First big blip in awhile.

In my child development class we had a guest lecturer come talk about the importance of early social interactions. I got triggered as hell and later that evening had a series of intense flashbacks. One of the things she talked about was the importance of facial affect.  How the children of depressed mothers who have difficulty showing positive affect (smiling and being expressive) are profoundly affected. Often ending up with autistic-like traits. This is really important and raises a lot of interesting questions but I can't think about it properly yet. 

I got flashbacks relating to being a young child and getting an expressionless response from my caregiver. The feeling is nausea and a primordial fear, a crawling, squirming sensation that perhaps I don't actually exist. 

Another is a memory of a face,  expressive, cooing and saccharine but there is something unsettling something not right something missing. The play of expressions across this looming face is a lie to cover the truth of a stony heart.  I'm not sure who this face belongs to but it's haunted me my whole life. It is my first nightmare. 

Each image-feeling sprouted more and more, expanding into my more typical shame-based flashbacks, interrupting and feeding off each other in an exponential frenzy until they became too difficult to make any sense of. Instead they turned into a physical pain, an electric charge snaking around  

 my body. 

Meanwhile it's Thursday evening and I'm meant to be writing my lit review for Research Methods. The flashbacks themselves didn't eat up much time but they left me dissociated and exhausted. I try to do my work but it is totally pointless. I can't hold any information in my head. I can't even make sense of a single sentence because I forget what I read at the beginning of a sentence.  So I have a nap and try again. I keep trying and taking breaks but my progress is absurdly slow. Around 1am I realize that there isn't a hope in hell that I can do this. I ponder the implications of getting a sick note. Do I just say that I'm sick? But then I have to lie to the doctor. But I don't want to have to explain the truth. The truth is ugly and the prospect makes me recoil in disgust at myself. Suddenly I'm not totally sure that the flashbacks even happened. Maybe I'm just being creative again aka being a stupid lazy child who lies to herself until she believes it. And then lies to everyone else without remorse. 

Internal mocking ensues. 

How can I inflict this nonsense on people? Even if it is true it's pathetic. What are you going to say? Ooooh noooo you saw a scary face when you were little. Wahh wahhh you are SO broken because your mother allocated most of her smiles to the children she looked after in her home daycare. Boohoo please give me special treatment because I'm sad and pathetic. 

Realizing that I could focus enough to bully myself, I tried again to do my work. But everything just switched to blank again. I couldn't even manage to read in the order things were written. And I did this for another hour because I had lost touch with being practical or effective, or any executive control. At some point I fell asleep and in my dreams tried a series of options to see how they would play out. 

When I woke up I had a sufficiently strong gut feeling that I should say that it was PTSD but avoid giving specifics. My mind was still sluggish but I wrote an email to my TA. 

Hi [name],

I need an extension on the lab assignment. I have PTSD and the course material in my Child Devlelopment class triggered a series of flashbacks yesterday. I ended up pretty dissociated. I tried to work on the assignment but my working memory was pretty much toast. I'm still fairly out of it and everything is taking a very long time to do. There is still a window of a few hours but I don't think it's possible for me to get it done before class. 

I can go to the clinic and ask for a sick note but I'm not sure if they would write one for a psychological issue rather than a physical one. If it's acceptable, I would prefer to ask my psychologist to write the note in my appointment on Tuesday. 

Thank you,

[name]

She got back to me and emphasized that the sooner I get a note the more likely she can give an extension. After confirming that Counselling services could write notes after the day in question, that my psychologist wouldn't be in until Tuesday (and in fact that my appointment was on Wednesday) and that my GP was not available at the clinic until next week, I went to my lab. 

I felt incredibly vulnerable. She knew too much and now I had to pretend like I wasn't switching in and out and that my skin wasn't transparent and that all my squirming toxic insides weren't visible to the world. 

After class I waited until everyone had left  to talk to her. She understood that having to see an on-call doctor would be retraumatizing. She even used that word. However it was also ultimately whether the note covers a sufficient amount of time, and how the professors deem it best to handle it. Technically I had several days to complete the assignment so it isn't as simple as for a test. 

At this point the tears poured out. It had only been one night. I had started my assignment before but due to other courses I was relying on Thursday evening to get it done. 

Ultimately our agreement is a one-day extension, on the basis that the note is sufficient. She can make a stronger case for me if it's only one day late. 

So now I need to do the assignment I tried to work on it earlier but still couldn't focus because my mind kept wanting to process this stuff. So I made the decision to write this post first with the hope that it would give me some room to focus on the task. 

Here's hoping that was the right choice. Wish me luck.