Damage Control

Here's a sad thing.

Its hard to go back and clean up messes that you made when you were a mess.

There's no way to justify it, and there's only so many times you can retell a story, or what you were doing or thinking when your brain was messed up.

So to all humans in my life, I am sending a blanket apology for that I really got lost for a few weeks or maybe even a few years, and I really lost my perspective on some things.

It was actually not my fault. I had an incredible fall with PTSD. I'm recovering from this. This was inevitable and I'm ok.

I am really sorry for whatever it cost anyone in terms of happiness or peace or trust.

Bad years plus PTSD = Bad brain, bad perspective, bad days and bad weeks.

I discovered that at the absolute core of the PTSD is a powerful experience of abandonment. I really got that today. That feeling was at the heart of my life as a mother with a child with PANDAS, and as a woman, the way it came down for me, was this experience of being completely abandoned by anything and anyone in life that was ever good. I never let that stop me. But then as soon as I had a current situation that even remotely felt like that, it was part of the what triggered those incredible panic attacks that I had. This almost crippling feeling of being abandoned and alone, but the intensity was so cranked up it was not normal. It was terrifying and lacked any perspective or power to do anything constructive about it. I never went through anything like that before, and of course everyone ended up being hurt. And i feel pretty bad about that. One thing I do not believe that I do very often, is hurt people. Its hard to forgive myself for this incredible breech of trust, someone's heart, that I hurt by my process. But it is yet another thing I must add to the list of things I need to let go of. Fortunately, this person is a true friend and we walked all the way through it, and for that I'm super grateful.

If this happens to you, this is what PTSD looks like. It bleeds the past trauma so into your present that you can't tell the difference and its super intense. You get it all over people. If you are losing your perspective like this, its ok and its not your fault, but you probably need some help, and that's ok, too. It's good, actually, because its a sign that you are moving forward, out of your trauma and back into your life.

So I am apologizing to anyone out there, to whom I owe any apology over the last eight years for any reason related to that I was sucked up into a sucky and unhealthy PANDAS life.

If I let you down, I'm sorry.
If I didn't trust you and I should have trusted you, I'm sorry.
If I disappeared and didn't tell you why, or if I didn't let you help me, or judged you for not being enough or helping me enough or understanding me enough or fixing PANDAS enough, I'm really sorry.
If I needed you but didn't tell you, I'm sorry. And especially if then I was angry because you weren't there, I'm very sorry.
If I was too caught up in myself and wasn't a good friend to you anymore, I'm sorry.
If I showed up as someone so self absorbed and believing that my problems were bigger or more important than yours, I'm really sorry.
If there is anything else I may have done on a human front that hurt, disregarded or disappointed you, i'm sorry and i'm certain I did not mean it. I was simply overwhelmed. I would do anything to make it up.
I am more than what you see out here.
Thank you for listening.