Lord, it’s like a hard candy, Christmas

I’m barely getting through tomorrow
But still I won’t let sorrow bring me way down.
— Dolly Parton, “Hard Candy Christmas”

Yes. It’s a Total Party Kill again.

Positives: in the living room, my couch is the base of operations with cows and such.

Downside: I think I’m starting to lose the bedroom as a result. But that could just be a result of not spending all my time up there anymore. I like to think it’s the latter.

General PTSD stuff: Good gods, there’s no way I can get through this dungeon without major, even permanent, damage to my HP.

Maybe I’ll just get drunk on apple wine—

Sadly, I’ve gone back to denying. It’s hurting and… well, maybe I’m facing it a little by not resorting to the “be unconscious for several days in a row”, because so far it’s the only ledge my PTSD is giving me that seems… free. But probably, like the really horrible GM it is, that’s only a trick, and the purchase will crumble under my feet at the last moment.

Last year, this is where I ended up. And that was when I thought I’d be fine… I’m just crashing.

Friend of mine on the island told me a year ago that I was simply thinking myself into the PTSD.

Ah, ha ha ha ha. I don’t even know how to prove to him that it’s not that way. Some people you can’t convince.

As I progress through all this, I’m trying to get my sleep, get my nutrition, get… something else. I’m falling apart. I don’t know what to do. Every path, it seems wrong…

Thus far, I am engaging in Mythbusters as a destruction. And playing war games with myself—although given that I can only handle complexity on the level of really bad strategy in the Pocket Battles series, this is making me depressed too. (Pocket Battles is a great little series, actually. I could see it having been a Kosmos 2-player, if German games were more confrontational.)

The really, really upsetting thing is that I’ve lost a lot of my cognitive ability even after a full night of sleep, and eating enough, and so I spend time late into the night trying to prove to myself that I’ll be fine.

I’m not gonna be fine.

But…

I want to actually be awake and aware this Christmas. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll learn something. Or maybe I’ll resort to Xanax and Ambien. I kind of… want to measure what happens over the next few days. Maybe that means I really am going to face it—but I can’t help but remember last year.

3 thoughts on “Lord, it’s like a hard candy, Christmas”

  2. Sympathies.

    I hope this next paragraph will come across as encouragement, because that’s how I mean it:
    It’s going to be bad no matter what, but that’s not your fault. Holidays just do this to you. And in RPG terms, the victory condition for this dungeon is survival: if you’re still alive next week, you win. That’s all you need to do. Being awake and aware, or free of fear, would be optional extra achievements for bonus experience points, but if you get through it in any condition at all, you win. You can do this.

  3. *hugs all*

    Wogglebug, ’tis an excellent way to think about it. For some reason I’m reminded of Mirror, Mirror which is one of the most evil, evil L5R RPG scenarios ever created in, perhaps, the history of all RPGs. Surviving the ravages of that campaign really is an accomplishment, and not often done.

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