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Sometimes serendipity tugs not only at my mind, but at my heart strings.  I almost feel guilty now beginning this post because what I wanted to talk about is how my Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is acting up this week.  In way of a visual image I saw dancers on a stage, only the stage is lumpy and bumpy, with lose boards, even with some missing.

I committed myself to participate in a community art project tomorrow.  I have no real idea at all about what this event is going to be like, but these people asked the local Fiber Arts Guild for a spinning demonstrator for it.  Most of the Guild is going to a workshop tomorrow, so I thought, “What the heck.  I used to do these demos all the time 30 years ago and I did just fine.  It will be good for me to get out of the house, be in public, do something nice for somebody else.”

Added to that, as I look back over my self this past week, I went a bit too far in my eager attempts to take myself out of the house into the wider world (remember, I live in a small town, so I am not talking major PUBLIC).  So, tomorrow will be my 4th day OUT.  Only already the consequences of my PTSD are causing me trouble.  I am like a dancer on a shoddy stage, I swear.

My sensitivity to sensory input of any kind is astounding!  I had lunch yesterday with my friend at a downtown restaurant I have been to with her many, many times.  Only yesterday I could not tolerate the music blaring through the loudspeakers.  My friend told me it was no different that it’s ever been before.  I could not sit in the booth facing the window.  I could not tolerate the sunshine, even in the distance, so my friend and I had to change sitting places in the booth.  By the time our meal was done, the din of voices from other diners sent me reeling out the door.

This is no fun.  This doesn’t feel like the me I knew in my past.  I see the image of a roulette wheel spinning and spinning, slowing down — that’s me.  I need to be WAY slowed down.  This all makes me think about running down a hill.  All my life I’ve been able to stay ahead of the house-sized boulder rolling along behind me.  Not now.

This also makes me think about dissociation, about how handy dissociating has been in my life.  I used to have access to a confident, competent, socially gracious Linda that has vanished from view.  I am raw when I go out.  I no longer have an ability to ‘make things go away’.  I no longer seem to switch into different versions of myself that used to be able to participate fairly appropriately in different scenes, with different stimuli or different demands.

I don’t know how tomorrow’s event will play out for me.  I will load up all my equipment and show up like a good soldier.  But I won’t do this to myself again.  I evidently have to pay a high price internally to now do even the simplest things.

This has made me think today about those of us with PTSD, that maybe we are so burned out, physiologically, from what we’ve endured that there just isn’t enough life force left to tackle life head on any longer.  It’s like my body-brain wants to be in a PERFECT WORLD now.  I need that sense of peaceful calmness around me in my environment as if the world ever COULD be perfect.

PTSD has our entire system on hyper-vigilant super-scanning while at the same time we have a severely diminished capacity to tolerate stimuli.  To give you an example of what today showed me:  My friend works at a building with low income roomers that has a washer and dryer.  Once a month she collects the quarters, and I go through them looking for the 1976 bicentennial ones as I roll the rest of the quarters into their paper wrappers.  I’ve done this for a long time!  But today, from an arm length away I could barely stand the metallic smell of the money in the box my friend brought them to me in.

I mean, how ridiculously overly sensitive  is THAT!  Even the sound of them dropping into the little plastic tube thing we put them in to make sure there’s $10 worth in each paper was hard.  This little sound was a roar to me!  I swear!!

So, then I thought I’d look for an image of a fallen dancer online because of its connection in my thoughts to PSTD — and found this terribly sad story.  I had told my kids a week ago that I can no longer tolerate watching the Olympics because of the tension I feel knowing how much these athletes have invested in their art.  I can’t bear even the anticipation that one of them might fall.  I somehow care too much!  And now I see this, a tragic, tragic tragedy:

FALLEN DANCER

“Liu Yan, considered one of the top classical dancers in China, was seriously injured while practicing a solo routine for the opening ceremony for the Olympics in Beijing, and she may be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life. On July 27, the 26-year-old dancer was practicing in the National Stadium when a platform malfunctioned and she fell 10 feet, landing on her back and suffering nerve and spinal damage. At the moment, she cannot feel anything below her chest, and she cannot move her lower body. Organizers for the opening ceremonies initially told witnesses and friends to not disclose the accident until after the Olympic Games, but news began to leak after several newspapers began inquiring about Liu. [NY Times]”

dance for the fallen – Korean dance performance Suwon

Who will love all of us enough to dance for us?  Can we find a way to safely dance for ourselves?

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This IS really what I am talking about.  Every single one of us who suffer from PTSD and trauma-related changes ARE fallen dancers.  My heart goes out to this fallen Chinese dancer and to all of us who have suffered so from trauma — and I need to include ME in the US.  I need to not judge myself harshly because the smell of quarters or the brilliance of sunshine or even the sounds of voices sets my nerves to vibrating worse than fingernails on the chalkboard.  I need to learn what this all means to me, having PTSD and now only really being fit for a perfect world.

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