PTSD and Games
As I’ve mentioned, I have the PTSD. Proper diagnosed and medicated, with a monthly therapy date and a mental health care plan and all that.
Doesn’t stop the triggers but I am better at dealing with them, and to that end:
Content Warning: suicidal ideation, sexual assault, rape
The most recent set of go arounds in tabletop have been incredibly triggering. As I mentioned here, it isn’t that I hear what Suleiman did to get himself banned from Stokercon and I go into flashback mode.
No it’s when women say they ‘didn’t know’ and ignore me, and trans women, when we speak about the missing stairs we know. All I can think of is sitting on the other side of a bonfire from a man a full foot taller, with at least 50 pounds on me, telling me that a woman had said he should rape me. Because I wanted it really. That when I asked her she made excuses about my queerness, my gender non-conformity, my oddness in general, and that women like me deserve men like him. I remember the fear. I remember knowing that my only chance in this situation would be if he chose to do the right thing.
He did, as it happens. It was later that a different man chose to do the wrong thing — a man not known as a weirdo, just a man known as the kind of flirty guy who gets too intense when he drinks, who likes women, who likes to fuck.
But what I want to talk about it what being triggered like this feels like. It’s hard to explain. I’ve spent a lot of time since the Weinstein stories broke in a state of disassociation — handy because I can still parent and write and work, but I lose time, react strangely, forget a lot.
It’s a little bit like when you are trying to juggle too many things at once.
So imagine for a moment you are playing Dark Souls. You’ve played it before, it’s pretty familiar, you like it. Then someone insists you wear sunglasses and you cannot get them off. You can still function, but not as well. Everything is muted. Then to keep the game going you’ve got one of those electricity-making exercise bikes. So now you’re pedalling furiously, sunglasses on, still trying to play. It’s a familiar game so it isn’t too bad, but you’re making mistakes a lot more.
Oh wait, someone has flipped the x-axis. It’s randomly flipping now.
Now this song is playing, really really loud, over and over.
It’s okay at first, you’ve adapted to all of these things. You have practice after all. You get a feel for when the axis is going to flip. Your eyes adjust. You pedal on auto-pilot. But that song is louder and louder and more discordant and you cannot hear anything but that distortion.
Every time you die someone throws a brick at your face. Sometimes it is a soft one, sometimes lego, sometimes a building brick that lays you out on the ground for a bit and leaves your head ringing. But you have to get back up and keep playing.
If you take a break — meditate, shower, eat, hydrate, medicate — then you can ditch the sunglasses or turn the music off for a bit. But eventually, things being what they are, a stranger will suddenly and unexpectedly force those things onto you.
But at any point in time you are still trying to play Dark Souls with something fucking with you. And it’s hard, and other people are having a much easier time of it, obviously you just need to practice harder, right?
Except I’m not playing a game, I’m trying to work, I’m trying to parent, be a friend, be a partner, a teacher, manage a household and four journal articles and two short stories and a book manuscript and a conference in another state. Instead of sunglasses I have the adrenaline narrowing my vision as I watch someone claim that they didn’t know, when multiple women warned them, and none of them warned me and were told not to. Instead of a stupid exercise bike, I have muscles and nerves that are shot from lack of sleep and nightmares, and a constant tension meaning sudden noises make me jump, that make even a short walk exhausting beyond reason. Anxiety makes my perception flip between ‘fuzz everything out but what is in front of you’ and ‘every single conversation on this bus is the same volume and importance’.
The song? That is the most accurate auditory representation of anxiety I’ve ever heard, but it’s also representative in this situation of the overwhelming knowledge that no matter what I put on the line I cannot change the system that eats its children. That convinces women to throw each other under the bus, tells men their wants are needs and they are entitled to them, that I will never ever accomplish anything.
That cynicism, that dead end of hope, will be the death of me if I let it. That’s the brick, the moment when I know that the world will be better if I walk into the ocean, fill my pockets with dead dreams and hopes and let the water take me. Or just imagine, for a moment, the world might stop for a bit. Or the satisfaction of a razor blade. Or just the visceral burn of a cigarette.
I am lucky, I have friends and a therapist and a good medication regime, and a hard won set of tools that mean the suicidal ideation is fairly minimised. I rarely dwell on the water covering my face, or memories of what my flesh looks like under the skin. I am craving cigarettes a lot more though, this is true.
(I have elected to elide the gastrointestinal aspects, for the sake of all of us)
I am also lucky that my years of therapy have given me excellent tools to mitigate a lot of this. I can minimise the harm I do to myself, I can engage help. I can also identify the points of distress. I can identify that some of my anger is displaced, that I am angry at myself for being different. Or I am afraid. Or I know I ignored red flags in order to pursue a easier path, or money, or fear.
That’s the only real way forward, as an individual and as a culture under stress, constantly traumatised and retraumatised by our actions and inactions. Identify the source, change tactics, bear witness, and work to make it better for those who are suffering.