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Sufferer Memories of childhood fire tragedy

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Craig76

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Hello to all of you. I have never posted on a forum like this about the topic which is bothering me, although I have posted on depression message boards, because I suffer from clinical depression and anxiety, also bipolar disorder (all diagnosed, medicated).

I hesitate to include myself as a "sufferer" of PTSD among so many of you whose pain and trauma dwarf mine by tidal wave heights...yet, I really don't know where else to lay this out.

Thirty years ago, in July of 1988, five members of my family (cousins) were killed in a terrible house fire. There were two parents in their thirties, and three children--twelve, six, and four. It was absolutely ghastly and made news all over my area of Ohio; there were even articles in the New York Times. The fire was quickly determined to be arson. The house where my cousins lived was a duplex, and a woman lived on the other side from them who had recently thrown out her boyfriend. He took revenge early that July fourth (of all days) by pouring gasoline all over her side of the front porch and striking a match. She was out of town. My cousins were at home, asleep. They all died at the scene except the youngest, who spent several hours hospitalized in a smoke-inhalation-induced coma before she joined them. The man who set the fire is now serving several consecutive life sentences in prison.

I was a very awkward eleven at the time. A doorstep adolescent, shy and reserved to begin with, emotionally retarded genetically (none of the men on my dad's side of the family, to which my cousins belonged, ever usually talk about anything personal). Even aside from the nightmare itself, mine was a hard, hard spot to be in because I did not know most of my dad's other relatives whom I saw at the funeral and afterward (he did not get along with them or even his mother as a rule); I never really knew the victims of the tragedy...and yet my pain, exacerbated by that I saw around me, was harrowing. Absurd as it may sound, I didn't dare cry over these people I never really knew in front of people I never really knew. So I didn't. And I truly believe that my failure to grieve properly over this tragedy has resulted in even greater emotional scars than there might have otherwise been. It didn't help that I overheard a lot of ghoulish details about the appearance of the deceased ("When Ray went in to identify them, he said Jack's eyes was all burned out...he'd never seen anything like it.") Then there was my grandmother's unsettling story about "seeing" the mother, Debbie, at the foot of her bed in the night in a white gown, appearing to call out to her. "I said, Debbie...Grandma's here. And she turned and just vanished out of the room..."

I am forty-one years old. I have been through a lot in the past thirty years since the fire. Thirty years is a lot of living for anyone, I know. I've battled psychological/mental issues, life issues, employment issues, academic issues, relationship issues. I attempted a career as an actor and am now busy building a career as a writer. I've had triumphs and I've suffered other tragedies. But the events of that night in 1988 have returned to haunt me regularly, sometimes so badly that I could not think of anything else. One example is when I was performing with a Christian drama troupe in college, and we happened to make an appearance at the church where my cousins worshiped and where their funeral was held. That, really, was the trigger, in 1996, which brought it all back to the point where it has never completely left me alone since.

One thing I find odd--and there so many things that are odd about this story--is that, as I mentioned, I did not know my cousins well. I met them a grand total of maybe three times that I remember. We weren't close, although I liked what little I absorbed of them personally. Jack and Debbie were very good parents and their children were respectful and well-behaved. Anything else I know, I heard from other family members who loved them. They were good, generous, giving people, and a very loving family. They were poor--thus they were living in a low end of town where something like this was more likely to happen--but they were coming up in the world at the time they died, financially and in terms of their location. Another great irony: they were in the process of moving, and one week later, they would have been in their new house. Also, there were no working smoke alarms in the house which might have saved their lives.

I was thinking today that the whole thing sounds like something out of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. As a writer, I don't think I would use the story in a book because it sounds too contrived. Yet it did happen, and again, the terrible memories keep rearing their heads no matter how much time passes or how much help I get. And these instances are oftentimes uncanny enough to be downright eerie. A few weeks ago, I was showing a friend a picture of the house lot where the duplex once stood, and as God is my witness, we both started to smell smoke. It was a neighbor grilling out, but still. Then, another major trigger at present is that I have a new job which takes me past the site once a week. One day, I got out of my car in the parking lot of the store where I work and a fire engine pulled into the lot right after me, siren blaring, apparently in response to an emergency at the adjoining store.

