The Mad Doctor Strikes Again!

` No, he's not planning to vivisect me once more over my holiday trip to Ohio. Indeed, as you may well know by now, this man has thoroughly and fundamentally changed my life via his heinous money-grubbing shenanigans.
` Afterward, my being unable to handle the PTSD symptoms (before I even knew what they were) has caused a huge rift in our relationship.

` When I first moved in with Phil over a year ago, I quite enjoyed being in physical contact with him. After a certain point, he triggered a phobia of mine which had developed after my violent encounter with Dr. Benninger.

` It's a being-tortured-by-a-mad-doctor-thing.

` Just from living with Phil I began to shut down and suffer more flashbacks and nightmares than I had been before. Gradually, I distanced myself from him so that it would stop. Which, it did. (I guess it was a habit left over from growing up with Jerry.) Unfortunately, I had become so detached from Phil that we are giving up on our relationship.

` So now, we're going our separate ways, which involves both of us moving out of this apartment since neither of us could afford it on our own.

` Phil is utterly miserable. Mainly, I am feeling bad for him. Why couldn't I have cleared my thinking sooner so that I could see that there was a problem, rather than tuning everything out? My PTSD teacher would say it's not really my fault, since this kind of clouded mind and mental avoidance is normal for people with this disorder.
` Doesn't make me feel any better about myself. I'm still guilty of getting into the habit of feeling fearful around Phil, rectifying it in a non-constructive way, and eventually choosing to ignore him in order to be able to think more clearly.
` Sure, it's not really my fault - those are survival strategies in the mental world - though I wish this situation would have been spotted earlier on by someone or another.
` I guess the only good thing about this is that I'm healing anyway and that I'll probably be happier living by myself.

` As it is, I vow that the Mad Doctor will not ruin another $mas, even though I don't celebrate it anyway.