just like everyone else.

I heard a term this week that made my nerves dance. I was told that I could wait, suffer through the fact that I may not get a break at work, just like everyone else. 
I'm not entirely sure how many times I'll have to say it before people start to comprehend, I'm not like everyone else. Everyone else, can go home at the end of their work day and throw their coat on the couch and slump down in a chair after grabbing a drink and say "That was rough" and move on with their life.
What do I have to do in order to make people comprehend that if I need to walk away for five minutes I need to walk away for five minutes. I don't want to walk away. I need to walk away. Because if I don't, my brain takes off in a furious mess of flames and smoke and I can no longer function.
Unexpected (and I say that as if there is ever a time as though it is expected, but there really isn't) trigger reaction can go two ways.

1. Is that I have this (sometimes impossibly small, sometimes generous - and in generous I'm talking 15-30 minute) window of opportunity. If I take that window, I can use one of my "tools" to distract my brain back to reality. I can use my phone to distract me in a million ways, I can use my iPod to listen to a song that I have to force myself to remember the lyrics to, I can listen to part of an audiobook, I can watch a smidge of TV, I can have a small conversation with whatever person is nearby, I can write a few sentences of a letter or my blog or my novel - even if it's just on my phone or in my head, I can count cars in a parking lot - picking out patterns of colors. Do you get my point yet? It takes me all of five minutes to get myself back to reality, most of the time - especially if I'm only allowed those five minutes before I need to get back to the real world. If I'm not literally forced to stand in one spot and let my brain turn into a memory hungry monster.
I've been doing this for forever. I'm really good at it. So good, that even if you followed me around for an entire week, you'd barely even notice anything out of the ordinary.

2. I don't get my five minutes within the time allotted. My "I need a minute" might not be that big of a deal to you. You might say "fine whatever" and give me my minute. If you don't, it is a big deal because what follows can ruin my entire week. My brain goes into massive overload and what happens is I'm literally left a trembling mess. My brain is on overload, shutting down in various ways - to protect me - and my body is physically responding. My arms and legs are literally shaking/jerking/trembling. I can't type or write or make my hands function as they normally should, I can't speak straight sentences, I can't write down what you're saying to me, I can't remember what I was doing two seconds ago. And this mess? It takes hours to get out of, if I'm lucky enough to have the energy to do so. My body becomes literally physically and mentally drained and it takes all I have in order to go on with any part of my day.

On that particular day, the day where my trigger went past it's window of opportunity and my day followed result number 2, I had to go to class after work. I had to drive an hour to get from work to school, I had to function enough to listen to 2 hours of lecture and remember what I had been taught so I could apply it to my work for the next week. By the time I walked out of the doors at work that day, I had marveled at the fact that I could even bring myself to do such a thing as move one foot in front of the other.

It isn't always A+B=C. Sometimes I have no control. Sometimes one really big thing can send me straight into a convulsing mess and there was no getting away from it. Sometimes the threads of memories that are being linked are harmless and I don't need to step away in order to get away from it. No one instance is like another. No one instance is predictable.

I can't even begin to make you comprehend the massive amount of memory that goes through my head in one day... even just within the first few hours of my day. I often wonder on my drive to work "What is it like to be able to just forget all of this stuff... to make it til lunch time without having to draw my weapon and intimidate the enemy?"

Marla Handy writes the following passage in her book titled No Comfort Zone on her experience living with PTSD:
Everyone has memories of good and bad times and can voluntarily call up some of them, then set them aside again and live in the present. Some people dwell in the past out of choice or habit. They may relive their glory days or cultivate a past hurt. This may even get in the way of their current happiness.
But this is not the same as having intrusive thoughts of traumatic events or reexperiencing them.
Now, whatever you do, do not think about a pink elephant.
So, what did you just picture? A pink elephant. You've had people do this to you before. I just planted an intrusive thought in your mind. Now, imagine that pink elephant popping into your mind every five to ten seconds. Imagine coming to wakefulness in the morning and, in that split second before you open your eyes, you see pink elephants and wonder if they are in the room.
For me, the pink elephants are a part of life.
Sometimes they are just irritating distractions, like a song stuck in my head. Sometimes they are more real than my current surroundings. Sometimes I can't even read, not with the roar of a heard of stampeding pink elephants throbbing in my brain.
The elephants are constant, uninvited companions. Much like hypervigilance, these intrusive thoughts are unrelenting. 

Pink elephant, pink elephant, pink elephant, I want to go to sleep.
I haven't slept in 7 days. Yes, I go to bed some time during the night and yes, I wake up to my alarm. But I can 100% assure you that during those hours that I'm "sleeping", I'm not. Not the kind of sleep that counts, at least. I know, because I can't function during the day. Because the underside of my eyes are turning into a reddish purple, because my level of patience is below 10%, because if someone out of the ordinary sees me - their first response is something like "Are you even awake yet?".

So, you're saying, it's almost midnight... why the hell aren't you sleeping?
I'm not sleeping because I'm trying to push myself to the kind of exhaustion where my body has no choice to respond but to fall into a deep slumber. I'm not sleeping because my brain is churning with frustration and anger to the ignorance of the world. I'm not sleeping because people are still pretending that my disability doesn't exist, that it's something we just don't talk about or acknowledge. That I can function just like everyone else.

If we stand real still and don't make a sound, maybe she won't even know we're here...