At War with Zombie-Vampires: PTSD Doesn’t Take Vacations

It was an unfortunate coincidence that I went to the desert when I was feeling abandoned and  empty, as the roots of the word “desert” indicate.

In some Indigenous languages, “desert” means bright, shining place, but also a place of thirst.

I thirsted for something and did not find it. The plants and mammals, the birds and insects, seemed barbed for self-defense. The sun was relentless. The property where I was staying was at a remove from other lives and other liveliness. The owners had decorated the walls with generic art featuring wine bottles and cafe tables, signs indicating Paris metro stops, or clocks whose batteries had long since died. I rested my head near a garage filled with a half-dozen sports cars. The owners drove one car, then another, around their cul-de-sac, preening to no one in particular. 

It’s no wonder then that I couldn’t escape ruminating on trauma, the behavior of people who held my life in their hands but who betrayed my trust, even though they received salaries and benefits that at a minimum, should have guaranteed that they didn’t behave like selfish, spoiled children.

I was not content without content, stuff to fill my senses and fill my head. The sole joy I had was purchasing and reading a book of personal essays that I found intricate and intriguing. The only pleasure was the feeling of my muscles working when I climbed mountains and hiked canyons. 

Despite what I have survived, I have a brain that thinks clearly and a body that won’t quit.

It was a relief to find Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” on TV one night. I felt the film rescued me from the darkness, from the emptiness, from the banality. “Sinners” isn’t just a good movie; it is a true work of art meditating on what brings people together and what keeps them apart, about the uses of music, song, and dance, about what is worth fighting for and what is worth dying for.

I realize I’m more at ease at war with zombie-vampires than with listening to the wind and the wings of hummingbirds.

Should I strive to be monkish, capable of stillness and meditation? Satisfied with the austerity of sand?

I am not there yet, and I might never be there. PTSD doesn’t take vacations. 

I relax by doing, by being absorbed and inundated, by sorting and ordering, by working my way through sensations, ideas, things. 

I may never find what I am looking for, but I am still searching.

Let the world’s millions of details come at me. I have strength. I have capacity.

I have strength. I have capacity.