My brain seems to simply have wiped out part of my memory. I think it’s for the best. It’s never served me well to dwell on the past. I’ve messed things up so many times and made so many mistakes. To carry that around with me each day would be to carry around an unneeded burden, a constant reminder of a person I used to be – someone I have forever sought to be rid of, following me incessantly like a stray dog.

‍

I hate that person. I try to forget about him and pretend he doesn’t exist. Besides, my drug-tangled mind lives only in the future. To it the past is an irrelevant inconvenience. The present is an ungraspable concept, best left for the Dalai Lama or for monks living in secluded hermitude that have the time in their schedules to unravel such an elusive riddle. Let them ponder on that divine paradox.

‍

No, my mind is too busy to live in the present. Who has the time to stop and smell the flowers? There can be no walks in the park when you have threats to anticipate, moves to make, plans to formulate, risks to calculate. Indeed, my mind lives in the future, where there are a million things to worry about, outcomes to predict and prepare for and problems that we can fix somehow by thinking and worrying enough about them. However, it took me a long time to realise that’s not how our brains are supposed to work. The clinical diagnosis? Trauma response. Defense mechanism. Symptoms of PTSD, especially when coupled with severe bouts of anxiety, hyperventilation and panic attacks.

‍

When I was given this diagnosis though, I was skeptical and cynical. I thought it was psychological mumbo jumbo you could use to describe any unconventional or irrational state of mind. It was only when I eventually ended up in a residential rehabilitation centre after being given bail, that a therapist explained things to me.

‍

She told me that, after living and being exposed to any environment the mind perceives as hostile or dangerous for extended periods of time, it can enter a state of seemingly never ending fight or flight. This is in response to the constant perceived danger that must be avoided in order to survive.

‍

It explained the constant feeling of anxiety I carried with me every day. That followed me everywhere like the stray dog of my past, always poking its mangy head around the corner a street behind me in a lame attempt to avoid me seeing it following me. It felt silly though. PTSD seemed valid only when I pictured a shell shocked soldier, traumatised from months in the trenches being shot at and bombed. The stereotype soldier of my grandad’s generation returning from war. That was what I pictured when she told me I had PTSD. Compared to that, any supposed trauma seems invalid. First world traumas.

‍

The mind has no scale for trauma though, the therapist said.

‍

I had not been to war but I had spent a long time in prison, and I guess the ever-present threat of having your house tipped upside down and someone you’ve never met wearing a body cam conducting a strip search at four in the morning can leave one feeling on edge.