Hello all,
It’s been quite a week for me this week. Well, really it started with the weekend. On Saturday, I received an email that said they had passed me over for the job I wanted. What was confusing was that the day before, the corporate office had called and said they wanted to move forward with my application, and after my interview, the store told me I was already hired, so I was incredibly confused by the endless changing stories. To be honest, for a person with PTSD this would be called a trigger, meaning an event that causes us to manifest what for me is always hypervigilance which includes not trusting life, a kind of fear and even anger at times.
I’ve learned to understand most of my reactions from the two therapy sessions that I’ve had, and this made this new crisis more tolerable. I think that this is because when we understand what’s going on in our brains, it helps us to handle the symptoms that we feel. This is actually a good point to make about quitting smoking. That if we understand addiction and how it interacts with us before we quit, we can handle the effects of that quit so much better. That’s why so many here preach learning about addiction before we ever quit. Knowledge really is power when we face the hard obstacles in our lives. That holds true for both PTSD and quitting smoking.
Anyway, back to my story. On Sunday, I got a call from the work location and they assured me that everything was fine as far as my new job went. I went in on Monday to do the new hire computer classes and finished those and on Friday at midnight, I start this new job. Because of the trauma that I’ve had recently, I found the whole thing rather unnerving. Funny thing is that I’m not nervous in the least about the job itself. I know I can handle that job because of past experience as an inventory guru of sorts. (That’s what the inventory company that I worked for called me at least.) I am quite good at bean counting as some like to call it. Though it’s only part of the entire job, this past experience is a big help for me as far as getting good at that job goes.
And then, a little more good news. I borrowed some money from my son and will be purchasing a car tomorrow. I won’t have to ride my bike to work every night after all!! But I’m so glad I learned to ride again and intend to keep it up. It just feels good to cruise around while working out my body. I’ve now found a new hobby. All in all, I think my re-entry into the world is going rather smoothly.
One thing I found interesting as far as my PTSD goes is that when things started turning around, I think I’m fine and don’t need any help after all. But after I thought about it, I realized that I really don’t know what my normal psyc is because I’ve never really had an opportunity to experience it yet and as such, though things seem great, I still have to continue to change this baggage I’ve been carrying my whole life into something manageable. I look forward to this very much because I really want to have every bit of that incredible future that I worked so hard to attain a bit over eight and a half years ago when I quit smoking.
Change is never easy but sometimes change is just what we need. I’m rebuilding my life on my own terms without the baggage of addiction to slow me down and to be honest, that decision that I made so long ago is going to help me now simply because I took the time to learn about myself and my addiction before I quit, and that my friends is a prize that I’ll carry with me forever! I hope we all gain that prize of freedom!
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
Chuck
