PTSD

This morning, I got in my car and headed to work. Yes, I have to work on a Saturday, but I love my job, and my drive to work, and the day was glorious, full of burgundies, and golds, and a playful wind was tossing the limbs on the trees.
I love autumn.
I love these mountains!
I thought, “The only thing that could make a working Saturday better might be a little classic rock.”
I switched on my radio, hoping for Whitesnake or Tom Petty, but the John Boy and Billy show was playing and someone impersonating Ric James began to tell me “How to keep your woman happy”.
I whispered to myself, ”Is this supposed to be funny? When did domestic abuse become funny?!”
I switched the radio off immediately but memories flooded from the recesses of my mind, like it or no.
All my toughest memories are like a street gang in my head; they hang out together and attack me wen masse, usually when I'm already down. Sometimes at the merest sign of a chink in my armor.
Now I'm drowning in them:

A dark gun and a look of supreme satisfaction.
Blood that looks like Kool aid to my thirteen year old eyes.
Pain that finds all my weaknesses.
Panic that makes me lose myself.
The sound of my children crying.
Picking gravels out of my leg.
The feeling that nothing will ever be ok again, and I'm a failure as a mother and as a human being.
Utter. Complete. Hopelessness.
Angela, 13 months old, cold and dead in her mother's arms.
I. Did. Nothing. To. Help. Them.
Red, hot anger.
Black despair.
Feeling the gun against my head.
The sound of the trigger clicking.
Urinating on myself.
Struggling for oxygen.

And now, I'm struggling for my breath again, all these years later.
Still fighting for my sanity if not my life.
Fresh hopelessness settles on my shoulder like a wet blanket.
This day is going to be tough.
I wonder why I can't be normal.
Am I just too sensitive for this world?
And, I'm angry at myself… and at the John Boy and Billy show. Why can't I be stronger? Why can't they be kinder and more thoughtful? And I look up to my mountains but the world is only muted grays.

This, to me, is PTSD.
This, to me, is life.