How Survivors Define PTSD

Wow. Yes, the word "frozen" over and over comes up in that article. That is what it's like. A frozen computer screen. I can't even BE in my apartment anymore, which I loved. I keep wandering outside for some reason, but then his house is right there and I go back inside, come back out, go back in, etc. No sense of hope, which I always had. No sense of reality. No trust in anyone but my small children. For the first time in fifteen years, I have had dreams about my dead father, my dead aunts and uncles, friends from childhood and young adulthood that died or were killed. I fall asleep on the couch, the floor, anywhere and at anytime. I can stare for an hour or more at a flower outside or tree branches or even the dirt in the garden, thinking about the overwhelming complexity and unfathomable reality of the universe, thinking, what can I ever know? what can I ever figure out? I have never in my entire life thought that perhaps none of it is ordered, none of it makes sense. I have never before believed in evil. It is the tablecloth pulled out from under the dinner, the rug from under your entire understanding of everything. And HE did it. And then you think about that power that he had to reduce every single thing you thought and believed and felt and loved and wanted and endured and pulled through to questions and instability. I sometimes look at the N's foster child of five years old, holding the N's hand, with the same dead look in his eyes. Just two years ago, that child was happy and loving and compassionate. He has already destroyed him. And I look at my own beautiful loving little girls, who are going to grow up and live in the same world as him. And I think about that movie, "The Omen," And I think, now I know why his own father killed him.

I can identify with every single symptoms in this article. It is strange how i didn't realize how severely ill i was till i came here though. I have isolated myself from people, places and situations. Only allow two people near me (female cousins i grew up with). Even when i go to the store for no more than an hour, i want to go back home cause i feel in a state of panic. Home is where i feel safe. I have good days and bad. Motivation is something i struggle with daily. Nightmares of horrifying events come in waves. I can go a week without a dream then it hits and i cant sleep for a week. My physical appearance has changed. I look older, more frail and weak. Lost a lot of weight. I have no attention span. No patients. I cannot focus. Can not watch movies (love em). Phone conversations must be kept to a 2 minute maximum (if i answer at all). Have no ambition to get a job since moving back (fear of rejection). Im On medication that makes me tired all the time. My friends say "wow! he really f*cked you up didnt he?" I would say that's an understatement. Oh well Im still moving forward.