I couldn’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a time for a week after that happened. My entire system was in heightened alert — I think the while thing triggered some old PTSD I’d thought I’d long gotten over. Even now, I am still detoxing from 4 long years serving under that horrible regime. I swore, 3 days after the 2016 election, that I wouldn’t let the likes of him chase me out of government service, even as I watched many of my colleagues flee and bail on their careers. I vowed to outlast that MF-er, and I have — but I did pay a price. It’s going to take a little while for all of those bad psychic toxins to leach their way out of my battered and bruised psyche.