Category Archives: PTSD

Break for Freedom – Day 3 (Spaghetti Squash)

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Day 3 – Sunday, August 13, 2017

7:26 a.m. – Ugly morning. First awake moments loaded with all kinds of discomfort, emotional, physical antsiness.  You don’t plan a day’s first moments; you live them.

In the shower, a few minutes ago, I realized the isolation has separated me from my body. This new awareness, I am pleased to report, riles me up, makes it far more likely I’m getting out the door this morning. I cannot shake the images of violence from the White Nationalist/KKK/Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday. I’m sure Donald Trump’s response-statement further secured his white-racist voting bloc.  If the man ever walks in front of my car I am not going to let my dislike for him have so much decision-making power it makes me to forget the brake-pedal is on the right.

8:47 a.m. – Home. God, what a beautiful word. I walked the same distance, again, without the armor of dog, walking stick, music, pepper spray.

It felt cool out. Three minutes in, I am soaked through and unable to tell if I am actually cold or not. A mishap of sorts from yesterday has me burst into laughter a few times, and that helped. I recently got on Instant Pot, a kind of pressure cooker. My friend, Annie, had suggested it as a help for someone like me whose patience mirrors the size of a gnat when it comes to preparing meals. I thought I’d begin with Spaghetti Squash.

I cut the squash in half, put some water in my new pressure cooker, saw it was set for 10 minutes, and on it went. I suppose the best way to let you know the outcome is to give you a paraphrasing of the conversation I had with Annie afterwards. I called her in Hawaii.

  • Hey, Annie. I just wanted to thank you for the Instant Pot idea. It’s great.
  • I’m so glad.
  • I had spaghetti squash!
  • Wonderful! How was it?
  • Drank it through a straw.
  • You drank – How much water did you use?
  • About three and a half cups.
  • Oh my God!
  • Too much?
  • (Laughing) Peter, maybe three-quarters of a cup.
  • I drank both halves.

Anyway, Day 3s’ walk is under my belt, next to the spaghetti squash.

Break for Freedom: Day 2 (Ha!)

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Day 2 – Saturday, August 12, 2017

I’m going to have to get out of my own way if I am getting out the door again at eight today. They say, Keep it simple for a reason. As my friends, Maria and Annie like to say, Ha! They say this to me in a text or email from time to time, and at the best moments too. Maria lives in Florida and Annie lives in Hawaii. Recently, I suggested to Maria that we either have a baby boy, or adopt one, and name it Mueller, after Robert Mueller III, the man heading up the investigation in Russia-Trump and a man who, by any measure, represents all that much of our country needs to wake up and remember our country stands for.  Maria responded with a glorious, “Ha!”

The, Ha!, is loaded with humor, love for life, and the radiant, healthy defiance (playful in these instances) found in the face of one who is not about to have their love for life and equality tampered with.  Every time one of them fires off a Ha!,  I want to hug them. My life is far better off for the presence of Annie and Maria. For those who think men and women can’t be just friends, Annie’s been a friend of mine for 30 years at least, and Maria’s been a friend of mine for 40 years.

So, it is now 6:48 a.m. in the opinion of a digital clock that sits on the cluttered top of a two-tier filing cabinet. Oops! Changed its mind, it’s 6:49. Eight a.m. is coming into view. I need music and movement and a shower.

I suppose, too, if there is going to be any benefit to either of us, I’d be wise to offer a glimpse of my emotional state, which, of course, is physical and, spiritual too. I’m packed with fear and the sweat has started. Emotional, spiritual and physical equal one because they are one

7:42 a.m. – I’m out the door. (No dog, no music, no walking stick, no pepper spray.)

9:04 a.m. and I am finally home, another soaked shirt under my belt. Same distance walk as yesterday, followed by a trip to the store. Walking outside is something like being in another world. It’s overcast today, damp out. There is a street I walk on near here with large beautiful houses. I like looking at the care and love and creativity people bestow on their property is great fun.

