly in its little tree. Nibbling away, waiting for us to lose interest. 🐀 The crow sat perched high above it all. 🐦‍⬛ I tried to listen. As we came to the end of our path, a cat sat ahead watching us. On its terms. When we were close enough, it turned and moved on. 🐈 We had moved beyond the purview of the crow. 🐦‍⬛ I turned to look where I thought I might...

When I realized I was happy ...

When I'm really triggered, the bunny becomes my spirit animal. I see flashes of him in my terror. She is my first thought when grasping for a metaphor in the days of tremor following an attack. 🪦 I'm like a scared bunny. I must remember that the scared bunny is a survival machine. As long as we are in flight we have not given up no matter the peril. 😱🐇 ...