Covid RN PTSD

I don’t want people to look at me strange, but I also don’t want to not tell you how it is.

I have a (mostly) private journal that I write my thoughts and feelings down in sometimes, as I have them, and that’s important because other than anger I don’t often let myself have feelings anymore.

I wrote the entry below back on 12/4, when we were watching the post-Thanksgiving numbers rise, and before vaccination roll out. I’m not so bleak now, but…I likely wouldn’t be anyways.

Because I’ve perfected the art of disassociating.

People who know me know my brain is full of boxes. Cluttered with them, in fact, and that’s where I put everything. Because when you’re a nurse you’re always expected to move on and perform — and far far far more so now in times like these.

The downside of it is the general disconnect from humanity (which isn’t great when taking care of humanity is your job) and feeling unmoored. But if to be connected is to feel pain and not be able to function when people need me the most, well…that’s why I journal.

To remember what it was like to get to have feelings, while they last.

I don’t want people to look at me strange, but I also don’t want to not tell you how it is.

Entry from 12/4

It's been a hard day to concentrate, really. I can kind of feel the wheels falling off again inside my head, re:work and covid and people online and in the world still being maskless, anti-vax dumbasses.

Because I don't know that I'm strong enough to do all this again for a second time. It hurts so bad and it breaks my brain. I'm so angry one minute and then so indescribably sad the next -- it's like my thoughts are treading water endlessly, with nothing ever to let them rest.

Some things are still good -- my health, my husband, our relationship -- but watching the tsunami, just this upcoming unending wave of dark coming in overwhelms any particular personal brightness.

And there's not even a point in trying to escape because it just is, it's everywhere, and it's not going to go away, and it's going to take months and months. And ppl (who I am related to, even!) are still so terribly fucking, fucking dumb.

It's really hard to have empathy for everyone, and to some degree I don't want to anymore. I just want to hog it all for myself and people who listen. Being a good person fucking sucks (don't let anyone tell you otherwise.) Sucks even when you're getting paid to do it. Maybe more, because you legit have buy in.

I've spent my whole life thinking about myself in one way -- and then this spring I had to walk through a tar pit and I feel like it almost got me. I was broken, I felt betrayed, I was suicidal. It took me months to put myself back together into this current version of me, New Cassie, Now, with Dents!

And so just knowing more tar is coming, more endless stupidity, more dealing with the fall out of people's bad decisions, listening to people weep on facetime because they killed their grandma, having made decisions THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO MAKE because they were let down governmentally, systematically, educationally, by their churches, etc, is heart breaking.

I don't know how I can do my job without feeling things, because that's not good for my brain -- I can compartmentalize like a fucking mofo, but I know doing too much of that leads to disassociation, which is also very not good, because then I feel so distant from the world.

Which I always lowkey do anyhow, but this just makes it so much worse. Between people not believing things on the internet, and just in general -- like -- I had this happen when I was a burn nurse. No one wanted to know what my job was really, because it was gross and frightening. It was just my burden to bear, solo, and I got used to it.

But at the same time -- I never had to see anyone wander around outdoors with lit matches, you know?

I was OK back then holding things in when it was just a pact between me and the patients and my coworkers. But now that I see people wander around in society, trying to, looking to, gonna get, burned (metaphorically) by this -- it's really fucking hard.

(And in my darker moments, it makes me want to grab their faces and curb them against the pavement, which is not a very nursely thought at all. I don't enjoy being a violent person on the inside. I'm so angry y'all. There's so much rage in me. I want to quench it, but to be honest I don't know if it's safe to. What if that's the only thing holding me together, keeping me put one foot after the next, just sheer fucking spite?)

Anyhow. I'm trying to stay connected right now, really. I know the drill: hanging out (virtually) with people, gardening, exercise.

But this is just a lot, on all fronts. It just is.

My husband keeps telling me to go to therapy, but here's the thing about that -- I never once needed therapy as a burn nurse, for being a burn nurse, because I had that shit on lock. (For being a morbidly depressed author? Oh yes. But never work related, heh.)

If I hadn't though -- like -- what would've been my ethical responsibility there? Because I can close my eyes and conjure up shit that would make you puke on your shoes. If I couldn't have hacked that, if I needed to share that with someone else -- what civilian could I have ever expected to help?

It wouldn't have been ethical of me to give that shit to someone else's brain.

And that's how I feel about covid now, too.

It'd be different if I saw a therapist who lived on Mars, I guess, who wouldn't also be participating in this society. But, obviously by default, any current therapist would -- and I don't know what they're going through. I don't want to spew shit out at someone who may very well have lost, or be going to lose, a relative, and scarring them too.

That's not right.

I don't even know what I'd say to them anyways.

"Hi, yes, I've been epically betrayed by my country in general and my relatives in specific, and there's Not Anything You Nor I Can Do."

"Yes, I have PTSD, no I manage it pretty well casually, thanks."

What would even be the point?

I make therapy appointments and by the time they come around, I’ve already boxed everything up again and don’t want to talk.

All this shit is situational, and realizing that is the only leverage on my brain that I've got -- and I don't need a therapist to tell me that.

I just have to tough it through, again. Despite the fact that round one almost broke me. Getting the vaccine will help. Watching people die who didn't have to, well....

Hope I like the new version of me who I'll get to be on the other side of all this. She's gonna be tougher and more distant and more weird and have an even harder time being present, and people are going to talk to her in the future and be all, "Wow, that must have been so hard for you" and I'll get to smile tightly at them and say, "Why yes, yes it was," without telling them any of this because they don’t really want to know and I don’t really want to hurt them, and that’s what people who move in polite societies do.

Eh, it'll all fit in a box again someday.

Just gotta keep getting bigger boxes to shove things in is all.

And make sure I don't fall in myself.

***

Back to now — I read this, and I’m all, who even was this person? And it’s not that I didn’t feel like this or that this didn’t happen. It’s just that…it’s no longer me.

I boxed her up and set her aside already. There was work that needed doing, so I did it.

I tell people astoundingly sad things sometimes, and then they come back a week later and they’re all, “Hey, so, how are you?” in that gentle kind way where they’re worried you’ll break — and truth be told, I’ve completely forgotten. (Or I’ve seen so much sad stuff in the interim, I’m all, “Uh, you’re gonna have to be more specific, please.”)

It’s not like those feelings weren’t legitimate in the moment. I did feel them, and needed to express them (verbally, or in my journal) but… I’ve just gotten so (cripplingly?) used to moving on.

Because not moving on isn’t good for me — if I dwell, I get (more) depressed.

But at the same time, when all you’re doing is moving on — I don’t know if that’s healthy, good, or right, either.

Is it?

It is functional. Yes. But I kinda feel like vast parts of my psyche are spring loaded traps that I’ll get to discover later. Maybe all these boxes I have are turning into Jack-in-the-Boxes, I don’t know. I don’t feel as whole as I did before all of this started, or perhaps even as whole as yesterday. When you run through all your memories with a melon-scooper sometimes you have to really conscientiously try to be a person again afterwards. I don’t want to be your strange friend who can do a human dance with dead eyes. But I don’t want you to feel bad for me either, because that’s strange too, and I know personally so many other people who have it worse and who would need your pity more.

So yeah. I’m okay, mostly, as long as I’ve got enough cardboard and packing tape.

(Just some days I’m not sure I really know what the word okay means.)

-Cassie