The emotional breakdown that followed was a crumble at first. It was little, confused pieces every day, and huge, gasping sobs every night. It was four months into my relationship with Sam, and he spent his days at work and his evenings holding my hand on the couch. He believed it would pass. I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t understand how the death of someone I didn’t know could cause such intolerable internal pain.
“This isn’t how I want to be, you know.”
“I know,” he said.
Our one-year anniversary came and went quietly that November. I thought about how PTSD had now been a part of our relationship for longer than it had not. I thought about how nice it would be if our weeknights were about lazing on the couch, talking through our days, or having an occasional argument over the dishes. I wondered if my emotional volatility would ever cool off. I wondered if our relationship could make it through this stress.
Would Hawaii Be My Getaway?
On Jan. 1, 2020, we touched down at Lihue International Airport with jet lag and weary happiness. It was the first day of a new year and what better time to leave the past behind? My thoughts chirped along as we walked to baggage claim, the warmth and relief sweeping in like a wave. “This feels like where I need to be right now,” I thought. We joined throngs of sunburned tourists waiting for happy hour to start at a restaurant patio, which was open on the holiday. A waitress appeared at our table just in time with a basket of warm, salty edamame. We drank chilled seltzer with bitters out of ruby red tumblers, and smiled at each other across the table.
“We made it,” I said.
On our fourth morning of the trip, I looked at Sam across the backyard patio table and burst into tears.
“I wish we were planning a wedding, or thinking about having a baby. I wish that’s where we were instead,” I sobbed. The words came out faster than I could breathe. “I hate that I’m still here, after a year, reading books about complex PTSD and ruining our lives.”
I’d been officially diagnosed by the psychiatrist I started seeing after the death of my father. The term “complex” gave definition to the feeling-states I now experienced out of context, outside of the time frame in which they first occurred, decades earlier. She explained the waves of sadness that rose every day, like the tide, were emotional flashbacks. They rode in with a sense of despair, and utter hopelessness, and sometimes it felt like I was drowning in their aftermath.