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Scraps of me - bits of wisdom, madness, mayhem, S&M...low on dogma, high on everything ;) |
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Entries: 1 - 4 of 4
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The ends of the mind: Synaesthesia, Migraines and PTSD
I wanted to put this link up:
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/silentjane.htm
It's a fantastic article, very clear and on topic - talking about PTSD, and the weird and wonderful ways our brains choose to cope with it.
In the case of the lady who wrote the article, her version of dissociation mixes synaesthetic experiences of sound (from TV shows) with the reality of trauma...
it's a rich text, complex and emotionally deep without being overly nightmarish in its description of traumatic experience.
It's in the style of Oliver Sacks, and as I'm a sci-fi fan I got a kick out of the pseudonym the author uses, silentjane, as it's in part a reference to Orson Scott Card's Ender saga.
It certainly made me feel better since it made me feel OK about my brain's slightly quirky responses to dealing with trauma. It's not your average article, by any means and it isn't the standard lip service to the reality of PTSD either.
For me, I get curious about these things because I get migraines. I used to get the classic visual auras before the pain but these days it's a little quirkier.
I tend to get olfactory hallucinations, which I find incredibly entertaining if something of a pain in the behind. They happen after the nausea/vomiting part but whilst I'm still overly sensitive to light. I'll be drinking something and when I taste it I get this accompanying smell sensation of (fair warning, this is gross) a wound infection. Like the smell of a bandaid after you've ripped it off a healing skinned knee. I told you it's gross! ;) Weird, very weird so I really related to the article.
It's funny the places the mind goes when it's being assaulted - by its own chemicals or by an outside force, it doesn't seem to matter. As I read recently, the incidence of PTSD is much higher for those who experienced accompanying head trauma. As Alice would say: curiouser and curiouser!
A Tall but Empty Glass - February 5, 2008
I'm a victim of mortality,
all of you and all of me -
Can't you see
this is weak piracy?
Steal my heart
my private dissection of wishes
lost in the deep blue something
that churns with rebel force.
I explain,
I'm riding through.
Awake, to take this,
your talk-back,
better off bloodless,
captive here, drinking my beer
stifling my fear.
I stitch me up
and turn me round
and drop me to the heavy ground.
I'm found, ever around.
Ultimate distinction
Winter fields as we march
the long road.
Pushing and wishing
fretting and failing.
I fall off the cross
and weep so far below
pulled in an undertow,
nowhere left to go.
Get off of me,
Just deck me,
and let's dance this dance.
I'm a trip,
I'm a trance,
I'm a stuffed-up romance.
I wear this old engagement ring
a reminder, a mirror
a glue.
I've got it all together now
Vibrant dream
painted viral meme
that was once your lost scream.
I stitch me up
and turn me round
and drop me to the heavy ground.
I'm found, ever around.
Boy, pretty boy
you sing to me
of poppy fields of need,
you crave me,
and with my head tilted
i cry.
I am at rest
between your shoulder
blades.
You call me:
Jelly Bean
Green Eyes,
lit by gin.
A flame in which
this begins.
I grin, I gamble
with this my last
five bucks.
I must confess
but to whom?
Now it's all up to us,
nobody else left to trust.
Bring me back the toy from your
next happy meal,
and maybe I will start to feel.
A hope spider,
crawling up the inside
of my legs -
careless love in a tall glass.
Digitised dismissal.
There's no way back
to the before
to hear the unheard
or unsay that word.
I'm not really so sure,
drill me,
sporadic pounding at my breast.
I stitch me up
and turn me round
and drop me to the heavy ground.
I'm found, ever around.
Stay away,
please,
honestly just await the evening tide
and let me learn
the regal blue
the fragrance true
that taints me with you.
So far outside it all,
I feel my guts slip out,
into the muggy light.
So far to go,
so much I do not know
but I'm spinning in this spot
and my half-smile tells you
to make this stop.
Cup the curve of my breast
in the circle of your palm:
The air will stop,
the mirror of you in me
is all that I can truly see.
Discovery tied about my wrist.
I'm at the mercy of each twist.
Human exposition,
tonight I am a jungle
and I am one breath away
from Neptune.
I sink in skin,
and now, oh how I begin
with each and every little...
Grab my hand, tea party time
move on, move up,
stunned flashes as we stand.
we'll stitch me up
and turn me round
and drop me to the heavy ground.
I'm found, ever around.
I do not have to swallow,
only suck it up
and take it hard,
and break each shard
so that I cannot, later
recall my dizzy dance,
our false seduction -
I will not rise again in three days time
but I will soar far over you
into a day not black and blue
but made of gentler hues
that calm the marrow of my womanhood
and descend into an instant bliss,
not unlike a kiss,
which glances across my skin.
