The one where you think everything that happens to you is your fault

(I don't know that WAS ever a 'Friends' episode... but I'm sure Ross would crush it if it was.)

I blame myself for things that clearly aren’t my fault… but I still think I’m responsible for.

I don’t know if that’s a condition of my PTSD, or if it’s just a byproduct of having lived with my parents for 14 years, and being stuck that whole time at the emotional level of John Bender or Andrew Clark in ‘The Breakfast Club.’

(Which, I’m sorry to have to say, but it really isn’t that great of a movie… really… I didn’t even like it that much when it was new… but that’s a fight for another day.)

Last week, my nephew graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in agronomy.

My brother (his dad), my parents, and I, all traveled to El Paso, Texas, to attend his graduation.

We each came from different locations: his parents drove from Colorado; my parents (his grandparents) flew from Seattle; and I flew from Lubbock, which if I could’ve taken a direct flight, would’ve taken about an hour… but there are no direct flights from Lubbock to El Paso, so I had to fly to Dallas and then catch a connecting flight to my final destination.

Both of my flights were delayed due to bad weather in Dallas. Because of this, I wound up with like a two-and-a-half hour layover in the Dallas airport, instead of the 40 minutes or so I was anticipating.

The Lubbock flight had left almost two hours late, and I got bumped to a later flight out of Dallas (which was even later on account of also being delayed), and I was hungry…

So I very foolishly decided to buy some airport quality, fast food Chinese food. The pictures on the menu screen made it look really good! But it really wasn’t. I was starving though, and I’d had the same meal from the same exact fast food chain, years before, in the Seattle airport, so I thought/hoped it would be okay.

And it wasn’t, like, gross, or anything; it just was not satisfying in the slightest.

So when I finally landed in El Paso around 7 pm, still pretty full from my Dallas “supper,” but also still craving something that would actually taste good… I noticed that the El Paso airport had a sandwich shop!

So I meandered down the terminal and I ordered their special super deluxe sandwich — and a large Cinnabon, because let’s face it, those cinnamon rolls are phenomenal, and I haven’t had one in years… and I was on vacation… and everyone knows vacation calories don’t count…

Only the super special ultra deluxe sandwich was less satisfying than my Dallas airport Chinese food… and the Cinnabon was nowhere near as good as I remember them being, back around the time that ‘The Breakfast Club’ was first gaining popularity as “the gold standard” of movies for my generation.

(So now, my generation needs to watch more movies, and make a better cinnamon roll… but again, that’s for another post.)

I ate about half of the sandwich before I came to my senses and realized I don’t have to eat every bite of something I think is disgusting “just because I paid for it!” But I ate that entire Cinnabon; even though it wasn’t the best, it was still doughy bread, and cinnamon, and frosting, and about 4,700 calories worth of comfort food. (Give or take 4,000 calories or so.)

None of which is all that unusual for me, in itself. I mean, I regularly order two meals worth of DoorDash and eat it all in one sitting… so the amount of food I purchased at the two airports was nothing to bat an eye at.

But then I met up with my parents, and we went to the hotel, and decided to get dinner together, and I had yet another meal! (Okay, maybe this last one was my fault… maybe… but I still wasn’t feeling like I’d had way too much food… after all, I only ate half my dinner with my parents…)

The next morning we met up with my nephew and went to breakfast. I ordered one meal: Bourbon Street pancakes. (And that one meal is enough that now I want to move to El Paso so I can have it every day! And finally something I ordered on this trip was worth writing home about…)

After breakfast we went back to the hotel. My nephew dropped us off and went to take care of some pre-graduation stuff… and I went to lay down, and wait for my brother and the rest of his family to arrive later that afternoon.

And I got so sick to my stomach, I wound up missing my nephew’s graduation ceremony the following morning.

Because I didn’t just get sick to my stomach…

I convinced myself that getting sick meant I was a failure, and a disappointment to my nephew and my entire family.

Friday night, when I knew I wouldn’t make it to Saturday morning’s ceremony, I told myself a narrative that said I’m no good for anybody… and I always ruin everything… and it would’ve been better if I’d just stayed home, than to have traveled all the way to El Paso only to miss the actual graduation…

I told myself a lot of things that, when I examine them now, simply aren’t true. In point of fact, I knew even as I was having those thoughts that they weren’t true. But emotionally… psychologically… it all felt real… and it made me feel like I failed, again… and will continue to fail throughout my life, because of my PTSD and my anxiety.

Even though getting sick from eating too much airport food has nothing to do with PTSD or anxiety, somehow I knew in the moment that it was because of my PTSD that I chose to eat so much food that I got too sick to go to graduation…

And I knew that my brother and my nephew would be so upset, they’d hold it against me for the rest of my life…

And Mom and Dad would never say so, but they would secretly be disappointed and would think less of me for getting sick to my stomach and having to stay at the hotel because of it…

And I would never forgive myself, and I’d have to go home knowing that despite the years of therapy I’ve had, I was still a walking disaster, and I’ll probably never actually get better no matter how much I keep saying I want to…

And I hated myself because I should have known better than to get sick on such an important day…

And I had a full-blown panic attack in the hotel room at about 11 p.m., that lasted almost two hours, and kept my mom awake as she tried to comfort me and help me calm down (and meanwhile my mom got up at six something that next morning and went to the graduation, even though I was too sick and too shaken up myself to attend).

I blamed myself for choosing to eat food in the airport on Thursday that wound up making me sick for half of Friday and all of Saturday. And then I blamed myself for having a panic attack about it. I even tried to blame myself for having PTSD in the first place — because maybe if I’d never gotten it to begin with, I might not have been too sick to go to graduation.

But as it was, it was all my fault, and no matter how many times my mom told me that getting sick like that could happen to anybody… I just couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it in. I was so certain I had purposely (though unconsciously) brought it upon myself, I couldn’t accept that sometimes, people just get sick… and that “people” includes me.

I couldn’t accept that it was just something that happened. My PTSD and my anxiety told me it had to be my fault. I was wrong for getting sick, and I deserved to suffer for my poor choices.

Like I said, I know that’s not true. But that’s how my PTSD makes me feel, when something goes wrong. It’s not just that “something happened” and this is the result of that. It’s my fault it happened… and it’s evidence that I’m no good…

And even when I know that’s not the God’s honest truth…

I still don’t always know how to move beyond it.

I’m glad I went to El Paso.

I’m glad I got to see my nephew.

I’m glad I got to see my brother and my sister-in-law.

I’m glad I got to see my mom and dad.

I’m glad my nephew is a college graduate, and has a degree that he’s proud of and that he’s ready to put to good use.

I’m just disappointed that, through no fault of my own, I wasn’t there to see him receive his diploma.

Because, try as I might, my PTSD-addled brain still thinks it must be my fault…

And I wish I knew how to make that go away.

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