Jennifer's Journal

Trigger Warning: Living with PTSD

There’s a game that I play every day. All day long.

I bet you want to know the rules. I mean, every day, after all.

The rules are really similar to the rules of walking through a mine field. “Don’t trigger anything.” There are a lot of ways to lose.

You start by rolling the die. If you roll low, that’s good! You start off the day without nightmares. If you roll high, then you have to roll two dice every time you have to roll in the rest of the game. Have fun!

Every turn, you pick up a card. A turn is basically anything you do: leaving the house, going to work, walking your dog, surfing the web. Each card has something different written on it. Sometimes, its a free pass: like, “You have someone you trust with you.” Congratulations!

But your next turn comes up really quick, so don’t get too comfortable. There are a lot of turns and some of those cards are nasty. Examples range from “someone tells a joke that reminds you why you’re playing this game” to “someone touches you when you don’t want them to.” When you pick up cards like this, roll the die (or dice depending on that nightmare factor). Good luck!

Now, keep a tally of all the points you rack up from the dice rolls from each turn. The higher your score gets, the more dice you’ll have to roll. And when your score gets too high, you break down. Maybe you have a flashback. Maybe it feels like the worst thing that’s ever happened to you is happening again and again and again. Oops, you lose today.

Go home and try playing again tomorrow. Ha, and people wonder why you’re so jumpy!

But maybe you managed to win! Even then, your score is usually so high by the end of the game that you’re dragging yourself into bed… knowing that by doing so you’re rolling the first die of a new game… knowing the next one will be as bad or worse than the last.

By the way, you can’t stop playing.

I never said the game was fun.