I had a dream last night that we were on the roof. It was kind of like my old house in Mount Pleasant in DC, there was a trapdoor you could climb up and get out onto the roof and it was nice. Our shoes were crunching the gravel up there, and it was night time. Just a little cool out, so I was shivering and you were saying how it would be perfect if the temperature dropped like fifteen degrees, so that you could wear a sweater. We talked and we talked and you held my hand and, like always, I marveled over how your hand could just engulf mine.

I have the stupidest dreams.

I found my guru on youtube. He looks so old now. And I can't believe how much I miss him.

I don't know how many fucking times I can lose everything.

The meds work. I can speak now. Hooray for talking.

In other news, I keep trying to write something about mind-control, brainwashing, and how victims perpetuate those practices. But for some reason, it's really getting to me more than usual. Maybe another time.

I went to the doctor today and got a lovely scope shoved through my nose and down my throat. CRINGE CRINGE. Anyway, I am on more meds and if this does not work then I am giving the fuck up. Because I am broke from all this medication. Fucking broke. And I am tired and in pain. I have been ill non-stop since November. This has to stop, because I can't do it anymore.

Two weeks, still no voice. Monday I am calling an ears/nose/throat specialist to make an appointment for them to shove a scope down my throat. This is causing me some completely irrational freakiness, but fortunately for me I like talking more than I am afraid of someone messing with my mouth and throat.

This is an absolute must-read. It's a run-down on the Assemblies of God churches and what it's like to grow up in all that. It's absolutely 100% resonating with me.

I had another acute fucking asthma attack. Goddammit.

Theron,

You do realize I shut down my old livejournal because of you, right?

Please, let me be.

Those Cymbalta commercials make me want to off myself.

I go to the dr. tomorrow. I haven't been able to speak really for a week. My voice is cracked and hoarse. For a few days there I couldn't talk at all. Couldn't even answer my damn phone.

Yeah, Spring break '08 is rockin.

I haven't been using my steroid inhaler because if it's not causing this throat shit, then it's aggravating it horribly. Only, without it my chest is a-tremble every time I inhale, trying immediately to expel the air in my lungs. I'm out of breath. This is unbearable and it's fucking freaking me out. A PTSD discussion site polled its members and an overwhelming amount of them have asthma. Knowing this does not help, though. Not at all.

I am rapidly losing weight. In the past six weeks, I have lost half the weight I gained on medication four years ago. Pants I could not come close to wearing in January are now falling off my ass. This is both good and bad. I am afraid that people will start thinking I have an eating disorder, like they did before when I was thin. But, then, women's bodies are always under scrutiny and people think they can comment on them because we're public property, I guess. So whatever. Eh. We'll see, I guess.

I just can't breathe.

There is no satisfaction in telling off someone you love. None at all. There's only hurt on top of hurt on top of hurt. And the only person it is hurting is me. And that makes it hurt even more. I can't sleep. There just isn't enough melatonin in the world to make me rest easy. I can't even drink myself to sleep.

All right, let's shut the fuck up about all that "survivor" shit, now, why don't we? It's stupid. It doesn't empower me. What's so special about not having died? Do I deserve a cookie for not having killed myself? I mean, what the fuck did I survive for? This? It can't be this. There's nothing here. I fought and I tried and the end result a ridiculous, empty life and a lot of crying to this dramajournal. It never gets any easier and it never gets any better. Congratulations. Go me.

My father called today and left a message. Checking up on me, he said. This is on the heels of intermittent emails from my mother asking me to contact them. I think this is the fourth or fifth time my father has called me on the phone. In my entire life, I mean. Anyway, even if I wanted to answer, I couldn't. I've had acute laryngitis for days and I can't speak. So I emailed them and told them that, no, my city has not been bombed and to chill out.

I am such a coward.

In PTSD, victims' brains are awash with heightened levels of cortisol. High, sustained doses of cortisol destroy neuroreceptors in the hippocampus, the area of the brain that controls the fight/flight (and freeze) mechanism, which becomes heightened and uncontrollable. The hippocampus, in many PTSD victims, is significantly smaller than normal. This part of the brain is also controls spatial navigation and spatial memory.