Up these stairs I head,
and drop each letter you wrote
(Each apology and reason,
each well-phrased execution of my soul)
is casually released
as I go.
I am not doing well with the nightmares/PTSD, and I just want to be moved into my new apartment already... hopefully I will be soon 'cause I hope that'll make me feel a bit safer. So many memories coming up because it's that time of years - anniversaries of crap things in the past.
I so wish I hadn't found this old journal of mine because it has a couple of entires from a scary time in my life and it still fills me with dread in bits because reading it over again feels like falling down the rabbit hole and I can't yet find where it all fits in my head and I'm really struggling with that.
A bit braindead - Fri, January 4, 2008
Music in the Moment: Tracy Bonham, Metallica
Munching On: Toffee Apple bar
Drinkin': Coke Zero
Reading: Newsweek
Watching: NCIS (mmm, I'll take a bit of Abby anyday and hell, throw me a bit of Gibbs too and I'll be a very happy camper)
Quote: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." -Will Rogers
I'm trying to roll with the punches but they're coming thick and fast just now.
On the one hand, I'm happier than I have been (generally) in a very long time, and I really do thank the universe for finally letting up a bit. On the other, it means I'm really feeling more than 'comfortably numb' most of the time, which is interesting, annoying, confusing, joyful, maddening, and worst of all, so very standardised. Not normal, no (since I don't believe it exists and since if it does it's clearly the anti-christ) but just plodding, like the ticking off of items on a shopping list. I imagine I'm a shopper in Coles, and where once my life was just grab and go, now there's food miles to calculate, organic whole-grain, battery-tortured, maimed, mutilated, innanity to process.
The world doesn't make me crazy, I just come that way.
What exactly am I supposed to do when every little thing makes my skin crawl or my mind race? I am learning, slowly, to take time out and actually deal, genuinely, with the hard parts. That's good but it's not easy - Of course, I don't really want easy but just a little bit easier would make all the difference.
As you can probably tell, my mood is barely tipping the scale at OK but that's largely due to exhaustion. For those that haven't noticed I'm part Vietnam Vet, part Cast-iron Bitch, and part Pretty Kitty, with a little bit of my Father's alcoholic melancholy thrown in for good measure. I'm a bit Shakespeare, I'm a bit braindead - I don't think anybody would say I'm the excitable sort though I'm working on it, really I am.
Right now, I just want to rock out to some tunes, and chill on my couch and the world be damned.
I have done all my errands, for all and sundry; I have mollifed my Mother; I have checked up on everyone who needs checking up on; I have done all I can to make sure that the world will not come to a crashing halt if I finally give myself the OK to stop kicking my own ass for a while.
You know what? I am quite happy to kick my own ass when it's necessary but this year I am genuinely going to try and only do it when it really is necessary, and not just as a reflex.
I know, I'm a control freak, right? Yeah, well: :P
This is the problem with holidays, too much damn time to think but hey, at least I've written a bunch of new stuff !
Fully Formed
Music in the Moment: The Dresden Dolls, Placebo
Munching On: Wasabi Peas
Drinkin': Pepsi Max
Reading: Area 7 (Matthew Reilly)
Watching: Carrington (Emma Thompson is a Goddess!)
Quote: " I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it." Mae West
New year = new blog, folks. Yes, clean slate and all that. I don't make resolutions: I just jump on in even when the water's cold enough to freeze your nuts off!
I'm not a robot, maybe just a word junkie.
They say writers are prone to addiction and goodness knows most of us are mad but maybe it's just a certain creative process requires you to think and see and do, all overlapping till it happens so fast and so naturally it only seems like a system when you try and break it down. Words can't really be separated like that even though we try, they still rely on the most circular of logic and more of the irrational than much else once you get past pure description. There's something about knowing your words are bouncing off more than your own brain skull that gives strength to the urge and adds a kind of focus, or at least reinforces the rush of putting pen to paper.
Sometimes that's all it takes, reading something new or hearing that perfect turn of phrase and wanting somehow to reproduce and contextualise it. I think these things take a while. Partially it's a trust thing, trusting yourself as much as anybody else to get it somewhere near right or analyse the situation fast enough to come up with something spontaneous yet real. I have been at this so long that recovery is always present, always something I'm involved in because I don't know where the beginning is, where the first crash came is hard to find and all the subsequent obstacles are enough to crush whatever tentative agreement might be reached.
It isn't a burden though. It's just a process.
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