Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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I'm in my last week of school year duties at my college. I'm about to leave right now to take part in Commencement. I sit on the stage in my cap and gown and announce the names of students so they can come up and get their diploma from our college president.
It's a real honor, but I'm having some trouble pulling it off because I've had some PTSD symptoms this week concerning being shaky. I've knocked over beverages again and again all week at home and out in the world. Yesterday I dropped a drink I'd just bought at a McDonald's and exploded it all over the floor. The manager had to come mop it up.
I did it again back home, this time with a bottled water that poured all over my laptop's keyboard as I was typing replies here to DS PTSD posts. I'd had that laptop for 5 years, so I guess it was due to be replaced, which I did. But that laptop had survived trips everywhere with me, just this past March to New York City and Mexico City. And yet it died here at home from my own shakiness. SIGH.
My fingers are crossed for luck as I head out to Commencement. I'll be glad when I can get some rest so that this PTSD shakiness has a chance to pass.
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Here is my new brother, copper :) He's so tiny! Moo and Tuck were ok with him on first meeting. Rocket due to his severe aggression will never meet Cooper.
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https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTDeA9Wxg/
sending peace too, breathing with you xo
But the unsteadiness and clumsiness did rear its head at the end of the ceremony. Just as all of us on the stage rose to file off stage and join the parade of robed up faculty back out of the building, I got up and reached for my cane.
It so happens that unbeknownst to me, by then my cane was under the legs of the chair I'd been sitting in as reader of diploma names. You just can't plan the kind of clumsy scenes that follow when PTSD has you just not aware of the space you occupy. In a million years even with professional movie stunt experts I couldn't have duplicated what happened when I innocently pulled at my cane to lift it.
It lifted all right, and as it did so it acted as a lever. The leverage perfectly flipped the chair I had been sitting in up in the air and backwards off the back of the stage. Right there in front of the college president, vice president, and two college board members, not to say the rest of the college that filled the gymnasium facing the stage.
@#!!!&%#!!??/!@#$ PTSD!!! (Fill in the blank with the curse words of choice). ___________________________________________ !!!
Oh well. Color me red-faced in front of everybody where I work. At least I didn't flip myself off the back of the stage like Peter Sellers in one of those Pink Panther movies. I came close, though.
Now I hope my sense of humor and/or patience will be allowed to have a break. I'd like a chance to get some rest and stop this PTSD anxiety/stress/insomnia I've had for two weeks now that's given me the shakes at year's end.
Coping with my PTSD symptoms these last two weeks while the school year I got less and less sleep every night. Meanwhile, the drama built more and more toward the "big show" I was to take part in--that Commencement ceremony.
Man, I'm glad that's passed. Thanks for pointing out what a good job I did in spite of all. Like I said, I got so tired I was shaking and knocking things over. That bottled water that spilled and ruined my laptop. That chair up on stage during the graduation ceremony. I was knocking something big over every day.
SO tired. Now it's all over. I think I'll go back to bed now--ha! And hibernate, like some kind of bear.
Focus on the great job you did reading all those names, that sounds like a challenge and you did it, isn't great they picked you to do it.
Support & hugs
As for how I'm spilling beverages--what killed that poor laptop last week--I went shopping for non spill mugs tonight. They were hard to find out there in stores. Guess I'll have to shop for one online.
Kinda humbling, but I guess it counts in my favor as acceptance, so I'm going to go with the latter approach. I wanna be spill-proof when I fire up my laptop every day to post here on DS PTSD.
((I ruined a laptop in a similar fashion...)
I've also been known to drink hot coffee/tea with a straw.