I’ve been out of sorts lately. In a few short days, I will be on the overnight bus to travel well over 350 miles away from my current home in order to complete a C&P appointment for the VA.

I knew it was coming; it’s a necessary part of maintaining my disability benefits through the VA. It’s just happening really fast. It’s been maybe a week between the initial email and scheduling the appointment. Then, of course, arranging the travel. Travel. To sit down with doctors I’ve never met; and who’ve never met me. To let them look me over, run their tests, and determine whether or not I’m still broken enough to continue financial compensation.

It’s not the physical that bothers me. It’s the psychiatrist part that bothers me. A shrink who’s never met me, who doesn’t know my chart or my past; and it’s that person that’s going to decide if I’m broken enough.

Because my kind of broken is different than most. My kind of broken isn’t as much physical as it is mental, and it has nothing to do with combat. It has everything to do with what my brothers in arms did to me. It has everything to do with the system that led to continued trauma and an utter ruination of my psyche.

My kind of broken, caused by someone else, landed me in rehab at 19 for substance abuse and I didn’t even talk about what happened that night because I was ashamed. Because I was told it was my fault. That I’d asked for it and had brought it on myself. That nobody responds to trauma like that, so clearly I was faking it. Crying wolf.

I know what happened. NCIS knows what happened. The command that send my suspect on a convenient deployment when the prospect of a polygraph presented itself.

I know, too, how my brain operates now. I know the fear I feel, the anxiety. Worst of all, I know the episodes of dissociation and absolute shutdown when faced with certain situations. I know the body freezing fear of being “in trouble,” of working out eighteen different ways in which I was to blame for every single thing that has ever gone wrong since that night and never wanting anyone to take up any cause on my behalf because clearly I have always been to blame for everything bad that’s ever happened to me.

And that’s not even taking karma into consideration.

So I have set up meeting with a friend for a meal. I’ve worked out a tattoo friendly onsen to visit before heading back home. I have plans to rest and recover the following day. I’ll be okay, that much I know.

It’s just a matter of making it from here to okay again.