I’m so going to have to upgrade July 4th to Badass Trigger Holiday.

Last night got painful at the holiday scrolled to the end; around 10pm or so I began sliding down the wall into the pit of crazy. I think around midnight I entirely lost my grip and just fell in, because I started to panic uncontrollably. I definitely failed my PTSD level 2 check, and may or may not have made my PTSD level 3 check. It’s not so much that I started seeing things, inasmuch as I started reacting as if I were seeing my father. I really wasn’t—but they were very strong, very intrusive memories.

It was actually worse than FatherLESS Day, and definitely worse than MotherLESS Day. And yeah. It probably is true that July 4th is worse than it otherwise might be in isolation, because I don’t get much time to recover between the BAM BAM BAM holidays.

I took a Xanax and Ambien together, which is not the wisest thing, but neither alone let me sleep. And the dreams… the dreams were bad.

When I woke up, it took me a while to grasp that this was 2010, I wasn’t Back Then in the Years of Zorn and Tharn, or the Years of War and Torment, and there was a bottle of Xanax on the table. I’ve took one one waking, and a couple hours later (or… maybe not even that long) I had another. ‘Course, that means I’ve run out of continues, I mean, Xanax. Checking with the doctor (who’ll get back to me… at some point) about whether I can safely have more continues.

I think I’ll need more, though I’m relatively calm now, it’s the kind of calm that hides deeper turbulence in the waters, which may or may not surface.

Anyways, July 4th needs to get its category upgraded. Probably Category 4 at this point. (Thanksgiving is going to be Category 5 most likely. And the extended holidays that are Christmas and stuff… I think that’s super-tsunami territory at that point.)

Of course, the summer of hell isn’t over yet. Or is it? I have a birthday to get through.

My birthday is the anniversary of the day I cut my parents off. And subsequent days hereafter it is also the anniversary of death threats, my parents coming to kill me on campus, and fun stuff like that.

Yeah, I totally didn’t know what triggers were back then, or else I might have tried for a different day. But I wanted a birthday present for myself. Sigh.