Even if I could describe my current state and how it has changed in the last 18 hours, you would not believe me or you would not be able to understand me.
I only slept about 30 minutes last night. I think it is 1 pm here (the clock on the computer is always wrong because the operating system is a pirated copy), and I gave up trying to sleep less than an hour ago. I spent the three hours before midnight arguing with man-boy who is too loud and trying to get some sleep despite the yelling and throwing toys and the loud movies no one is watching. Then I argued with the loud jerkwad who works at midnight. It was horrible.
I spent the next six hours afraid that someone else would come in to the dorm room and argue with me. Even when it was finally quiet at 2 am, my heart was beating so quickly that it was pounding in my ears. Mine is the only room that does not lock, so while the terrible mother retreated into her room and locked the door behind her and had a bathroom there, I was cowering in the corner, afraid to sleep and be woken up by someone wanting to argue with me.
I fell asleep for a short time around 6 am. Something startled me and after I calmed, I realized I had slept a little. I could feel my muscles smile in relief, and it immediately turned to terror because I realized the day manager and possibly the owner might arrive at any minute. I believe the day manager will support me, but I do not want to fight with anyone. I just want sleep.
Sleep never came. I tried to calm with a shower. No good. Meditation. No good. My thoughts were gruesome and awful, so if I could not sleep, I at least wanted to direct my thoughts to something happier. I was successful with that.
I had another day-dream / alternate-time-line experience: very strange. The feelings are so real and intense, but I am aware that it is all imagination. I experience the events as if they were happening to me, and then I recall them as if they were memories. Just before I came out here to type, I put on my shirt, and it felt odd because part of my alternate time-line included the experience of throwing away this shirt—my only shirt—and buying a new one at the airport. When I put this shirt on, I was momentarily confused because I had just “stepped” from the alternate time-line, in which the shirt is destroyed, so I could not comprehend how I was putting it on.
I recall the events and relive the events as memories. The time line was purposely happy, so when I recalled the memories of these things that will not happen in the future (follow that?), I still felt as if I was recalling something from a few years ago. I cried. I could not control it. I cried because that life I will not live was so beautiful and so loving, and I cried because it will not happen.
The PTSD definitions say that people often cannot recall the exact events of the trauma—at least not without help. Until last night, I did not that applied to me.
The midnight jerkwad reflexively starts or ends every sentence he directs at me with, “My friend.” I hate it. It comes from Arabic-language customs here, so I understand why he does it, but he, in particular, is not friendly so his poor, and automatic, pronunciation of “myfrenddd” is offensive.
Last night I said, “I do not want friends, I want sleep.”
The first part was just a rhetorical device and not meant as a precise statement. My analytical mind, however, overheard the statement and dissected it. I am now sure that I have been able to see that I have PTSD symptoms but I have not been able to articulate the traumatic event(s).
I do want friends. I desperately want friends, and I am terrified of my friends. The most damaging trauma has been the betrayal by my only friends in Carroll County. I did not see how those events made me suspicious of all of my friendships. My unconscious suspicion caused me to mistreat my friends, probably all of them at least once. If I were conscious of the suspicion, I think I would have managed things a little better, but I still would have had difficulty with my suspicions.
I only saw this about 12 hours ago, so I do not know how, or if, it will change anything. I have already destroyed or lost nearly all of my relationships. I cannot control my own mind or sleep, and I do not have the strength to eat or drink—much less strength to repair friendships across the ocean.
I have not decided which state is the least unhealthy: cowering in the corner terrified to sleep, or “living” a time-line that will not exist. What bothers me the most is that I do not which option to choose because it reminds me that I am living in state that I do not understand and that I do not have the skills to navigate—and I live in a country, and a world, where I can get the medicine I need if I “come back tomorrow, insh’Allah.“
