As near as I can figure what happened is that my PTSD came back. Or flared up. Whatever you want to call it.
It looks like what happened in the spring carried over into the summer. Oddly enough (and this will make sense when I can tell everyone exactly what happened in the spring of 2016) what did it was driving.
It all started with a car a lot like this:
I don't remember the exact make, model or vintage, but it was my Grandmother's car. She adored that car. And if you're thinking it was a gas guzzling boat, you would be correct.
So after she died Pop and Nanny replaced it with one of these:
Around about 1992 I finally learned how to drive. I had been trying since 1988, four years, because I have a) a huge blind spot in my left eye, b) no depth perception and c) problems with hormone balances, including stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Driving in any sort of traffic tends to leave me as washed out as a dish rag in a very short amount of time. More so when people keep trying to grab the wheel because I'm about to hit something I didn't see, or I thought was further away than it was. Add in a minor accident when I was first learning that left me having a panicked fit and I was quite content with my bicycle for years.
But in college my job moved downtown, and one thing led to another and I learned to drive. Shortly thereafter I lost said job because the physical symptoms I had from driving, little things like shaking, stuttering and crying fits, made it impossible to do my job. But I could drive back and forth from Fresno to Monterey now, so I was happy. Granted that was all backroads, at least the way I went, and wide swaths of highway where everyone was going the same way. but I could drive, right?
Anyway. that car died after about a 12 year run. It had been running downhill, more or less ever since Nanny married Ex #2 and Pop stopped driving and eventually nothing I could do would save it anymore, not for anything short of a lot more money than I could afford. As it was it was costing me $300 every other month or so. I needed a new car, so roughly in 1993 Nanny and Ex #2 convinced me to buy Nanny's current car, because it was so safe and well-maintained. And I believed them.
Enter Buick Le Sabre #1.
Which managed to a) have the radiator rot out, leaving me stranded in a particularly bad part of town, b) go right back to costing about $300 in repairs every couple of months and then c) had to be replaced when Ex #2 put transmission fluid in the brake system.
Yes, that destroys your brakes . Yes, I figured this out while going down a very steep hill. Yes, I managed to pull the parking brake and get out. Call that major accident #1.
So I needed a new car. And Nanny and Ex #2 convinced me once again.
Enter Buick Le Sabre #2
Same model, slightly different color.
This one dumped it's radiator in the middle of a major intersection. Call that major accident #2. And then it caught fire under me when a hose disintegrated and landed on the manifold. Call that one #3. And in the meantime it also nickeled and dimed me. New tires here, new hoses there. New air filters. New this. New that.
Let me point out that three cars went out from under me in three years. All from problems resulting from a lack of long-term maintenance. All of which were maintained by Nanny and Ex #2 before I bought them.
Enter the 1996 Pontiac Grand Am
Which I got straight from the used car dealer with the insurance money from the car fire. And which ran like a top until the spouse and I sold it before moving to Oregon in 2003.
To recap, I go through three cars in three years, all from the same previous owner, all due to long term maintenance issues. I then get a car from another previous owner and it runs without issue, 60 miles a day, for six years. Spouse and I go through a few different vehicles as we sort out our needs up here, then we buy another Buick, a 1995 model, in 2005 and we are still driving it today. Ten years on a ten year old car.
But I'm the one who's hard on cars.
Unfortunately by then the damage was done. Now I'm not only afraid of traffic but I'm afraid of cars falling apart under me and leading to major accidents.
Strike three was harassment from Ex #2 after Nanny made him an Ex. As the family scapegoat he blamed me for the divorce (still does as far as I know, ten years later) and had me stalked and harassed from 1996 to 2003 when we left town. Part of that was a shit-ton of traffic tickets, and all from the Monterey cops. Cops used to follow me around town all the time. I would go from being a good driver in Pacific Grove or Carmel, to being a shitty driver in Monterey, to being a good driver in Seaside. So over the course of 4 miles my skills would go from being so bad that they had to follow me to wait for a reason to pull me over to being just fine. And would remain just fine for the other 24 miles of my commute.
Oh. And I had my registration tags stolen, which is a reason for a ticket in CA. Four times.
And from 1998 through 2002 I was taking medication that I have since found out I do not tolerate. At all. I get symptoms like hallucinations and black-outs.
By the time I retired I was taking anti-anxiety meds just for driving.
When we moved up here I was stopped for expired tags about a week after landing (I honestly had no idea) and I lost it. I gave up on driving then and there. And I didn't drive again for thirteen years.
In other words, this past May.
For most of that the spousal unit worked 3-12 hr shifts a week. This left us four days a week for errands, ample time. And for most of 2015 spouse worked from home, so errands happened when they happened.
But when spouse started working 5 days a week in a town 30 minutes away, well, there's not a lot of time left for errands. And I had to step up to the plate. But I can drive, right? I have a licence. I drove for years.
We forgot about the anti-anxiety meds. And I honestly never made the connection with my past. Bad cars and harassment and I don't see well anyway.
So I started having PTSD related issues again. And one of the first symptoms is when I start having issues with time. I lose track of it, it passes too fast, I lose track of my days...
And that is where my summer went. I was too stressed to do anything.
About two weeks ago I got caught up in traffic trying to get through an intersection. I immediately had a flashback to not one but three separate accidents that happened in the exact same situation. At that moment I was very glad I was wearing a pad.
No, really.
I called the spouse, who came home and brought me to therapy that day. And the three of us, me, spouse and my therapist decided that I needed to hang up my keys once more.
Time is already slowing down to normal speed. Thank goodness.
More tomorrow I think. On my other PTSD triggers, crafty things and why I need more TV and such. But hopefully I'm back.
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