at the mercy of sense.

Smell binds to the PTSD memory in a way you cannot understand. Seeps deep within our soul and tethers itself to bits and pieces of our mind. When a familiar smell hits me - my body begs me to remember. It dances around familiarity and the guards in my mind go on high alert. My body remembers even when, on the rare occasion, that my brain doesn't follow suit. It makes me anxious and frustrated, like a stuck sneeze. Afterwards my mind plays tricks on me in a "I can give you a clue" type way by leaving phantom smells to follow. Maybe a waft of cologne when I'm not around a single person or the faint smell of hairspray when I'm nowhere near a bathroom. When I can't place the smell the nerves of my body will dance, forcing me to be unsteady, uneasy, trapped in a fleeting mess. My body begs and pleads and sometimes leaves me in a convulsing mess, balled up in the corner of a room.

Even when I can remember, it doesn't usually make for a good day. A smell that unlocks memory also, as I've said before, holds the master key. One door opened leaves all the rest unlocked and ready to be revealed at any moment. The rest of that day officially becomes harder and more challenging. To be completely honest with you, some days it's easier to just give up and become a shell of a human being. Some days isn't worth the fight.
Each day isn't a guaranteed reset either. This isn't Stephen King's 11/22/63, I don't have a rabbit hole to jump through as a way to start over and try again. I don't get to go to bed at night and say "Tonight will reset my brain and tomorrow it won't be sensitive". Sometimes one trigger can have effects that last for days. Doors stay unlocked, monsters running loose wreaking havoc on my brain. Going through each day turns into running a race in mud a foot deep. No matter how much effort you put into it, it seems as though you're not getting any closer to the finish line.

In order to more easily explain my mind, I often speak of the doors. Each door, to me, holds a memory. Inside every memory room, there may be another door leading to another memory. Sometimes it's never ending. My job is to not only keep the doors closed, but locked. Imagine me running around in a mansion endlessly closing doors that other people have seemed to have left open. There's no one place that I can sit in that mansion to keep a watchful eye on every door. Constantly running.

The other day at work I had a customer who was clearly an alcoholic. The minute he walked up I could smell it coming out of his pores. There's a clear difference between the way you smell the day after a big night of drinking and the way that you smell when the alcohol has become a functioning part of your chemical makeup, clear that it's all your body knows. The way he smelled tripped open the Rodney door and my body started to ache in a fleeting way. I carefully watched him, noticing small similarities to the way Rodney had appeared on his bad days. His hair was slicked back, his skin had a reddish tint to it, and when he removed his hands from his pants pockets they trembled no matter how hard he tried to stop them. My mind whirled with memory and as I stared at this man, I remembered Rodney and how broken and helpless he was at times. How he fought the demon and the demon had won out in the end.
You can save him my brain screamed. You can save this one!

I sent him on his way since he had, afterall, only come to see me for computer help. It only took that one small thing to open the gates and let the flood in. The entire day I was sensitive to smell and sound. The world grew increasingly louder as each minute passed. It wasn't difficult for me to hear the conversation of two people who were normally out of earshot. If someone were to talk to me that was standing right next to me, it'd be as though they're screaming. Their words would be muffled with the sound of static, as though a speaker was turned up too loud. Please speak softer I want to whisper. I don't say it, because they won't understand and usually just stare at me blankly and then walk away, confused. I've learned to tolerate the noise, but it doesn't mean that I don't have the urge to go and hide in a quiet room. Sounds can be overwhelming, especially those of screaming children.
It’s not every day that a smell trips me up. But when it does, it just adds to the seemingly never ending list of challenges thrown my way. A smell trigger can be a cologne/perfume (trust me, I’ll be able to pick out your scent anywhere, my mind remembers), a soap (ie Neutrogena face wash will take be back to October 1998), a hand soap, a hair product (ie. American Crew pomade will take me back to 1999)… the list goes on and on. I can understand why some people with PTSD don’t get out of bed in the morning.
It’s safe there. The world trips you up.

Sound sensitivity (brought on by heightened senses from triggered memories), more often than not, can last for days once it surfaces. It sometimes sends me into a maddening downward spiral and it won't be until I dream at night that someone (typically someone from my past who has passed away) will walk up to me in a blank black space and softly place their hands over my ears to muffle out the sound. The world will have gone quiet and I’ll spend my time drawing their image from memory. I'll awake the next day with my hearing returned to normal. Sometimes I see it as a gift from God. She's tired, please help her He'd say to the spirits of my past. He’d send them to fix me, to grant me a few hours or days of relief.

Dear God,
Thank you.
-Erica