A Different Way to Tell What PTSD Is Like

The strength of your emotions during the event determine how long and how vivid you will remember things. Sharp pain, as a physical representation of negative emotions is stronger than intense pleasure, a representation of positive emotions. What I write below is irrelevant about its content, but is very relevant about the longevity and the vividness of details preserved by memory over time. Again, and again, I am not comparing this situation to PTSD. Instead, I use this example to illustrate that if positive emotions could capture the degree of vividness and preserve it over time, negative emotions are by their nature are more potent than pleasant ones. If I remember my pleasant experiences this well, a soldier or a rape victim remembers details of his or her nasty events much more lucid and much more longer.
I could, of course, write about different nasty experiences, about things that will make your hair stand, and will keep you awake at night, for many nights. Instead, I chose to share with you only pleasant memories because they will not be disturbing, intrusive, and unmanageable.
After reading my notes, I want you to understand with your brain, gut, and soul, that PTSD is polar opposite of this and many times stronger. The point is for you to, at least, somehow, experience what PTSD is like without putting you through the real, the nasty, the worst of what a man is capable of doing.
Our memories shape our lives, our actions, and our reactions to the conditions that resemble what we experienced some time in the past. From the moment of inception, we remember, consciously or subconsciously, everything we hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, and think about; we remember ideas and emotions, we remember it all, from inception to death. The reason some memories stay fresh for a month, a year, or for life, is because they were written using stronger and stronger emotions. In a way, emotions assign the tools with which the memories are recorded.
Special Memories Come with Keys, Like Charms on a Necklace
In my early twenties, I fell in love. I was young and inexperienced in handling emotions. Although many years went by filling my memory banks with other experiences, I can still recall the sensations, the emotions, and the feelings I had back then. That relationship did not work out. And even though I have not seen her for decades, I still remember. The stronger the feelings, the longer the memory will last.
I used to enjoy playing music, including five years of music school with classes at least three times a week, and tons of practice. After my graduation, I put the instrument in the closet, and when found it a year later, I could not play a single tune, even with the music sheets. So how is it that maybe 50 aggregate hours of sex during several months of relationship linger in my memory for several decades, while what I learned in over 1,500 hours of lessons over five years, vanished from the memory in less than a year?
Why is it that every time I see a redhead, I remember the redheaded girl, my childhood friend? Actually, playing with her was more trouble than fun. To this day, I have no redheaded friends.
Fear is another key-more powerful emotion than love, in terms of memorability. Although I've had my share of gruesome frightening memories, I would rather talk about the brain and memory by using pleasant experiences.
Her skin was soft and velvety. Her scent, lightly sweet, with a hint of vanilla, reminded me of the scent of the hair of a toddler. Her eyes were dark, big, and deep as an ocean. We were kissing, cuddling and kissing some more. Our hands caressed each other's skin, and it felt as though we didn't have enough hands and enough fingers to touch and caress the entire body, all at the same time. Her lips kissed every spot on my body. Hot, moist and insatiable, they wanted more, and more, and more. At times, when I had my eyes closed, it felt as though I was in her lips, between them, as though I was within them, inside and out. We had to take short breaks from giving each other pleasure. When she kissed my hand, or arm, or leg, or stomach, that part would experience such intensity of sensation, it felt as though my heart moved in there. Sometimes it felt as though my heart was in my stomach or in my throat, or in my calf. She would start kissing and caressing that part, and after some time, that part of my body would get hot. I would start feeling my heartbeat in there. Then it would start throbbing with pleasurable sensations. The pleasure would increase to the point of becoming mixed with discomfort, to dull pain, to intense pain mixed with intense pleasure. When we stopped, it was only to catch some breath. Between the periods of cuddling, caressing and kissing, we would interlock our genitals for the dance of life, with the rhythm of the blinking star. Going inside her was not a treat, it was an ever-evolving journey, sometimes boisterous, rough, relentless, merciless, like the heavy storm waves pounding the rocky cliff; every time exploding, roaring with the raucous unbridled spirit. Sometimes it was a calm voyage with slow, warm, long waves running up the fine sand of a tropical beach, breaking up in tiny white bubbles, absorbed by the thirsty sand without a whisper. Oozing from the inside out, spouting from the outside in was the nectar of love, saturating, insisting, permeating, invading, remarkable, unstoppable. We relished in its tangy presence and let our bodies drink up the elixir of life.