The basement chest freezer broke. All the meat I had in it luckily fit in the fridge freezer upstairs so it should have been a rather benign event. Yet, agitation and anxiety followed. I spent the day feeling overwhelmed by a problem already solved. I bunged my neck up again too. Never thought I would be able to injure myself with thoughts but then again I suppose that’s what all this PTSD stuff is, right?

Problem is I get overwhelmed when there are multiple things to do and that unplanned event was the one that tipped the glass. Even better now that my wife and I paid two dudes $100 to spend 30 minutes replacing a $15 relay that, had I been paying more attention would have noticed the schematic on the back of the freezer for and likely been able to diagnose and replace myself. That’s how distracted I was over the freezer. My tail is between my legs once again.

What does this have to do with rye? That was a big reason why I drank. The denial phase of having PTSD is interesting that way. For a while it seemed as though my cognition improved with inebriation. It obviously didn’t but by that point the bar wasn’t very high so anything that put me ‘in the moment’ came across as helpful. I told myself it was temporary, it was just helping me cope with the immediate. I would stop afterword. Problem is I can’t be my own catcher when I’m neck deep in the rye denying my approaching cliff.

This is what worries me about trying to return to work, even for modified duties. I’m a distracted overwhelmed idiot. There’s always something I’m forgetting. Everywhere I go there are “triggers and emotions”. Feeling like I’ll go back and just let everyone down again doesn’t exactly lend itself to confidence and capacity. Having that argument enter my head doesn’t exactly lend itself to recovery and post-traumatic growth. There is nothing beyond ego involved with that debate yet I still wage it. Constant self-awareness is PTSDs mocking cousin, always there to make sure I know that I used to be able to handle things, isolation being the safe solution.

Maybe it was all just another illusion anyway, the age-old self-grift. Consumed by the humanity I denied. It felt powerful to reject but there comes a reckoning…