Live Through This
Swimming to Breathe
My therapist tells me I have PTSD and I laugh. “No I don’t,” I snort, even though the idea suddenly feels right. It would definitely explain a lot.
“The word ‘trauma’ is so abused,” I lecture him, “it’s not like my legs got blown off in Iraq.” I think about people on social media who use the word “trauma” to describe bad dates, who water down the term into oblivion.
He shrugs. “If you don’t believe me, go look up the PTSD symptoms in the DSM-5, written by guys in suits who don’t know or care about you.”
A few hours later, I sit in my car after my weekly eyelash appointment and do exactly that. For months my therapy bills have had the billing code “F43.10,” and I look that up too: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Unspecified. My mind seizes on “unspecified,” and I decide the term is a hedge; no one really knows what’s going on with me after all. I’m sitting in a Volvo, post eyelash appointment on my way to a manicure, and this does not strike me as the life of a traumatized person.
But then there’s another life, one in which I can’t stop crying no matter what or where I am; in which I sometimes can’t breathe because there is a lasso around my neck or chest, tightened by some invisible force; in which I chain smoke, drink, lash out at people; in which my own health has completely…
