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I'm glad to tell you that my picnic with my brother turned out well. It was a hard day in terms of being around things that were incidentally triggering, like people doing park maintenance with loud buzzy tools that made anxiety-provoking noises around where we ate lunch, and then someone setting off firecrackers somewhere near where we were taking a walk after lunch, but I was able to talk the children through the triggers. Also, I've realised that not only does my brother not mind if I set boundaries around things that cause me difficulty, he actually prefers it. He told me that he understands that I am in pain nearly all the time and that because of it I have a great deal of difficulty navigating my life and that it doesn't make him angry or upset with me if I'm in pain, but that it can be hard to deal with when he doesn't know how he can help. So if I tell him "I can't handle discussing that today, let's find something else to talk about," he's not going to feel that I'm silencing him, but rather that I am giving him a welcome opportunity to take care of me. So that's good. I really appreciate the support. I'm just not doing well right now. I'm wishing that my mother (trigger warning, text in white) had just killed me one of those times that she restricted my airway, instead of just messing around with it. Hmm. Maybe that bit of my sordid history is another element of why I'm so triggered by the stuff currently in the news.
I don't know how to kill parts but sometimes I can make them go away by making up a little story about someplace nice they could be with someone they know is safe. Then they won't bother me for a while. If I don't have a story and I need them to leave me alone sometimes I can think about an interesting word to see what other words or sounds are in it, or see what it spells backwards and they leave me alone because they don't know how to play with words.
It's a really hard time right now, really scary. It will get better. I don't know when. Sending you love and good wishes for peace and cope.
Thank you for the response. Today was almost a better day, but some things have been against me. I was having anxiety but I also had some energy. Getting my heart rate up sometimes helps with my anxiety, and the weather is beautiful today, so I went out for a walk with my Person, and for the first time in probably two weeks I felt that my spirits were lifting. Then when we were walking by the cemetery in my town, there was a funeral going on. I guess it must have been a military person who died because just as we walked by, three soldiers raised guns and fired them into the air. Now, fortunately, we were looking right at them when they raised their guns, so I at least had a moment to register that the shots were coming, but even so the very loud sharp noise sent me into fight-or-flight. Then they fired twice more. The kids inside were freaking out, not only from the noise but also from the thought of how terrifying it would have been if we hadn't seen the soldiers and the gunshots sounds had come from nowhere. I did my best to comfort and reassure them as my Person did his best to comfort and reassure me. Mentally, of course, I knew that I was safe and that everything was okay, but those gunshots had wrought havoc with my adrenaline response, and from down deep in my mind where fear has lived wakeful ever since I was a little baby whose mother (potential trigger in white text follows)tried to suffocate her, the doom thoughts were rising. In particular, the feeling was "It's a beautiful day, I am coping well, everything is fine, which means something terrible is about to happen." I used my rational mind to deal with that as best I could. Then on the street we met someone we know from the neighbourhood who we haven't seen in a long time, and had a pleasant (appropriately socially distanced) conversation, and I felt better again. This was very good but then we had to stop at the grocery store, and by the time we were done with that and got home I was exhausted. I should have realised that I was shaky and needed rest, but because I had spent the past hour or so wrangling myself and powering through, when my Person asked me to help him move a table, it didn't even occur to me to ask to wait until later. Perhaps inevitably, I fell and hurt myself. Not seriously, but enough to finish off completely the notion of a better day. As if that wasn't bad enough, then I had to do a therapy session on the phone, and that has been a real struggle lately. After that, we went to the garden center to get some greens to plant, but the place we went didn't have any. Ugh.