Angry

I've now moved on to feeling frustrated and angry about this entire memory-I-can't-quite-access thing. I know why the brain shuts certain things down. I'm glad for this in many ways. There are things I'm sure that I never will remember and that I am glad I don't remember. In fact the memory that is annoying me now is probably one of them, although I think I will remember eventually (I just don't know that I want to).

The reason I'm angry is that the memory is close, like having words on the tip of your tongue that just won't come out. It's making me not sleep well, which means it is making me tired. It's making me sensitive to anything that is close in any way to whatever it is. (And unfortunately my current book on CD that I listen to during my commute is about guns, and the only other selection I have right now is too).

This is the time when I really hate PTSD. In many ways PTSD is a good thing; I know that I don't want to know everything. In that sense it is protective. However, it is also very frustrating because of this kind of thing where I remember pieces but not enough to know the whole story. And then, in many cases, I've ultimately remembered everything and I have handled those things and in at least some cases been able to get past some of the fear/distaste involved. For a reason I'll let you try to guess at (I doubt it's hard) I have a thing about vaseline that extends to many slimy things (I will not touch vegetable shortening and avoid using it so much that I just threw out the first tub I ever bought, which was in 1998, and it was mostly full). That one I hadn't really forgotten, but refused to acknowledge the reason for the fear. Eventually I did, and while I still hate that feeling, the appearance of it in a jar, and even the slight smell of it, I can stand to use ointments, I have used shortening occasionally, and when I had laser surgery on my birthmark I was able to handle having a layer of bacitracin covered by a layer of Aquap*hor for several weeks while it healed. Which just shows that understanding and remembering lets me move forward, and right now I feel stuck.

I suppose I have to go to work. I'm so tired, I really want to just sleep today. Oh well, maybe I can manage to leave early. I've got an hour coming to me....