Knowing When To Ask For Help

I have PTSD. Fully diagnosed now, finally, and so happy I can finally get some help for it. I have been dealing with a flare since September and I feel like I am drowning in this tide. If I had to live with this, no sign of help in sight? When my fear is taking control of me and I am trapping behind bars inside me, watching myself be fucking bizarre with no way to stop myself?

I don't think I would live with this. I'd try, but I think I'd fail. My heart or my brain might give out, I do have vascular EDS, but I might too. And that's a scary place to be.

I don't have the best track record with medications that mess with serotonin. I've had serotonin syndrome very badly once, and stopped three other medications when I noticed signs of it happening again. The medications that treat PTSD however... pretty unilaterally touch the serotonin. I am nervous about this, but...

I had a brain aneurysm burst in September 2023. I'm lucky to be alive after that, but everything, literally everything in my brain may be completely different now. I have brain damage, probably not very severe. There are some things I fully can't remember and know I used to remember. It's so weird to have that happen, as it does periodically. It's like my house keys have vanished, only it's about my third grade teacher's name.

(Okay, bad example, I remember Mr Boyd just fine, he was great.)

But when it really does happen? It makes my head hurt trying to remember something that's just... gone. And it's always a little sad for me and a bit frightening as well. What else have I lost forever? Whose faces, what music, what knowledge? Whose touch?

That aneurysm burst added to the PTSD I already had and it triggers it as well. There are so many triggers from that alone. I have others, it's been a distressing life in many ways, but I could sleep in a dark room without panicking, once. To be afraid of the dark at thirty seven, I know... But the dark holds some memories for me that I would rather never face again.

And I do not want to try and pretend I can continue to fight this PTSD alone. I fully cannot. So I am nervous... but I am getting help.

I'm in therapy, I have been since 2024 and we're making some progress. The diagnoses I have now will help that quite a lot. I'm still trying to figure out triggers... They're slippery sometimes, I swear! But sometimes I have a moment of clarity and it all just clicks into place. I try to keep notes.

Since the burst aneurysm, life has been, ah. Let's say challenging, shall we? I have learned many lessons that I stubbornly did not want to learn.

Pride is not my friend, nor has it ever been.

It's scary to trust when you have been hurt, ignored, and neglected... but you have to. It's not optional. Humans need community, and I'm human.

I am going to fail, in trying to heal myself. I am going to make mistakes. I should hold myself accountable to those, yes, but more I need to keep trying to heal despite them. Let myself be human, but strive to do better each time.

And it is way harder on everyone around me when I refuse to let myself ask for help.

That last has been a difficult lesson to learn. I don't promise I've mastered it. But I have seen the consequences from my own failures and the failures of others in not asking for help when it's needed. And I don't want to repeat that lesson.

There are parts of me that have been broken by circumstance beyond anyone's control, by people trying to hurt me, and by the inaction of people. Maybe I could mend those parts, if everything went exactly right. That's not how life is, though. Life throws you curve balls, it drops bird shit on your head, plops a dog that got loose in the field behind your house.

I can't juggle piecing myself back together with everything life is still throwing at me. Not alone.

So I am asking for help.