Stupid PTSD
Every breath you take, every move you make...
A 2-PRONG CONVERGENCE OF TOPICS, CONTINUED FROM:
—BLAM: My Dance With a Drunk Driver
—THE PERFECT STORM: That Caused My Non-Epileptic Seizures
This one’s gruesome. You might not wanna watch. And please always remember that I’m a martial artist who sometimes shucks the gloves. Some people say I hit too hard with this stuff. Other people thank me for Telling It Like It Is because they’ve never been able to find the words to explain their experience until I described mine, so you’ll have to discern where you sit on that spectrum. If you’re sensitive to gore, terror, and death, my delivery may not be for you.
If you’re looking for, “Okay, I/someone I love has the crap. Now what?” that’s a totally different topic. This post is, “What it’s actually like to live with PTSD.”
At least for me. Everybody’s is different.
If you do decide you wanna hop aboard today, I promise you some darling, feathered friends by the end of it, even if my Beast will never turn into Prince Charming no matter how many times I kiss it.
January 13, 2001
Day 24 after being rammed by a drunk driver
28 years old
I come out of my boyfriend’s bedroom and turn to walk down the stairs. As my knee bends and my hips tilt at the first step, that knife of constant pain that lives in my low back gives a sharp stab. I jerk full-body. My ankle rolls. I scrabble for the railing but just like in junior high whenever those jerks shoved me down the stairs, it slips out of my grasp.
This staircase, though—this one is way steeper and longer. These are not broad, shallow steps like at my school. I could usually catch myself in an acrobatic feat of agility before I truly tumbled.
I have no agility anymore. Since the crash, all my acrobatics are confined to those TBI feats of profanity I can’t keep from puking out my mouth.1 My boyfriend lives in an old Victorian house where stairs were built narrow and deep, so there’s nothing but air for way too long before my knee finally slams onto wood. I pitch forward and—CRUNCH. SNAP!
My cheekbone shatters. My nose breaks. My feet continue over my head and I get all twisted from trying to stop and then I’m summersaulting backwards down the stairs—Ba-Boom-Boom-Bam-BLAM! Every bony place bashes against every sharp stair edge until—CRACK! The back of my skull hits the floor.
I stare up at the ceiling, unblinking.
Warmth pools under my head.
I can’t move. My body goes cold as darkness slowly blots out my vision like the blood seeping across the carpet beneath me. I finally get my eyelids to close. Then open. Finally get my vision focused on the top stair.
It’s right there beneath my foot.
My hand still grips the railing as my gaze runs all the way down the staircase from where I stand. At the bottom, the office floor gives way to Galen’s big, black speakers. My mind gauges just how far down that is.
Yup. That’s a really long, precarious drop, so my hand fully closes around the railing and I lean on it. That way I won’t tax my back and cause a spasm that will make my body jerk involuntarily, thus plummeting me to my doom.
I carefully, methodically, meticulously make my way down EVERY. FRIGGIN’. DANGEROUS. STAIR so I can go about my damn day.
I hate these stairs.
My mind slams me with the same gruesome image EVERY. FRIGGIN’. SINGLE. TIME I have to go down them. Or any other staircase for that matter.
Stupid PTSD.
June 5, 2001
Month 5.5 after the crash
I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.
Driving.
I’m really glad I’m not trapped in my house anymore like a 15-year-old kid all over again, but I hate being in any vehicle, and I hate driving one most of all.
Okay, fine. Except when I’m not in control of the vehicle and somebody roars up to a stop sign and the person driving me doesn’t slow or even glance at them. I’ve finally stopped screaming, “OhMyGodSTOPSTOPSTOP!” and scaring the crap out of my friends.
The few I have left.
Nobody wants to talk to me. They definitely don’t want to get stuck hanging out with me. I don’t blame them, because I still can’t keep my thoughts behind my teeth.
Stupid TBI.2
Which means I can’t keep that clown-mask of The Positive Face™ on, or speak only unflagging determination with my fist raised—RAWR!®
I started losing my grip on that mindset within the first few weeks when the pain really started, and when I realized none of this was going to end any time soon. When I realized that some of it may never end. Now I’m just too friggin’ exhausted and I’m losing all my battles with the DA and the insurance company and Dakini’s smear campaign and even my own damn attorney and my own damn primary doctor who just wants to shove drugs down my throat and shut me up.
