Right now, I’m experiencing what might be called a ‘flair’ or a mild panic attack or it might be some depression poking through … all under the umbrella of “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”.

I’m in my bedroom.

The house is silent save for the rumblings of a new puppy and the run of a lawnmower outside (and I am jealous of the person behind that lawnmower as they, apparently, are not ‘stuck’ right now…)

I’m very hungry.

Everyone else went to get a bite to eat but I just didn’t feel up to going.

I’m not physically sick. No fever. No nausea. No actual pain.

I just couldn’t get my head around getting into a car and eating in a room full of other (noisy) people.

So here I am.

I want to heat up some frozen mac-n-cheese.

I can picture the little box of mac-n-cheese out in the garage freezer.

I have thought through, for about 20 minutes now, that it would need to be microwaved for 4 or 5 minutes.

But it’s in the garage.

And it needs cooked.

Those two things feel vast to me…to me right now inside this ‘flair’ or whatever is happening.

To get my limp legs walking, to go out into the garage, to figure out how to open the little box of mac-n-cheese. To wait the long 5 minutes for it to cook until I can sit back down.

Well.

That mac-n-cheese might as well be sitting in a freezer in Paris.

It feels practically impossible for me to just get up, walk across the house, open a freezer, open a small box of food, cook it, and eat it.

It is a very defeated feeling. It is very confusing to me.

I imagine it sounds ridiculous to many who have not experience mental health struggles.

This “stuff” is so very annoying….I am a strong person. Really! But..a girl cannot ‘beat’ a sickness. She just has to ride through it.

Right now, my mind is playing around to the point that I’m fairly frozen here, in this spot, in my room….stuck.

If there was danger…I’m sure I could move. Adrenaline saved my life once…I’m sure it would again.

But, unless some sort of high-voltage chemical change happens instantly, my mind will hold me captive for a bit longer. I will remain exceptionally fatigued and feel 120% defeated for awhile longer yet.

I’ve lived through …what…maybe hundreds of these types of afternoons or span of hours?

A span of time where the smallest thing feels the biggest and, during this time, it makes me feel that I will never make it out of this ‘state of weak’.

I always do though.

Sometimes I fall into a movie to get my mind at ease. Sometimes a book but not usually as I don’t have the mental energy to read during these ‘flairs’.

A nap might help but I hate it when a nap turns into 9 hours of sleep and then I’ve lost that time with my family and feel even more defeated ….. yet it was not on purpose.

I just want a bit of macaroni and cheese.

It seems so very basic. I need to eat because I am hungry.

Yet, inside my brain, a brain that is damaged from trauma, very basic things can feel as overwhelming as very difficult things. 

I wish I was mentally stronger than my mental faults.

I wish I was mentally tougher than my inner thoughts.

I wish I was mentally above the lows that my sickness takes me too.

I do know how to get through these blips in time that are my ‘normal’ now. But that doesn’t make the “flairs” any easier, it just makes them less scary. I know they do not last ‘forever’.  When this all first started 5 years ago, these “flairs” were more like “marathons” and it was all a major game-changer.

However,  these events, though smaller and less often, are still infuriating and depleting and constricting and it’s bothersome to everyone around me – including myself!

The really bad spans of time are getting further and further apart. I am improving. I am improving a lot.

But, yet, today, for quite awhile…I have felt stuck in the throes of figuring out how to get myself lunch.

It is a very weird place to “be” … this feeling of frozen and exhausted, defeated and confined.

But, the fight continues and I am sure I will eventually get the dang macaroni-n-cheese…because Jim will be home soon 🙂

In the Middle of “REAL”,
Andrea