You Are What You ...

Eat. Watch. Read. Listen to. 

Everything that you are exposed to has an effect. For example, people who watch, listen to, or read the news regularly tend to have a more negative view of the world and feel that crime has increased over time, because that is what they are exposed to.

I'm a highly sensitive person. Add to that extreme introversion and PTSD and you'll find that my nerves are all right there at the surface. Some of them may even extend past my skin. 

I learned over a decade ago that I have to pay attention to what I let in. Very dark books, tv shows, and movies are hard on me. I take them inside me and the darkness tends to stick. I remember the most horrific things from such stories and they pop up years later. Given my obsessive thinking, it can take days to get the thoughts to go away. 

When it comes to the news, I keep in mind the way it can bend your perceptions, so I mostly scroll over the headlines online.

Although I learned my lesson over a decade ago, I have to keep relearning it and re-remembering it, as I do with everything. I have remembered to not read books about serial killers that won't die, but I keep forgetting about TV shows. I watch CSI and CSI NY (I think CSI NY is less dark than the original). But the worst is that I've been watching Criminal Minds. That's all about mass murderers, serial killers, and bombers! It's one of the worst things I can do to myself. It's like an addiction. When the next season comes around, I'm going to remind myself to Watch Something Else. 

Now, I cannot watch movies about psychopaths, because they are monsters that exist and I'll have nightmares and my anxieties will increase. But I can watch movies about non-human monsters, such as giant sharks and behemoths that come out of mountains. And I can watch natural disaster movies — the worse the disaster the better. Maybe these are cathartic for my anxiety, my PTSD. Certainly they stimulate me and make me breath faster, make my heart race. Perhaps they are helpful in balancing out how withdrawn I can become due to the hypersensitivity and the introversion.

Some of my friends are very thoughtful and mindful of my sensitivities and will caution me about various movies or books, even going so far as to say "don't watch that, ever" or "don't read that, ever." I love that they care and that they know me well enough to be able to tell me this. Their doing so makes me feel loved.

Lately I've been bingeing on monster movies, now that I have Netflix Streaming Video. It coincides with a lightening of my mood. I cannot even apply a correlation because I have nothing to base it on; there are other things that do have some correlation. However, the movies don't seem to have a negative effect on me, so I think I'll continue. Anything to feel better, right now. Anything to feel better.

This time I'll remember what is good for me to watch, read, or listen to. This time I'll remember what is bad. This time I won't listen to the little voice that says "it won't hurt you, you enjoy this." I'm sure many people have heard that voice and knew it meant the exact opposite of what it says. This time I'll remember to sick my big, protective voice on the evilly seductive voice. Who do you think will win?

This time I'll remember to take good care of myself. Forever.

Floating lightly, as if smoke on air, and peeing

Between feeling like a cat — just a breath away from a nap — and feeling as if I have no responsibilities when I'm here (which isn't exactly correct), I've been drifting from one thought to the next, none of those thoughts being particularly deep. That's fine, but half of my two-week vacation is gone and I haven't accomplished what I planned to do: go through the storage unit to sort more of my things out and to find things to send home. I do have a couple of hours here and there I could devote to it, but so far most of my hours are completely filled. It's totally weird. And I still haven't set a time for dinner with the neighbors.

My two deep thoughts are about my health. First: why am I so bloody tired? Needing to take one or more naps a day is not normal for me, and my first (always my first) thought is that I have cancer or some other wasting disease. Because dying now would simply round out the story of my life: 1, 2, 3, 4 — Dad, Jim, Mom, me. Hypochondriac? Maybe, but more likely it is just another part of hypervigilance and always expecting the worst so I'm prepared for it. And yet, as with Mom and last summer, I'm only prepared for the worst in respect to myself. I mean, I've been grieving since September 12th; I've only been sleeping all the time for the past two months or so. The napping and the grieving don't match up.

The other health concern is about my urine. If you have a problem with bodily TMI, better skip out now. Are they gone? Okay, now it's just us. The problem with my urine is that it's gone completely clear and it smells a bit odd. No pains in my kidneys, but this seems like something wrong. Is it my medication? Am I dying? Is it something else? I've called and left messages with my psychiatrist and my physical doctor (because the psych wasn't calling back). I left info about symptoms. That was earlier in the afternoon for them. It is now mid-evening back there ... I doubt they are calling me back today. Does this mean the symptoms are nothing to worry about or that no one has actually looked at or listened to their messages? A call back would have been nice. Kind of like a signal on one of the SETI radio telescopes. "Yes, we heard you. You are not alone."

Napping and peeing: important issues at the beginning of life and often at the end. Let's just hope it's also a problem in the middle of mine. Not like I'm paranoid.

Who goes there?

Ah, the proverbial military security phrase, usually preceded by "Halt!" Movies and books have shown simple ways to get past guards: throwing gravel, pebbles, rocks. Making the guard jump, look, even go investigate. In a way, movies and books were telling us a bit about the PTSD a soldier can get. Hypervigilance — jumping at noises, seeing shadows.

It doesn't take declared war — or military action of whatever name politics calls it — to create PTSD. Just trauma, being placed in a situation (often repeatedly, but sometimes just once) where showing extreme vigilance was a survival mechanism. It means being hyperaware of sights, sounds, smells. And it means assuming, and mentally preparing for, the worst-case scenario.