One time someone told me we are a magnet for our own chaos, that I asked for certain things to happen, that things happened to me as a result of my own powers of attraction. When I think about things like my tattoo I think about that. I named myself Perpetual Present because I realized what that really felt like. It’s only gotten more pronounced over time. I drew a bubble chart on my white board with PTSD at the center and symptoms I experience spidering off from that. Then off of those bubbles in magenta I wrote the ways that manifests in my daily life. For example, one line leads to a bubble that says “anticipatory anxiety,” and off of that bubble is another bubble that says, “fear of things ending in disaster,” and so on. 

The chart kept growing until I ran out of room, which was quite eye opening. I honestly have no idea how the hell anyone would be expected to function as a normal member of society with all those thoughts bubbling under the surface. No wonder Billy seems schizophrenic, because schizophrenia and PTSD are just one or two elements from being the same thing–one being reality. These thoughts don’t stem from a detachment or split from reality, they stem from visceral interactions with extremely unpleasant aspects of reality that sometimes cause rifts in time and perception.