#PTSDDaddy Memory Problems, OCD, and Depression

I have had a rough couple of weeks. My wife thought it would be good to write about them so this is my attempt at writing about the events the past few weeks. I have added issues in life that may or may not be PTSD induced.

Chewie… my sanity check.

Memory Problems…

Ask my wife, I forget shit all the time. This combined with the fact that I had to change my plans from being in the Army until retirement to medically retiring NOW and having to figure out WTF to do. I ended up moving to Florida for a job and long story short, the whole situation caused some financial issues and bills not getting paid on time. This has come to a constant game of “who is on my ass next?” It’s always a surprise and as much as I budget and write things down, and calculate and recalculate… I always miss one. That one always calls me up angry, and some how pretty much everything I thought I had extra to pay extra on bills I got current, all go to THAT guy. I spend a lot of time putting out fires and this combined with my PTSD and memory issues has made life stressful at times. I do not know where I would be without my wife. She is a HUGE reason I have been able to keep our heads above water even though we often tread water for a long time. I swear I go over and over and over the bills and somehow I miss someone. I blame memory issues because this did not used to happen to me. I did not forget bills. We recently got some difficult news on a bill, which did not leave many options. This led me down a depression path that seemed like I could not get out of even though my wife was so positive about everything. The next day her car broke, the day after that something else happened. It’s like really? I finally get on the bills I paid a LOT of bills and literally the afternoon I am stepping and fetching to work with these people on figuring out an option that they will accept that I CAN do but it’s extremely painful. I went from thrilled to death of how well I got on bills to WTF I’m going to hell the next moment.

OCD Everything in it’s place

OCD…

So this issue leads to the OCD part of me. Now I have to re-arrange EVERYTHING to make up for this one thing. I cannot focus until I get all my ducks back in a row. This is the part my wife truly hates is when I obsess. I hit a point where I cannot “fix” something so I scramble to move decimals over here and pennies over there and add shit and subtract shit until everything fits in the square. I know I have memory issues so what really makes it worse is that I know I forgot something but what? Back to analyzing, calculating, re-calculating, writing shit down, going through bills, bank statements, anything and everything. As soon as I think I found everything I remember “oh yeah I paid paypal for this other thing is there an auto payment?” I lose sleep, I can’t eat and then when I do I overeat. By over eat I mean I order a pizza, wings, and bread and finish all of it. I go out with my family to do family things and my wife asks me a questions. I see this, I hear this, but I don’t hear it. My brain is back calculating and obsessing with numbers. Overall it is NOT that big of a deal. In the long haul I am stressing way too much about something that will be fixed. But I view this as a status of my “manhood”. If this is the status (a temporary hard time) then I am a complete failure as a father and a husband. I then begin to get short with my wife. I do not do this on purpose I am just lost in my world of “fixing shit”. Every time she talks it interrupts my ability to fix it and if I cannot fix it then I have no purpose as a man.  A “real man” provides his wife and kids with food, water, shelter, clothing, education and a few fun things here and there. But this one issue means I have failed at all of this.

Depression

Depression…

I will be honest I fight the thought of me having depression just as hard as the PTSD. The biggest issue is that to this day I still fight admitting I have depression. Once something happens that I view as a complete failure I trigger my depression. I have a distaste for people and socializing to begin with having PTSD, but with depression I want to shut the door, turn off all lights, go to sleep, and just say “fuck the world.”  I know my wife realizes when I hit this state because the poor thing will look at me and try to help. I hit a point she cannot help and she sends me to bed. She knows… she knows I am my worst critic. She knows that I am  horribly negative at this point, and she knows that really the only thing I can do is take a few moments to shut out the world. At this point I do not even realize that I am doing this to everyone. I become quite unpredictable when it comes to “is he in a good mood or not?” questions. The more unpredictable I am… just shows how hard I am fighting it. I know my wife sees this point because she has hit the point where she will stop talking. I hate this. It drives me absolutely bonkers because

Smile if you’re dysfunctional!

I knew I had issues as I couldn’t stop laughing at that bumper sticker.

#PTSDDaddy Memory Issues, OCD, and Depression