Suddenly, a lot of shit makes sense. Especially my almost comic lack of spatial intelligence and direction sense.

My right arm aches and goes stiff with a memory. My little brother was a toddler, still in diapers. My father was in front of the tv playing Space Invaders on the Intellivision and there were Falls City beer cans everywhere. It was always Falls City, with the red logo on the front. My brother wanders between my father and the tv screen. The time between my father shouting at him to move and my brother freezing in place from being yelled at was probably only a second or two, and then he stood up and grabbed the baby by his right arm and flung him. Hard. Who would have known that a drunk could move so quickly? He sat back down to his beer and his video game, scowling, while my mother called out, horrified. I remember exactly how she said his name. I sat there and I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I stayed very, very still for a long time. I think I was six, seven at the most. I wanted to go to my brother and hold him, but I couldn't. I was too scared.

I still freeze when I think about it.

I think it was three years later. My father was drunk. Again. The basement needed new panels to cover the overhead lights in the ceiling. My father was standing on a chair, trying to fit them in. Only, he was fumbling because he was too drunk to do it. He stepped down from the chair and beat the panels against the wall and the floor, smashing them while he hollered I can't remember what, just a lot of swearing. In front of all of us. I ran upstairs. My brother ran upstairs. I heard him crying in his room. I went to him that time and held him. We didn't say a single word. He cried and cried. This was the only time I ever went to comfort my brother.

I could hear my mother and father fighting when they came back upstairs. She was shrill and he was thundering. It's all confused now, but there were rifles in the closet. And a handgun I didn't know we even had. She was going to leave him and take us with her. Probably to Grandma's. I wanted to go to Grandma's. He pointed the gun at his head and I knew what he would do if she took us to Grandma's. I had to take my brother out of the room, I think she told me to. The front door slammed and he was gone. Drunk driving again. To the bar. We crept out of my brother's room to see. She wasn't crying, but she had a stricken look on her face. She raised the gun. It wasn't pointed at us, but it wasn't pointed in the opposite direction either. I wondered if she was just going to start shooting everything. I wondered if he had made her crazy. She pulled the trigger over and over, finally aiming at the wall and down. She wanted to check if it was loaded, she told us. It wasn't. I wondered what would have happened if it had been. We would have had holes in our house, shot by my mother, and for some reason that was very, very scary. But I was dry-eyed and mute. So was my brother. I can't remember anything that happened next, for the rest of that day. I don't think he came back that night. This was also scary.

She was always packing suitcases, for her and for us, but she never left. Not once. Not for a single night. She never took us out of there. She wonders, today, why my brother is always so short-tempered with her. So angry and resentful. Why he takes things out on her. Does she really wonder, though? Does she really not know?

She emailed me last night. Spring is coming to West Virginia and she is sprouting little plants for her garden. And I can't possibly be too busy to write. She wants to hear from me. She's worried about me.

Yeah. Me too.

Well, that was... interesting.

I just had my first acute asthma attack. As far as I could tell, there was no trigger. At least, none that I comprehend. I wasn't feeling particularly emotional. There wasn't anything new in the air. Nothing. I had to use the rescue inhaler and now I'm okay. But I was afraid I'd have to go get help, it was that bad.

I was trying to clean my upstairs. Get my clothes organized. Throw out things I haven't worn since I was a crazed cultist. And I just stopped right in the middle of it and now my upstairs is a fucking wreck. He left so many things behind. Some of them are too heavy for me to lift or move. He's been gone like two months and I still haven't thrown out the random things he left. Why was it so fucking easy to leave me? Why didn't I merit a "hey, let's talk about some stuff?" Why can't I find a way to deal with all the things that have me poisoned and unable to physically function like a normal person? Are there people who are happy and like living? Or is it that everyone is pretending and I'm just not good at that anymore?

This is all there is. There's nothing else for me. There are just days and days and nothing worth filling all those hours where I'm not working.

I have a wedding to attend in two hours. Also I am having another fucking meltdown. The two are entirely unrelated, except I have to figure out how to put on a nice face to be out in public instead of behaving like a badly played opera lead.