Black rain!

I suffer from moments of PTSD. It is as Marechera said: Black rain, drumming upon the head. The blackness metaphor is apt, because it implies numbness, the inability to think or see clearly. The metaphor of the rain that beats down in also extremely appropriate, because it describes an agitation that separates you from the rest of the world -- attacking the skull, the exterior of the brain. PTSD is exquisitely like Chinese water torture. When it begins, it seems as if it will go on forever, but then suddenly the stress is released, and one is once again back in the real world.

The unpredictability of this foe is what makes it hard to manage. Will it come to me in my sleep, making everything seem hopeless, like a heavy blanket of dread? If so, I will be less well positioned to use various deliberate tactics I've developed over time, to fend it off.

This PTSD is a product of contemporary identity politics. It was produced, above all, by patriarchy's anti-feminism, but also by those who made an industry out of hating whites who came from Africa.

It is a product of Australian xenophobia.