PTSD IS A cruel and Unforgiving Mistress

by Catherine Firemancer

Across history, it has been called by many names, Malingering, Cowardness, Shell Shock, Battle Fatigue, Combat Stress and know Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD. It can impact your life in many ways nightmares, flashbacks, depression and anxiety and sadly often suicide. This story presumes Gibbs has PTSD from the various trauma in his life.

He needs to sleep but fears sleeping, avoiding it or thinking about it, by filling the space instead with movement, or reading anything that occupied his mind and pushed the intrusive thoughts to the boundaries.

Hoping that when sleep is unavoidable he's able to have a sleep pattern where he wakes up before dropping into that zone where the dreaming occurrs, it helps, but doesn't solve the problem.

So approximately every two hours he wakes, hopefully before the tendrils of fear attached themselves to his subconscious and forced him into yet another sequence of memories, ones so vivid in their colours, sounds, textures and smells. So realistic that when released from its grip he explodes to the surface and consciousness like a cork, sucking in lungfuls of air like a drowning man often with a scream dying in his throat.

Disoriented, Gibbs' eyes frantically flitting around the room trying to find something that reassured him that he's out of the nightmare cycle, that what he is now experiencing is real and in the present moment, not just another false hope of the nightmare halting.

Gibbs will untangle himself from sweat-dampened bedding which was both a restraint and a combatant only minutes ago and free his limbs so he can visit the bathroom carefully avoiding any mirrors or surfaces which will betray just how worn out and aged the last hours, days or years have made him. Because in that one glance if he captures his eyes he can see straight down into his own soul, into the fear, loneliness and despair that resides there. No more times than at these are all his guards down and he is laid bare.

Rinsing his face and head under a cold tap he hopes the icy water will chase away the vestiges of sleep, shivering as the sweat on his body chills him in the early morning air. A quick towel down and some soft warm clothes will suffice until he showers later before dressing for work.

Then begins another day where Gibbs runs sleep-deprived through routines to distract himself. He's emotionally on edge and just hasn't the energy for the social niceties, it's hard enough to keep moving and not to let flashbacks of events long ago from intruding into the daylight, but sometimes they still do.

Cases come and go as the team work together to secure justice for more families, travelling around the country, sometimes the world.

Gibbs dreads the cases that end up with them sleeping in some hotel, barracks or guesthouse because he fears the night and the dreams which plague him.

Tony has heard the shouts and screams when he's stayed over at Gibbs, and he understands because some nights he too walks that same path of nightmares.

So they both share a room and try to get one as far away from the others as possible. If they help each other with the aftershocks of a nightmare it's never spoken of in the daylight hours. It's as if talking about them reinforces their power over the night.

The days continue hours going by until the clock has moved forward and the anxiety of needing sleep raises it's head again, it's rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

Maybe he should talk about the nightmares and the experiences in war, law enforcement and life that parade through his dreams. Talking has never been his strong point, easier to force everything down into the strongbox in his soul. That strongbox is started to creak at its seams, and at some point, that choice of if to talk and when to talk will be taken from his hands.

PTSD is a cruel and unforgiving Mistress.