Skin Deep

I've spent some time today looking at posts on a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder forum. One of the threads is for stating your accomplishments, no matter how small or ridiculous it may seem to people who don't get it, and on that thread I read a post from someone who's been living a "normal" life according to them.

Part of their "normalcy", they said, was that to counteract their triggers -- in PTSD, a trigger is a sight, sound, smell, occurrence, person, place, thing, etc. that triggers the traumatic memories in flashbacks or intrusive memories or overwhelming emotion or panic attacks or any number of other ways -- they had developed "skin as thick as iron".

I suppose this is good for them. It seems to help them. I'm glad they're getting on with their life and it's good to know that people are moving on from PTSD, or at least learning to manage it. But that phrase "skin as thick as iron"...that phrase bothers me.

I don't want thick skin. I want a skin soft to the touch that bruises and bleeds and lets people see my insides if I want them to. I want my skin to be permeable as white linen sheets on a clothesline in summer sunshine. I want my skin to damage and heal and burn and blister and peel and scrape and scab and goosebump and get hives. I want to jump into cold rivers and come up shrieking with delight. I want to stretch out on a Texas sidewalk in short shorts and a tank top and feel the sun baking me like ancient clay and shining so brightly that the insides of my eyelids are hot orange.

I want skin that feels all of life and responds to it and enjoys it and hates it and continues on living. I want skin that sometimes loves the rain, that dances in it and splashes in mud puddles, and I want skin that hides from the rain under soft, warm covers and is grateful to be dry.

I want skin that understands the joys of fresh-from-the-dryer clothing, of putting on clean socks after wearing wet shoes, of being written on by a friend's pen and proudly wearing the ink all day. I want skin that knows deeply the agonies of paper cuts and skinned knees and remembers how it got each and every one of its scars.

I want skin that shows the world with amused pride the green-blue-black-purple-red lumpy bruise it got because it played hard or got knocked down or did something stupid but then recovered, got up, learned, and moved on.

I want skin that freckles in the summers and gives me awkward tan lines. I want skin that dries out in the winter no matter how much I lotion it, that loses all color so that my veins are visible.

I want skin that deals with the consequences of life but then heals itself.

I want skin that, when I'm old, will wrinkle where I smiled and laughed, will feel like ancient parchment, delicate and thin and irresistible to grandchildren.

I want skin that tells a story. My story.

The Chimera

It's been a long time, gentle reader.

How best do I explain my journey in the past few months?

I finally got in to see a therapist right about the time my mental illness rendered me nearly incapable of living what was left of my life. I was awake involuntarily until all hours of the morning, sometimes only finally falling asleep as the sun was coming in through my not-quite-blackout curtains. I would then sleep until somewhere around noon, at which point I would get up enough energy to plant myself on the couch where I would eat and cry and cry and eat and marathon television shows on Hulu and Netflix and eat and cry. I could occasionally manage to take a shower and even sometimes leave my apartment. If I had an obligation to someone else, I could manage to make it into the city or to a social gathering with only three or four mild to major panic attacks on the way.

I had such amazing friends during this period of time, reader. Friends without whom I may not have been able to leave my apartment at all or may have been reduced to a blubbering anaerobic fetal position on the sidewalk. So many amazing friends that to mention only a few would be a disservice to the rest, but the ones who helped most must surely know who they are. My parents, too, have been truly wonderful in their care and concern and quest for understanding.

Just before going home I got in to see a psychiatrist thanks in no small part to my exceptional new therapist. This psychiatrist put me back on Sertraline and then gave me something potentially more important.

Ah, reader, how can I possibly express to you what a difference it makes to correctly name the beast? Like the fabled Rumpelstiltskin or any demon in Creation, to know its True Name is to have power over it.

Depression, I called it for years. Then major depression, but still it did not heed my call. It did not bend the knee, but rampaged through the kingdom of my life, outwitting all my best-engineered defenses.

Well enough could I see the destruction in its path, but I only ever caught glimpses of the elusive beast. Fangs here, scales there. Monstrous claws, size unimaginable, a tail tipped in venom. Each sighting left me more shaken than the last. How can you defeat an unknown enemy?

And then the psychiatrist gave me its True Name:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And I called it by its name and it came to the gates of my being and sat sentinel at the door. I saw it finally for what it was, like a feral child or the lion with the thorn in its paw. It was not my enemy, nor was it malicious or vindictive; it was scared and lost and suffering a magnitude of pain I had forgotten or locked away. This creature was the one I'd invented to guard my darkest dungeons and fight my fiercest battles. I cannot defeat this beast. I must help it. I must tame it.

My kingdom is still in ruins, but I am rebuilding. And I am teaching the beast to trust me.

But most importantly, dear reader, I am finally being kind to myself.