Stuck

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  PTSD.  I have no idea if I have it. I know so many people who like to toss psychoanalysis into casual conversation (was I one of them?) and I am only now fully realizing how lucky someone is when they can use words like this, without a full understanding of their meaning.


I suppose (hope?) I will have the chance "work through" what I will describe now, in therapy.  OK, let's see whether I can do this justice, because words are strangely difficult for me to conjure now:  It's like, my brain is stuck on a continuous loop at a moment in time, like a record with a scratch.  Maybe when veterans return from war their brains are stuck on a moment of gore, of death, of people with limbs or heads blown off.  God have mercy on their souls.  My brain thankfully isn't stuck on something so vicious and gory.  Strangely, it isn't even stuck on my baby.  Here's where I am stuck, like a recording that has looped and never ends unless you turn the whole fucking machine off:


I am lying on the table, in the moments after the sonographer has completed gathering the pictures for the doctor to view.  I am calm, holding my belly.  And waiting.  And waiting.  My baby was waving her arms just minutes before....Does it feel like a long time has passed?  Why hasn't the doctor come into the room?  More minutes pass.  I am trying to recall every bad ultrasound I have ever endured, did I have to wait this long for the doctor to return for those bad ones?  Then the door opens.


Maybe this is what people mean when they say they recall the moments before the car wreck.