Is this real life?

Existing in a dream-like state with PTSD

Sometimes, my best friend Holly will say: “This is real life?!?!” when she is amazed by the absurdity of some situation, when a conversation is socially awkward or someone is acting especially bizarre.

She makes a funny face and we laugh about whatever has happened.

But the truth is—I frequently think the same thing regarding my own life and that 50% of my immediate family (2/3 of them, excluding me) have died by suicide.

I know this. It has been my reality and my family’s story for over 3 years now.

And yet, still—

I often times struggle to grasp that fact.

Can I really grasp it? Get my mind around it?

I don’t think I ever truly will. Perhaps that it is a good thing.

I know the reasons for this: I have complex PTSD. Too much grief, loss and tragedy occurred in such a short period of time that my brain has struggled to make sense of it, to accept it as reality and what has happened.

I recall in March 2020, after my mother and brother died earlier in the same year, and three months after I miscarried, (but before COVID hit), walking around Florida with my former partner, and feeling float-y, like I was in a dream-like state.

I am not quite sure how to put it into words, adequately. But—things felt foggy. I felt disconnected, detached, discombobulated. It is challenging to articulate.

But it sure as hell didn’t feel like real life.

I have had dreams that felt more real then that time period. I know that I existed in that cloud for a long time.

I was sleep-walking. I was just trying to survive.

Then, COVID hit and there was a whole other set of circumstances to ‘survive’ from.

It makes sense. People struggle to grapple with just one death or loss—be it the loss of a grandparent or parent, or perhaps a miscarriage. The grieving process may take years. Others, perhaps more truthfully, suggest that we never cease it.

Within half a decade, my entire family was gone. Two dead by their own hands.

The other day my best friend reminded me of when she came to visit me in Charlotte, shortly after Jeremie died.

I was a bit taken aback.

It had only been about two weeks since Jeremie died. I only vaguely recalled her presence there. I had to ask her to remind me what we did.

That was jarring to me. Since, normally, I have a pretty solid memory.

It makes sense: with PTSD, the brain changes, physiologically. Brain scans of those with PTSD look remarkably different from those who do not have it.

Trauma triggers our flight or flight reaction, the amount of cortisol in our system intensifies. It flooded my system. My adrenals were working over-time.

I do recall that after Jeremie died that I felt that cortisol rush in my system, coursing through my system, for several weeks. Sleeping became especially difficult. I had to take a handful of pills and supplements to even get a few hours of restless sleep—but then I would wake up with a short, a jolt.

My body and mind was in a hyper-vigilant state. I was bracing myself for what would come next.

These are the moments that I realize how much I was in a state of shock after my ‘trilogy of death’.

Memories like these remind me why I have complex PTSD.

These recollections are also why I give myself grace that I stayed with a narcissist—because I was in survival mode, just going on auto-pilot, and I was trying to make it through the day.

I was still teaching. I was still grieving the loss of my baby, then my mother, then—all of a sudden, my only sibling was gone—from a gunshot wound to the head, just as my father had done five years earlier.

I was numb. Paralyzed.

Even today, I still grapple with the truth that my life has been shaped so by suicide.

I understand that it is not something that one ever plans or hopes for. We cannot (should not?) prepare for it.

Feelings surrounding death, grief and loss of family members are always complicated. To make sense of the fact that someone is forever gone, when they have been a constant throughout your entire life, is hard to comprehend and accept.

But it is so much more complicated with suicide: my feelings surrounding my family members, my regard and love for them, the emotions I feel at being the one left, the survivor, are multi-faceted. They are layered.

The include a range of emotions: Heartbreak and devastation. Guilt. Anger. Resentment. Relief.

I have felt them all at different times. I have felt them all at the same time.

It is never just one thing. One feeling.

It is complex, this grief, this PTSD.

The question of —-is this real life? exists both to describe absurdist moments in life and my family with two suicides.

I will credit my best friend, Holly, for giving me this statement, the future title of my memoir.