The shells of PTSD

I don’t trust me well.

Let alone you. Or others.

I’ve learned that well.

That’s one of the biggest takeaways about this move, and about some of my personality in general. I don’t believe in my own skill set, let alone the rest of the haiku. Due to a variety of things, trust, including ideas of confidence, just isn't much of a part of my mental vocabulary. And so, more than being a “highly sensitive person,” I am “thin skinned,” but not in a “fly off the handle” way. Rather, it’s that I simply don’t seem to have a lot of emotional and psychological “insulation.”

When criticism arises,

I enter my PTSD shell,

A set of nestled Russian puzzle boxes.

Dissociating even deeper.

It doesn’t even have to be actual criticism, or conflict. It can be fear of possible or anticipated criticism or conflict that sets me off. Add in some physiological things like consecutive male births (the more consecutive boys a mother bears, the more likely the latest boy is to be gay, and there may be other effects from this “battle of the sexes,” too, for all we know, which is what I am getting at) and a family anxiety heritage, it’s probably not a wonder I feel like I had thinner “emotional insulation” to deal with the events of childhood as they hit me. I don't mean this to be sounding like a pity party. It's simply to say this is part of my heritage as a "survivor." In light of the Penn State and Syracuse scandals, or the Catholic priest scandals, some "survivors" adaptations are even more "primitive" than mine.

Anyway, therefore, I adapted as I knew or learned how. When I say dissociation, it’s literal, though not as severe as it once was, and it’s more conscious, at times, than in years past. I know that nobody likes criticism, and few people claim to deal with it well, though many probably deal with it “OK.” People talk about letting criticism be like water off a duck’s back. Well, to me, this is criticism like a rain storm, not just water, but being blocked out by enough layers of shells (I hope).

It’s easier not to trust just one

Rather than another, too. So I live alone.

Occasionally infused from within with childlike wonder,

While desiring a thicker skin that no wizard has to offer.