You Ever Feel like You’re Living in Oz? (approx. 4-5 min. read)

Do you remember when Dorothy taps her ruby red slippers together and says there’s no place like home, because I do, and I wish I could click my heels together and be home again, but where is home?

Up until we moved here a year and a half ago, I lived in a circle that was about sixty kilometres in circumference and that’s where all the friends, I hung out with on a regular basis are; except for Gary. Once we got up here, my kids stopped talking to me, and I still don’t have a reason why, but in order for me to get my brain in the game, I have to tell myself that that is okay; that it will never be home for me again.

It’s been really hard since we got here; not because I don’t love our home and our property because I do, I’m just having trouble with getting used to living somewhere so unfamiliar, it might as well be Oz.

In the beginning, I barely went out, so that meant that Gary had to do all the shopping, but when we’d been here close to a year, things started to shift, and I started to feel more comfortable with my surroundings. When things started to change, I started driving to a small town about ten minutes away to pick up eggs or fruit to tide us over until Gary could go into the city to do our weekly shopping, as well as doing my service dog, Laddie’s public access training.

After a couple of months, I was able to extend my training with Laddie to the local hardware store and while we were there, we could pick up one or two things that we needed for building the house. Which meant that I couldn’t just go into the store and walk the isles, I had to stand in a check outline, and that meant that I might have to talk to someone, and the thought caused me so much anxiety. At first, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, but each time I faced a “hurdle,” because that’s what they were, I became more comfortable and trusting.

As most of you know, trust is something people with PTSD struggle with, especially if most of their trauma was created by people that were supposed to love and protect them. It takes a lot of time for someone like me to learn how to trust because every time a person living with PTSD is triggered, our sense of trust is destroyed, and we need to rebuild it and that can take a lot of time.

A few more months passed by and I decided it was time to challenge myself a little more, so I started going into the city to do Laddie’s training sessions at the big box stores. Then when we’d mastered those, our next goal was to graduate to the mall, which was a setting he had always been trained in.

I won’t lie; it was hard, and there were times I couldn’t go out, but when we did Laddie’s recertification in September of this year, he passed with flying colours.

Life was starting to feel good and I was beginning to feel like I could make this place my home but after the incident in that same mall a couple of weeks back, I can barely leave my house.

I feel like my health and safety were threatened. They treated like a criminal and truthfully, I’m scared to go back there, or anywhere else at this point. I was triggered and even though I was in a good place in my recovery when it happened, my brain has reacted in a way that has become all too familiar since my PTSD diagnosis and I don’t seem to have much control over my thoughts and feelings at the moment.

If you’ve been following along you know that injustice has become one of my biggest triggers and I think it’s because the guy that held me up never got charged …as I wrote that last sentence I realized that none of my traumas have seen justice so it totally makes sense why I haven’t been able to live normally since the incident at my workplace happened and why injustice is now a huge trigger.

Which brings me back to why I feel so messed up now. Two weeks ago, when I visited the mall, one of the merchants stole almost $400.00 from me. After the merchant stole my money, she told me she was going to call her head office for help and instead called security on me and if you read last week’s blog you know that I was threatened with the police, handcuffs and being charged with trespassing. How many people saw what happened? Do they think “the lady with the service dog is a criminal now?”

I hate to play the victim because as you know I’ve been fighting with all my might to get out of that role, but I honestly feel like a victim right now. I was treated like a criminal, yet I did absolutely nothing wrong and what I’m trying to figure out is will this community ever feel like home, or will it always feel like Oz?

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.

Links and References:

https://www.davinalytle.com/blog/2019/12/4/do-i-have-a-target-on-my-back-approx-15-16-min-read

https://psychcentral.com/lib/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-residual-symptoms/

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-triggered-4175432