text: my old friend, you are still in my thoughts
  I was thinking so much that I had to get out of bed to come and write this. It was bothering me, so I had to bother one of our fur babies who was sleeping on the computer chair.
  after each individual PTSD episode, other memories seemed to come back to me.
  Some memories have made me realize the many close friends and family members I
  have lost over the years. But there is one memory that is bittersweet. I cannot
  recall the last time I spoke about this person, or what happened to them, in an
  awfully long time but here it goes.
  A foggy morning in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
  The last time we spoke, I was at the neighbours, babysitting. He came knocking after my mother had informed him that I was next door babysitting. The children were sleeping so we sat on the front porch talking about how school was going, or how we wish we had more time to do more things, especially together, and I am sure we talked about our birthdays since we shared one. He was one of those friends you simply enjoyed hanging out with. He stole his mother's cigarettes from the pack she would leave on the kitchen or coffee table. I even remember him stealing cigarettes from his mother’s pack when she left them on the kitchen table. We thought we were cool. And in my head, we were.
  Honestly, the flooding of memories has not all been bad. Yes, there are bad memories, and trauma, that I am hiding deep down inside. And these bad ones are the ones I do not want to deal with. And it is not just one. And I never wanted to remember them in the first place. I mean, I hid them in this iron-bust-out-proof container somewhere stashed in my head for over twenty years. Well, it was. That is until December 2020 when I had my first lengthy PTSD episode. During this episode I remember feeling fear and thinking about how much I wanted to die at that moment, I did not want to be there, back in that moment where I no longer had control of what happened to me. I wanted to run as far away as I could. I wanted nothing to do with what happened to me. I want it to go away. Far away. I want to give these memories margaritas, sombreros, and a wad of cash and fly them off to the first available vacation destination I can send them to. Five-star. First-class. One-way ticket. I have not figured out how to do that yet.