The Torture of a Game & the Shock of Having Been Shocked

Posted on May 10, 2010 in PTSD Violence

The exuberance of another player has put me into an uncomfortable position. The unremitting chaos of memory afflicts me. I can barely keep my mind on the contest when I am playing it because I am remembering the way my brother used to force me into playing games when I was a child. His stratagem was to read the rules through and then pummel me with accusations of laziness and introversion. Then we sit down to the card table he kept in his bedroom and study the board. Just when I thought I had the upper hand, he would invoke some hidden clause and undo me. When I complained that he was cheating, he would tell me that I should have read the rules that he never gave me a chance to read.

There were six years between us. He knew that his size and his willingness to throw his weight against me could cow me. When my mother intervened, she would do so on his behalf. I should have read the rules, she agreed with him.

One time we were playing a game set on the beaches of Normandy. The rules for the scenario clearly stated “Use Optional Rule Number 1 for this scenario.”

My brother saw the word optional and insisted that I was cheating. He called Mom in and she ruled on his behalf, again. I overturned the game board and tore up the rules. Ever after, that game which I had bought with my own money lay hidden in my desk. My brother had proven himself a cheat, twisting words to suit him. My father said the secret was to beat him because he turned into a baby and never wanted to play again.

I fear games, yet I am attracted to them. There’s a bit of bully in me from the experience of my childhood. It’s hard for me to see them as “only a game” because of the high stakes of honor for which I played as a boy. No blood splashes on the floor. No blue-brown bruises spread beneath my skin. No bones are broken. Yet in my heart and somewhere in the convolutions of my brain fear spreads and paralyzes me. This is the way with post-traumatic stress disorder. When it hits me, I don’t worry about pain. The images flashing across my brain do not hurt not even as much as the prick of a needle. No hands come down hard on me, no shod feet find my thighs and calves. It is only the memory of being overwhelmed that entangles me, the shock of having been shocked.

I seek to dream long and hard because that world is safer than the waking hours.