So after two months when I wasn’t All Better® or at least Perpetually Positive™ people started dropping like flies.3
It’s been half a year. At least I can drive my own damned self to my own damn appointments now instead of having to rely on people who hold it over my head or keep wishing I was The Ghost of Nadhra Past, instead of this beastly creature that now lives inside my body.4 Thankfully, I don’t have to pay outrageously to take a cab to work or get on that friggin’ bus anymore.
Well, except on the days when I can’t force myself to drive and I’ve called in sick from it too many times. Too often it’s too late to catch the bus because I’m already sitting in the car with full-body tremors and only fifteen minutes to get to work. Then I just have to leave everybody in the lurch.
Again.
But not today. I made it to work. I worked. And now…
Almost home. Almost home. Almost home. Just breathe. Envision it like it said in that book about “mind over matter.”
A friend loaned me that little book right before the car wreck. Supposedly it doesn’t matter what you’re focusing on. The whole book was about “attracting abundance into your life” but it said you could use it for anything, not just money. You can use it for better health, getting a job you want, having the kind of relationships you want, whatever.
Well, after reading that book, I’d been meditating on all this stuff, and I started envisioning getting home safely on EVERY. SINGLE. DRIVE.
That is, every single drive except That Night.
It was late. I was tired. I forgot.
Now I’m superstitious about it, so I make myself SEE it every time I drive or ride in a car. I SEE every road, every turn, every intersection and I FEEL myself getting through them all safely, pulling into my parking spot and WHEW! Aaaaah… Made it.
But today a lady is standing on on the grassy median of Uintah Street. I hate driving on Uintah more than any other street in this town. More than any other street in the world. Especially the exit where I got rammed. Whenever I approach that exit, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. My brain slams me with the images all over again.
HeadLights
HeartRace
PassMe
Now!
BOOM!
Skip—Screeeee!
ROOOAR—
Crunch—Zwing!
Whoa…
Ba-BLAM!
Brrooowwwwww…
Silence.
Black.
EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.
And random other times just…I dunno. Because? Because my brain thinks it would be fun?
But this is not the freeway exit. This is just Uintah Street. Just the street. Just the street. Breathe. See? There’s hardly any traffic right now. Mid-afternoon, so chill. Almost home.
But the lady’s toes edge toward the curb. She looks rapidly up and down the road and—
She steps out! I can’t stop in time! My foot slams the pedal. Screeeee on the floor! ROOOOAR of burning rubber. Sideways lurch—
BWHUMP!
I slam into her. She flies. Splatters. Rolls. I’m still skidding.
Th-thump-thump!
Over her body—FUCK, OH MY GOD!
Brrooowwwwww…
Silence.
I can’t move. Can’t even get out of my car. I’m just shaking-shaking-shaking. Voices all around. Police lights all over again. Interrogation. I’m so gonna get hauled off to jail! I try to tell them that I didn’t have time to stop. That I tried so hard to stop but she just stepped out and—
I’m pulling into my parking lot.
I blink.
How the hell did I get here?!
I turn into my parking space and stop. Shut the car off. The only real thing about the past four minutes is my shaking. My hand hovers around the key to turn off the car. Quivery.
Did I truly just blank out the entire rest of the drive home after seeing that woman on the side of the road because my brain was too busy slamming me with the entire start-to-finish episode of what it would have looked like if she’d stepped out in front of me?
Yes.
I clamp down on my hand. Get it steady enough to twist the key and pull it from the ignition. Trudge up the stairs. Wince at the pain in my low back. Wince at the images of tripping and falling and breaking my face on the—
Hold the rail tighter. Last couple stairs. Another lock. Another key. I can barely find the right one. Have to clamp down again to get it inside the hole and twist. I shuffle inside. Swat the door shut and twist the knob, locking out the whole world.
I don’t even get my shoes off before my butt hits the futon cushion and my head hits the cradle of my hands.
Holy fucking hell fucking shit.
I have just become as dangerous on the road as the drunk who hit me.
After that, I start having panic attacks before work every morning instead of just on the worst mornings. I start breaking plans with people even more than I already did. I start calling in sick to work way too often.
I am sick. They never should have cleared me to drive.
See, it’s not just the nightmares about car wrecks—or whatever your particular PTSD inciting incident is. It’s not just flashbacks about the actual wreck. It hijacks your life, turning anything and everything into a potential threat just by the imagining. And that imagining comes equipped with every sound, sight, stench, and sensation of a real memory. It’s often impossible to tell the difference until it ceases having its way with you.
Nobody ever really talked about these kinds of gruesome images back then, so I just called them “flash-forwards.”5
When you’re neurologically hijacked by flashbacks and flash-forwards all day, every day, and when your dreams become horror movies, bolting you awake night after night after night at a time when your brain and body need the restorative power of sleep more than they ever have—oh, and when you re-whiplash yourself all over again every time you jump up gasping or screaming—things turn pretty bleak pretty quickly.