There are gifts to going into the world you don’t expect. I walked past a tall, older woman with a Scotty on a leash. I said, “FDR would be proud.” She laughed and we talked for a few minutes. Here face had some serious scars and skin discolorations. It gave me great joy to continue looking right at her, smiling, listening, keeping our eyes connected. The discomfort you might feel when looking at an appearance influenced by scars, discolorations or whatever has nothing to do with the person you are seeing.

I told her I used to say dogs are people too until it occurred to me I was insulting the dogs. She burst out laughing and said, “That’s a good one!” We parted smiling.

Day 3 of this effort awaits. The good news is, it ain’t here yet. I’m going to have a cup of coffee now.

Ha!

***********

For Annie & Maria

Walking through the fear; making a break for freedom

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Day One – Friday, August 11, 2017

Maybe this is a kind of Break for Freedom journal. I am 63. There is no time to lose. Destroying my fear of going outside can never begin on a fear-free day. The fear will be there, like some kind of emotional fungus, and fungus is a bitch to get rid of.  I live with a brain injury and an ample dose of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) as a result of being held up and shot in the head in 1984. The bullet remains lodged in the brain.

I like to think of Nelson Mandela’s words about courage That courage a triumph over fear, not the absence of it. The exact quote is, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

I love Mandela. My guiding lights? Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Geronimo, Beethoven, Helen Keller. They all dealt with fear, and they all triumphed over it. I’m good on the role-model front.

But, here I am at 7:23 in the morning, preparing to go for a walk at eight. It makes me angry that this is terrifying for me. They use the word anxiety. Fine. But fuck that word. I’m afraid. I’m scared. I’m frightened. There’s no mystery to this. I long ago learned it is not weak to admit you’re scared. Were admitting it an act of weakness, why is it so hard to do?  I need to shower and go. I know I will shower again when I get back, but I don’t care. I feels better entering the fray, fresh and ready — sharp.

8:48 a.m. — I walked about half a mile: no dog, no music, no walking stick, no pepper spray. Just me. I came back my shirt soaked through with sweat, immediately drove to the store, picked up typing paper and a 64GB SanDisk. Now I am safe at home with Charley (my 10-year-old Black Lab mix).

Early in the walk I pressed the index, middle and ring fingers of each hand against the front of my thighs and kept them there. Feeling the muscles move and harden with every stride was comforting. I kept my fingers their most of the walk. It had not been a conscious choice. I just knew to do it; it happened; and it helped. Instinct. Perhaps the most precious gift life has to offer. It humbles me, this uncanny skill our species has for surviving, for keeping life, rather than relinquishing it, especially to a monster called fear.

Day one, under my belt. That this all occurred in under an hour blows my mind. It felt like hours. Now, Peter, breathe.

A couple of close-ups if you will. At one point, there was an inner dialogue, someone asking me, “So what are you so afraid is going to happen if you got out?”

“I’m afraid someone is going to kill me.”

“In Adams?”

To which, my unedited reply would be: “Listen, you stupid fuck. I wasn’t expecting someone to put a gun to the side of my head and blow my brains out when I was walking to work on a so-called nice block in Brooklyn. You let me know when you find a violence-free zone, you stupid shit, and I’ll move there. You think that’s strange? I met a woman who was sitting in a parked car in a nice community upstate, holding her baby, when a drunk driver crashed into her side of the car and her baby’s head was crushed right before her eyes. Like I said, you find me a violence-free zone and I’m in. In the meantime, shut the fuck up.”

I can tell you, this dialogue helped me cover a solid half block in distance. Imagination well spent. Tomorrow’s Day 2. I’ll see when it gets here.

**************** 

For Chris Albee

 

Walking on eggs, patience, facing death & willpower

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I’m a patient man but I fought too hard for my life to walk on eggs for anyone all the time (back to this in a minute). I was held up and shot in the head in 1984 and live with the bullet lodged in my brain. The bullet tore a path that extended more than half way through the frontal lobe.

Surviving that, as you might imagine, requires you fight like hell for your life.

Along with my brain injury, the shooting experience contributed to a formidable PTSD presence in my life. For me, PTSD means certain events, sounds, smells, situations, and so on, cause flashbacks and flooding. Flooding means a particular emotion or emotional condition has overwhelmed the person’s in-the-moment experience. Stopping it on a dime is impossible. In my case the emotional condition most likely to flood is terror.

