NICE / PTSD Feels a Little like Being Bipolar

Come to visit me and one of the first things you see, if you’re visually astute, might be an archival photograph of the Promenade des Anglais winding its way along the Nice waterfront. It has a place of prominence at my entrance.

I first visited Nice in 1968 and was smitten. I returned for academic year 1974/75 and the preceding and ensuing summers and I’ve returned many times. I explored my adopted second city and l’arrière pays thoroughly on my mobylette and on foot when I lived there.

I came out in Nice because I met the first person I had ever trusted there. She was Marie-Claude, my colleague at the faculté des lettres and the warmth of our friendship brought me out of the closet. I am so proud of my choice of confident.

That year was the best year of my life. Nice is paradise. I had a garden apartment five blocks from one of the more famous beaches of the world and I discovered the unforgettable and unparalleled Mediterranean diet.

The carnage of yesterday was like a punch to the gut. Marie-Claude wrote to tell me no one we know was hurt. Right on the heels of Orlando, these symptoms of malaise say that the human race is very sick.

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I walked the seawall on Thursday. It’s the third time since D(isaster) Day, April 9th. In three months I’ve walked the wall as often as I used to walk it a week. Slogress is what I call it.

I’m really happy I go out and I love the smells in the air and the sun on my skin when I’m out, but coming home feels like crossing a moat when I traverse the lobby and raising the drawbridge as I take the elevator up to my floor to unmitigated bliss.

I’m a homebody, a homeboy, I’m cloistered and I’m super fine with it.

And I’m writing differently than ever before because that’s what I do: I love trying things I’m not trained to do. I love experiential learning. That’s why making my paper costumes was one of the best things I have ever done—when you succeed at something you’ve never done before or trained for, you feel matchless pride and joy.

I’m writing a play that is entirely fictional and I love it. It feels like building a crossword puzzle: There’s a lot of planning and trying and rejecting and tweaking and cutting and pasting in order to get to an order that’s concealed and alluded to in coded language — clues in a crossword and imagery and actions in dialogue. And finding that order—through what is seen and heard on stage—is a process that must be captivating to the reader/audience.

This, for me, is true creation. When I write autobiographically or technically, it feels like reporting. It may be well written and engaging, but it feels interpretive whereas fictional writing fiction is invented. It’s exhilarating to create imaginary people and nothing beats writing dialogue. I am addicted.

There’s no action and no antagonist in this nameless piece. This is my Seinfeld moment; I am writing something about nothing, aiming to capture your attention as is done in the European movies I love, with character and smooth natural dialogue.

My plan is, first, to see if I can write something entirely fictional that I am proud of. Then, if I do, I’ll ask a couple of actor friends I respect to read it and if they see merit in it, I may produce it.

And here I thought I was done with long-form writing.

When I was diagnosed with AIDS, I thought my life was over. When the cocktail erased my death sentence I was reborn with an appreciation for life that hasn’t left me. C-PTSD, similarly, is a blessing.

PTSD feels a little like being bipolar (if you’ll excuse my saying so with no experience of bipolarity). On the one hand, I have seizures and fits of extreme stuttering, anxiety and I experience a complete loss of voice at times. Those are the lows. But the highs are incredible: Those whom I trust, for example, trigger a deep exquisite love that I have never before felt and the beauty of flowers regularly moves me to tears.

But best of all, when I can speak and now that I am writing again, I'm far better at both forms of communicating.

My mother, Françoise Berd, co-starred in a movie called
Un Jour Special with Sophia and Marcello Mastroianni. 

This is life with PTSD.

You know that feeling when you go to take another step up that isn't there? Or down? For me, perhaps a second or so after the misstep, I get a rush of "shock" through my body. It's a kind of frightened feeling I get, with a sense of warmth and tingling.

That is what happens to me often every day, but without any misstep. No matter where I am or what I am doing, it will suddenly start welling up inside of me. It's very hard to describe, but it feels like pressure to me... kind of like I am going to explode. I know I am not going to explode, of course, but I feel horrible when it happens and I become a stuttering trembling mess.