But if you don’t know what PTSD is like, then you can’t KNOW.
Everybody’s is different.
This was a tiny glimpse of mine.
And yet…this period was the most explosively healing time of my life. I was simultaneously learning, growing, imagining, working my ass off to claw back any semblance of a life that inspired and fulfilled me.
As such, I was becoming pure magic.
Only four days later
Journal
6/9/01
I held a bird in my hands today.
Like…a real, live wild bird!
Galen and I took a walk and there it was on the sidewalk. It had rained earlier so there was a huge pool of water. Bird was drinking and taking a bath, probably cooling down. Galen stopped to watch but…I dunno. I just knew I could. Just like that squirrel when I eight. And that deer when I was 25.
I softly walked up to the other side of the pool and knelt down. The bird didn’t fly away. Kept drinking and playing in the water. I held out my hands, cupped. Told him hello and that he was beautiful and that I just wanted to admire him up close if he wanted to let me.
He hopped right into my palms! Danced for a little bit, hopped back down to the sidewalk, shook himself, and finally fluttered off.
I might be The Beast, but today I am also Belle. I am Cinderella. I really am a Faerie Princess!
An exhausted Princesszzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Hey, man. This publication isn’t only called The Beast. It’s both of us in here, not always getting along…but always learning, and always trying.
UP NEXT: Sometimes it IS the classic night terrors and flashbacks. ALL NIGHTMARE LONG. Asleep and awake. Stupid PTSD.
AS PREVIOUSLY AIRED
PLEASE DON’T DRIVE IMPAIRED
© 2025 Hartebeast
This series starts here:
BLAM.
If Only. If only I wasn’t such a social butterfly, a hostess-with-the-mostess, a proud, doting teacher—I would have made it to the back room and had my costumes packed before ten o’clock after our holiday dance recital. If only I had let someone else drive a friend home after her truck broke down, I would have made it to Walmart twenty minutes earlier.
From Brainline - PTSD & TBI - the Perfect Storm:**
“The person may retell an experience repetitively in excruciating detail to anyone who will listen. Such repetition may be symptomatic of a cognitive communication disorder, but it may also be due to a memory impairment.”
For me it was both. Not only could I not hold back whatever was on my mind or censor certain parts of answering a question, but I also often couldn’t remember that I’d already told someone something. Sometimes I couldn’t remember that I’d already told them that 5 minutes ago. Sometimes I couldn’t remember that I’d already told them that 5 minutes ago.
Around here, we call these symptoms Think It Say It Syndrome, the Broken Stop-Mechanism or the Hamster Wheel, and Forgetful Lucy.
“Events and stories are repeated endlessly to the frustration and exasperation of caregivers, friends, and families who have heard it all before.”
Now I arm my loved ones with the safe-word: MUSKRAT. But in order to bypass The Beast getting hacked off about being Muskratted - read: Muzzled (“don’t muzzle me I have a right to be hacked off because this is atrocious you can’t handle the truth yada-blada!”), it is always wisest to ASK, “So…you’re starting to repeat yourself. Would this be a good Muskrat Moment? Or do you just need to blow off a cinder cone?”
This way, I get to decide. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually enjoy repeating myself like that.
Now that I have healed, rebuilt, and re-routed so many smashed neural pathways, that little cue will often give me the claw-hold to haul myself off the Hamster Wheel and stop ejecting pyroclastic word-puke from my hole. It helps me Woo-saaaaaah because it validates that someone DOES care—obviously, because they HAVE already listened to me, and now they’re caring enough to help me steer my broken cognitive rudder so we can salvage an enjoyable time together, and our relationship doesn’t need to go down the toilet because of stupid PTSD & TBI.
This is called Toxic Positivity. But I didn’t know what that was yet. Ultimately, it was a blessing when these people fled the ship.
I don’t remember hearing about the flight down the stairs before! That sounded heavy! Very well described.
I also found the part at the end about the bird lovely and also reminiscent of something I’ve been thinking about lately… I feel as though no matter how hard and shirt and fucked up things are (and lately that’s how they’ve been for me haha) there is still always these little moments of magic and wonder and joy, whether it’s the bird, or my cat on my lap or just a blue sky. I feel like the hard stuff makes us appreciate these little moments more than we otherwise would.
And finally — “I still can’t keep my thoughts behind my teeth.” — is a great phrase. :)