Knowing I’m safe intellectually doesn’t stop the terror. It takes hours for the terror to subside.

Okay. The egg thing,  patience, and willpower. Some years ago my friend (and in my heart, my brother) Dane Arnold, said, “You’re too patient with people.” Trust me, he said that to me more than once and he was right almost every single time. I’d be allowing someone to take advantage of me in one way or another, giving them chance after chance, when I should’ve cut them loose.

I rented a room in my lower east side apartment and one of my tenants was horrible about paying rent, cleaning up after herself in any of the common rooms. She had a marked talent for the woe-is-me ballad. So, I let things drag on until I finally realized she’d mastered the ballad but never lived the experience. The switch, as they say, flipped, and the she was out.

There are times people think patience, or, as the more common saying goes, niceness, is a sign of weakness. I can think of no bigger myth. One of the gifts getting shot in the head gave me is the awareness that the following paragraph describes an experience that underscores the active presence of willpower

Here’s the experience:

I am lying on the ground bleeding to death. I’ve been shot in the head and the top of my head’s been blown off. I can’t feel anything below my neck.  I’m blind. It’s around five in the morning on a residential street, it is dark and no one is out. I am alone and I know it. A few moments later I realize I’m standing up. My vision is back and I’m connected to my body again but I have no memory of standing up. But the truth is, I did. And I was alone.

I may still be too patient with people at times. You see, I know a lot of people who’ve been pulverized by life so badly trusting those around them is a steep climb. An impossible climb for some, sad to say. But before I disengage, I’d like to know I I did all I could. Sometimes too much, perhaps.

Thing is, I’d rather be guilty of being too patient than not patient enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-Eight Years Ago Today

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Twenty-eight years ago today I was held-up on my way to pick up my cab and shot in the head at point blank range. The bullet remains lodged in the frontal lobe of my brain. This is not a depressing day for me, not at all. In fact, as others who have survived similar moments have said, today is a second birthday of sorts.

What is worth noting is that it would be 10 years after the shooting before I would hear the words, brain damage. My experience is not unique. I know people with brain injuries all over this country and many went years before hearing the words brain injury, traumatic brain injury, TBI. Many of us were left to deal with the effects of brain damage not knowing that brain damage was the force behind the problems we were grappling with. We were, in  a sense, managing life blind folded, hands tied behind our back. We did our best, but it is hard to be successful when you don’t know or don’t understand what it is you’re up against.

All this is why it is so important for any state with a brain injury program to make sure those who design an implement the program have a solid working knowledge of the brain.

But this is not my reason for writing this today. My reason for writing this today is to share some thoughts with you. There is little doubt in my mind that you too have faced or are facing challenges that feel as if they have total control over every aspect of your life. I am here to tell you they don’t. They really, really don’t. The truth-telling, right-sizing equation goes like this; because something feels like it has total control doesn’t mean it has total control. It simply means it feels that way.

Believe me, there were times the damage to my brain felt all powerful. There were times too that the idea of returning to life after the combined experience of some kid put a gun to my head and firing and then another guy puts a gun to my head less than nine months later had so much power I did not step foot out of my house for nearly a year.  Were it not for some close friends who were my neighbors at 286 East 2nd Street in NYC, I don’t know how I would have stayed clothed and fed. In time, and with treatment, and the support and love of close friends, I began to reclaim my life and leave the house. 

And then there is this, you have a relationship with life and all the elements that come with life. I have a relationship with my brain injury. I have a relationship with the the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that is, today, my number one opponent. There are still days I can’t get myself to leave the house. The point is, these relationships are no different than relationships  between two people. They can be healthy or unhealthy. The challenge is this. Don’t let the elements of life that look to impeded your freedom to be you of have decision making power. Relieve them of decision making power every chance you get. There may be times you can’t. Okay. Relax. Don’t worry. Get some sleep, wake up the next day,  do your best.

The last thing these life-impeding elements deserve is to be behind the wheel of your life. That is your rightful place.

Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Remember to live.