I feel like things spiralled out of control in my fevered brain Tuesday night/Wednesday morning with an unlooked-for dream.

But if I dissect out the past few weeks, I guess I’ve been asking for it. It’s like jumping up-and-down on an unstable bridge.

I was seriously blind-sided by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Apparently other readers saw it coming a while ago, but I had absolutely no inkling about Severus Snape’s motivation for protecting Harry. When I read the chapter “The Tale of the Prince”, it hit me like a ton of bricks, forcing me to reflect upon the trajectory of my life these past 10 years.

I’ve learned that there’s no real way to compartmentalize trauma, whether psychological or physical. You may think you’ve packed it all away, nice and neat and clean, or at least walled it off like an abscess, a tubercular granuloma, but then one day it wakes you up from your sleep, leaving you crying or screaming. You submerge these things at your peril. These are the kernels of PTSD.

I looked back to June of this year, and it doesn’t look like I started losing my mind overtly until quite recently. I mean, there is definitely a sense of unease in my posts from the past three months, but, I don’t know. I was thinking that maybe I was little more hopeful than I’ve usually been.

The bottom started falling out when I started thinking about my birthday. A decade, and I’m starting to appreciate how emotionally stunted I am.

I’m going to try to go back to S.D. right now, though. Under the cover of darkness, like a thief in the night.