Navigating Trauma Flashbacks, Difficult Conversations, & Reborn Friendships

A weeks-long series where I try to rediscover creativity, balance, and connection.

Preamble you can skip if you read the last one:

Over the last 6-9 months, due to a variety of factors, I’ve experienced an increase in the most debilitating element of my Complex PTSD: emotional flashbacks.

This coupled with my unemployment status and just general malaise has made for a miserable summer so far.

And I’m tired of it!!!!

I can’t wishful think my way out of CPTSD, but there’s a few things I know are beneficial to my mental health that I’ve let fall to the wayside—including fostering my creativity and a regular writing practice.

In the spirit of that, I wanted to create a space where I document the ways that I’m reprioritizing my mental health.

Consider this a diary of sorts that will include everything from the mundane to more serious topics, like how I manage my CPTSD symptoms.

Monday, June 29th

Experiencing a fair amount of anxiety over my endoscopy tomorrow, so my day is low-key. I pull out a Legos flower set I’ve been meaning to work on for ages, grab a snack, and turn on the ‘90s TV version of The Baby-Sitters Club (streaming for free currently on Tubi).

It is perfect and just as cheesy as I remember.

Tuesday, June 30

I arrive at the hospital at my scheduled time of 10:45 a.m. for my noon endoscopy—except I’m in the wrong place. Thankfully, the hospital system is all relatively in the same vicinity because they told me to bring any valuables, so I don’t have my cell phone after my partner dropped me off. As I hightail it across the parking lot, I can only imagine how high my blood pressure is.

I sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes, my worn copy of Anne of Green Gables—my favorite book—laying abandoned next to me as I tap my foot and take some slow, deep breaths, trying to ease the invisible rubber band wrapped tightly around my upper stomach.

It’s an easy procedure, I tell myself, but all I can think about is my first memory, one where I’m separated from my mother at 3 years old to get my cleft palate repaired. It was the start of s short series of same-day surgeries that followed for the next decade, but my mother was always waiting for me at the end of it.

Today, though, I am alone.

I’m 35 years old, but I feel small. Like a child. I hate it. I want to crawl out of my skin, leave her there, and walk home.

I try to comfort her; I close my eyes and imagine us sitting in matching gowns on a hospital bed together.

I read to her.
We watch Barney.
I tell her we are safe, that it’ll all be over soon.

But there’s too much stimuli around me; I can’t hold onto the images in my head, so it doesn’t do much in the way of abating my anxiety.

If I was alone and in a safe space, I'd work through the rest of my flashback management steps, but there are too many interruptions. I know that, in all likelihood, I'm stuck in this flashback until the procedure is over.

But I can also tell it's probably not one that will linger much after, which brings me a small comfort.

After a kind nurse retrieves me, I step into a pre-op surgery bay and change into an oversized gown and a pair of bright yellow grippy socks that I think about stealing when I leave. My jaw aches with tension—I’ve left my hearing aids at home, but all the bustle outside the curtain sets me on edge, anyway.

A nurse takes my blood pressure; the first number is 144. I can’t remember the second, but I know enough to know that it’s high for me, who usually hovers around 120. She assures me it’s normal; even if I wasn’t already anxious, white coat syndrome is real.

The anesthesiologist comes in next; he’s nervous, intense, and fidgety, and I think there couldn’t possibly be a less comforting presence to have right now. He tells me the risks of anesthesia—lung aspiration, heart attack, and other scary words. When he asks me if there’s anything I think he should know, I reiterate that my soft palate in still has a hole—my repaired cleft reopened once I grew. It’s been that way for years, and largely doesn’t bother me, so I’ve left it alone. He asks to see it before reluctantly concluding that he “thinks it’s safe to proceed.”

Comforting!

The doctor arrives next, confirming with me that the reason for my procedure today is regularly-occurring heartburn. Without thinking, I correct him, “acid reflux,” and a flicker of annoyance passes over his face before he asks me how I know it’s reflux. Tamping down an eye roll, I tell him about the acid literally coming up my esophagus multiple times a week. I bristle at his sarcastic response:

“It usually takes some time for us to confirm that diagnosis, but OK.”

Ugh. Men.

The kind and funny nurse with unmedicated ADHD (her words!) returns to insert my IV and (blessedly) turns the lights off to let me rest before they wheel me back. It’s around 12:30 p.m. at this point, and I’m the last procedure of the day.

Later, when the doctor returns to confirm that I have GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) and tells me to lay off carbonated beverages in the same breath, I think about how cruel the world is for giving me the satisfaction of being right in the face of a smug white man while simultaneously snatching my favorite drink—and only vice—away from me.

Before I leave, I ask the post-op nurse what my latest blood pressure reading is: 115 (again, I only remember the systolic numbers, sorry). Winner!

I celebrate my average blood pressure + making it through my procedure without a total mental breakdown with lunch from McDonald’s, including, yes—a Diet Coke.

They can’t expect perfection overnight, after all!

Wednesday, July 1

The heat index surpasses 100 degrees today, but I put on my best office-wear ensemble and head back to the economic development agency I interviewed with last week.

I answer a few more questions, and they reiterate they’re looking to make someone an offer by the end of the week, before they go on vacation.

