PTSD, communication and COVID-19

With complex PTSD, communication restricted to that which DOES NOT involve risk of physical assault, should work well for me.

So COVID-19’s 1.5 metres apart, don’t visit, non-touchy-feely social distancing should work.  You would think.

Well. 

Never underestimate the power of attachment issues, to screw up physically distant methods of communication, each one of them dripping grief, screaming rejection. 

See, I was one of those perplexing toddlers who screamed when left, hid from temporary caregivers, then screaming, was dragged to my parent(s) when forced to reunite. 

And as an adult I do the same – fall apart when separated, go suddenly silent in my grief-anger cage, then am sluggish to reunite – the child in my brain shrieking: “They left me”.  Whilst the adult me is musing – “he/she has arisen from the dead”, startlingly – as I expected the separation to be permanent.  It is like Easter, and a doubt filled Thomas, I hang back. 

Fuelled by decades of relationship breakdowns, my ability to connect is now a seismic fault.  The longer the physical separation, the greater the rift.

I need regular face-to-face in the same space to maintain a relationship, with anyone.

But then came COVID-19 with those face-to-face separate space options. 

Things like Face Time, Zoom, Livestream – with their apps to download, links to press, and a fiddle around with cameras, all whilst I note the speed at which this fancy technology drains my phone battery.   

Finally, when the face pops up, heartache – as I gaze at this person (who I may have known decades), their now flickering face seems different.  Alien.  Changed. 

Staticky, it becomes a TV person, as I hold the device too close or too far, straining for a full body shot because I can read the language of only half this person’s body. 

Struggling to connect to this vaguely familiar soul, unable to accurately read its language, I find I have little self-discipline.  Never one for TV, my attention continually glides from the screen, lured away by unfinished chores and such.  It is not that I am bored.  Nor uncaring.  I genuinely want to engage.  But, it is simply too much like TV, with all the unreality of it.  Distracted by a strange noise outside, there is too much streaming into my head to fully take in every word.

Words delivered by voices that, diluted by technology, sound different, the logic of my brain translating that to a cooling of their regard for me.  They may swear black and blue that everything is the same.  But.  Something is off.  Do I sense a frightening change in tone? 

Having only a distorted face and voice to go on, I ponder -

We have a strong relationship.  Or do we?  Will we last this separation?  Or will it speedily end?

Because, the fancier the method of communication, the faster it is.  Suddenly, trapped inside their houses people are busy, and conversations once lengthy are now super-speed - hello, goodbye and a glance at each other’s lounge/bed/spa.  I feel unwelcome.  An intruder.  Silently, my insecurity notes - they want to get rid of me.  I am being evicted, from our relationship.

This new technology.  I dislike it. 

But, for all its distastefulness, at least I get to see a face.

Switch back to phone and -

Why are they not answering their phone?  Are they dead?  In hospital?  Do they recognise my number and are deliberately spurning me?  Do they hate me, and silence is their revenge? 

Death or rejection.  There can be no third reason for their silence. 

A terror that throws me into a spectacular blank eyed grief.  For me, absence does not make the heart grow fonder – it rips my heart out.

Which is what they often get in their seemingly sporadic calls - sobbing me, they blissfully unaware of the terminal illness I am now convinced they have, or my growing terror of abandonment.  A fear which is no longer a cloak – it is a body suit.

Now blind to facial expression, my insecurity takes their sentences out of context, creatively warping each word, their vague “talk to you later” interpreted by me to mean the other side of eternity.  If at all. 

Locked into my grief-terror, eventually I can no longer even speak.  Making the phone now a useless device, as I refuse to answer it. 

Leaving SMS. 

It may be overlooked, underappreciated, superseded by fancy new things, and not without its list of limitations (lack of voice and face separate space, cryptic messages), but curiously, SMS shoves people back into their bodies – unwarped by technology, their soothingly familiar ‘voices’ calming little keepsakes hoarded and memorised, no matter the topic. 

Afraid to intrude, I rarely text people but am comforted that our scantily-worded conversation will drift timelessly over hours, days, weeks, months, years, never terminated (perhaps forever) by red ‘end call’ buttons. 

SMS has no real end – irrespective of the length of gap between pings.  There is always that potential, for further connection. 

SMS.   

For when cheerio is just too final.

Yet. 

Everyone will be high 5-ing and chattering away, after COVID-19 has withdrawn.  Except me.  Narrow eyed, statue-inert, I will be sussing out greetings, analysing every facial twitch from metres away. 

We have been in contact.  Perhaps regularly.  Perhaps through multiple inferior mediums.  But it was from afar.  You are not dead, clearly.  But. 

Has our relationship survived the distance? 

Originally written April 2020, revised May, 2020; July, 2020