I rarely know what has triggered the feeling so I asked Dr. Shoja to explain it and she gave me a welcome, healing explanation. I feel exalted calmness just writing that sentence. I've been struggling to see patterns, to make a list of triggers in order to minimize my stress but now I know that is an impossible goal; ten years of abuse produces a galaxy of triggers.

Her insight has allowed me to relax a little. This is life with PTSD.

And locked at home to minimize symptoms, I do simple baking sometimes. I found some small plastic ice trays at the dollar store and I used them to make salted white chocolate, lemon and macadamia nut candies. I topped them with crushed pistachios. They ain't exactly elegant, but they taste like angels.

The Boy Who Loved Trees

As a kid, distressed by my life with the Tyrells, I would often retreat to the bathtub to sleep. It became a place of comfort for me even dry.

In mid-life, my journey to C-PTSD began in a bathtub. I got in and long-forgotten memories overwhelmed me with sensation as did the warm water of my bath. At first I didn’t recognize what I was seeing; I’d heard of repressed memories but never imagined I had any. I was 45 years old when that happened.

On Monday morning in the bath, one single memory destroyed me. No sooner had the memory of the trees of our backyard entered my head than I was shaking with grief. Today, telling Dr. Shoja, it the grief overwhelmed me again.

The Tyrells lived on a hillside. Both the front yard and back yard were terraced and on the top level of the backyard were two small groves of Vine maples and between them were an almond tree and a cherry tree.

The rule around our home was that the Tyrells were not to be disturbed. I was to stay in my room or be outdoors. In the summer, the Vine Maple groves were my retreats. I spent lots of time there learning about soil and insects, picking the fruit and drying the almonds.

When we moved to the house on the hill, my father had offered me a present to bribe me into acceptance of their decision. I’d asked for the almond tree I cared for on the terrace.

Then one day a neighbour came into our yard and poisoned all the trees. I was beyond consolation but the Tyrells could not understand my attachment. I’d never once seen them interact with a living thing on our lot.

I begged Dad to complain to our neighbour and demand he replace the trees but he would not do it. Dad was a wimp.

In telling Dr. Shoja, I said I loved those trees and I did. Weird as it seems, I loved trees. I could not trust people, so I could not love them; pets and plants and trees were what I loved. A boy has to love, after all.

It was my father who beat me but it was my mother who ordered it done. The fact that he could not stand up to our neighbour gives me some solace; it feels less personal that he could not stand up to his wife and refuse to beat me.

I am (still) the boy who loved trees.

My Gentler World

Nightmare realized: Last night I went to a small dinner party with friends. Thirty seconds after entering their condo, I had a mild but long-lasting seizure. My host, Robert, just amazed me; he kept hugging me and he gently kissed me on my shoulder twice.

In Kamloops, a seizure provoked nervous laughter from a server.

Living with acute PTSD is provocative—people react to me when symptoms overtake me. Otherwise I am just another neutral entity.

“Have a nice day,” I am told far too many times a day. “How are you?” It’s a question I am constantly asked by people who don’t really want an answer.  We are awash in insincerity. But not when you are different.

“Take care of yourself.” “Go easy on yourself.” My condition prompts people to speak to me with sincerity and originality. It’s moving and lovely.

When I display symptoms people see me as a person. They see me as…. It is hard to know how they see me. I’ve thought of many words with which to end that sentence: flawed, broken, damaged or maybe sick. My condition has people see me as vulnerable; in good people, it triggers an empathetic or compassionate response.

I live in a friendlier gentler world due to my condition. It is not a bad thing.

Coping With PTSD

My seizures have provoked witnesses to call 911 and they stress out my friends. The stress I cause around me increases my anxiety because although I cannot talk, I can hear perfectly and the increased anxiety worsens my seizure. I had to do something proactive so I made the booklet below to send to friends in the mail.

They can read it at home and then, when we are together, I do not have to talk about my condition (unless they have the questions I welcome) and they can know what to do and what not to do.

I'm fond of the layout of the second page—the one with the blank white top—because it references the scribblers we had a children in elementary school that were blank on the top for drawing and lined in light blue ink on the bottom for practicing our printing.

This is the booklet (click on an image to enlarge it).