That night, with all our blinds shuttered to keep out the heat, my partner and I cozy up with Matthew Rhys’ new Apple TV horror-comedy show, Widow’s Bay.

Rhys is a charming motherfucker in pretty much everything he’s in and excels at an American accent like few other foreign-born actors, in my humble opinion. The show is excellent, and we finish it in just a few days.

I’m sure, of course, that it’ll be another 2-3 years before a new season comes out!

Thursday, July 2

I typically spend Fridays with my Grandma, but my schedule shifts around this week because of the holiday.

Grandma—one of my best friends—is my favorite person in the world, but that still comes with the occasional struggle: my relationship with my mom. One of the reasons for my increase in CPTSD flashbacks is my current proximity to my mother, AKA The Person Who Triggers Me Most.

I didn’t name her last week because I still feel like I need to protect her—even though I think there’s one family member of mine who actually reads these things.

And honestly, my mother and I have already fought about my writing, anyway. I used to post poetry on Instagram and largely stopped because she got upset with me six years ago, even though anything I wrote about her (which wasn’t much) was fairly innocuous.

My grandma means well when she tries to push me toward my mother, but struggles to fully understand how my mother’s lifetime treatment towards me has led to the place I’m in today.

To her generation, family is everything.

And while I wish, of course, that my family could be everything to me, we’re just too different—something it’s taken me a long time to accept.

Today, my grandma tells me about a recent conversation she had with my mom, wherein my mom said that once I move away, she “doesn’t know if I’d come back if she were to ever get sick.”

My mother, who lives 30 minutes away from me and doesn’t spend 1:1 time with me.
My mother, who has initiated phone calls with me twice in the last year.
My mother, who never asks me questions about my life.
My mother, who doesn’t always greet me hello unprompted when I see her at Grandma’s.

My mother, the victim.
Me, the perpetrator.

Our conversation ends with tears drying on my face, but I hope that maybe my Grandma sees me a little more this time.

I hope and I hope and I hope.

Later, I have dinner with my 20-year-old cousin Grace. She has so much to tell me—and I, her—and I think about how grateful I am to have her in my life, to have relationships with family that see me.

We are 16 years apart, but she often feels like the sister I never had. It’s incredible to see how mature and wise she’s grown in even just the two years it’s been since I moved back home. She’s so self-assured, in a way I could only hope to be at that age, or sometimes even now.

I want a Diet Coke at dinner, but I order a water and an unsweetened iced tea instead.

On the way home, I wonder how much tea you have to drink before you’re at risk for kidney stones.

Friday, July 3rd

Five years ago, I met Liz at a remote job both of us quit a long time ago. We still somehow haven’t met in person, but we remain close via texts and twice-monthly Zoom calls, like the one I have with her this morning. We have so much in common, and I love having her in my life.

Later, I grab a bite with a woman I went to high school with that I reached out to a few weeks ago. I’m from a very small town, so while we weren’t the kind of friends who hung out outside school, we were friendly within its tiny four walls.

I hadn’t seen her since the day we put on our caps and gowns, but followed along with her own queerness journey on social media. It’s hard to find other LGBTQIA+ folks readily in Central PA, so I thought it’d be fun to get together.

We chow down on steak (her) and prosciutto and arugula pizza (me) and try to condense the last 17 years (UGH) into two hours. When she tells stories in the humorous, meandering way she always did, I smile and think about how funny it is that for as much as we all change, we somehow stay the same.

Saturday, July 4th

It’s still hotter than Satan’s asshole outside, so my girlfriend and I largely spend it indoors, with the exception of a quick trip to get some ice cream.

We spend some time reading and listening to music on our record player before we picnic in front of the television: hot dogs, fruit, potato chips, and the 1961 version of The Parent Trap (the Lindsay Lohan version remains my favorite and most-watched, but I still have a soft spot for the OG, which I watched on VHS a ton as a kid).

I tell Jecca, my partner, that I love the name Andromeda (the dog in the movie), even for a person, and she looks at me like I have two heads.

It’s okay, though—I have enough whimsy for the both of us.

Sunday, July 5th

It’s the first weekend in July, which means it’s time for my annual family reunion, one of my favorite days of the year. My grandma is one of 9 children—who range from ages 65 to 85—so in their heyday, these events were sometimes two-day affairs.

They’ve grown smaller and quieter over the years, a bit bittersweet really, but still a day I’d hate to ever miss (I think there’s been one in my almost 36 years).

Here’s the only picture that I took, of my uncle’s horse. I can’t recall her name, so let’s call her Andromeda.

………….

How My Week Went: It was an emotional one, and not without flashbacks, but I feel connected and more grounded than in previous weeks.

Unfortunately, I did not hear back about the job one way or another, which seems fitting, considering I’d actually really come around to the idea of it. Isn’t that always how it goes?

The next iteration of this series will be in a couple of weeks, as I’m going on vacation with my family and don’t feel like schlepping my laptop with me.

Both Grace and Grandma are going—among other family I love spending time with—so I’m hoping for a rejuvenating trip filled with books, sunshine, and pool time.

‘Til next time!

Liv