I later told my therapist that I looked at the sky and thought, "What do you all want from me?"

I had the thought that I'm supposed to write a book about my cousins, and I could, but I think it would take a serious toll.

What bothers me most of all about this tragedy and its imprint on my life is that it keeps returning to the forefront of my mind, even when I am involved in situations and endeavors which have nothing to do with it. I have and will go along peacefully for months, never even thinking about the fire...and then, all of a sudden, I'll have a creepy dream which brings it all back. I'll hear a song--I'll always associate the hymn "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" with the funeral, as it was sung there by a lady who could barely keep herself together to do it.

At the thirty year mark, with my recent new job bringing me literally into my late cousins' back yard once a week, I feel that the time has come to reach out. Enough is enough. I can't go on carrying this burden alone anymore. And I wonder if anyone else out there has had a similar experience which haunts them, and if they were able to "triumph" over it, and put it in perspective so that it no longer had such emotional power over them. I have a great therapist, and we've discussed this at length, and she was most encouraging when I told her about my idea to post on this forum after researching it.

In conclusion...today, I finally made the move to drive over from the store where I work to the site of the house, just a block down the street. I am somewhat confused as to exactly where it stood, but my instincts tell me that the bare, unseeded lot with the remnant of a driveway, surrounded by a chain-link fence, is the spot. I stood there this afternoon just looking on, not really thinking or feeling anything. And another incredible coincidence comes to mind as I write this...a year or so ago, I had a date with a guy who, just in passing, mentioned that he had grown up in that very neighborhood, playing in that vacant lot on that street, and that the other kids had told him the house there had burned down years ago...

Why? What is expected of me here? That's honestly how it feels sometimes as these echoes ring. Do any of you feel that?

Forgive my wordiness. I'm a wordsmith, and I frequently just don't know when to stop. :inpain:
 
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I hesitate to include myself as a "sufferer" of PTSD among so many of you whose pain and trauma dwarf mine by tidal wave heights...yet, I really don't know where else to lay this out.

PTSD is just one of the many possible results from living through certain kinds of trauma. 10 people can live through the exact same trauma (say a bomb on a bus) and walk away with 10 completely different diagnoses.

If I’m remembering correctly, I think something nearing 80% of people experience Criterion A level* trauma sometime in their life, but only about 1 in 5 go on to develop PTSD from it.

Once someone has PTSD? They have PTSD. There’s absolutely no use in trauma comparisons at that point / which trauma is “worse” etc. Ditto, PTSD exists on a spectrum. Someone with the worst of the worst of life long trauma histories may only have mild PTSD symptoms, meanwhile someone with a single event may have really severe symptoms. PTSD? Isn’t a pain scale. It doesn’t say how much you were hurt, or how much you are hurting, or how much you will hurt. It’s just a disorder.

Have you been diagnosed with PTSD?
 
I hesitate to include myself as a "sufferer" of PTSD among so many of you whose pain and trauma dwarf mine by tidal wave heights...yet, I really don't know where else to lay this out.
This is a surprisingly common sentence to see. Don't worry yourself. Your pain is clearly valid.

I'm so sorry that that happened. How horribly unfair. I'm glad you're here
 
Might it have been the funeral (s) and the surrounding grief by people you continued to grow up around and how they dealt with this terrible event that now haunts you more?

Do you usually handle grief in a normal way. (whatever that is)?
 
What a tragic story. *sigh*
Well you are among friends here.
We get grief, loss, trauma responses and that kind of stuff.
And yeah, minimizing our own trauma is a way many of us cope, it's often part and parcel of symptoms and shame and learning not to, is part of recovery, so yeah, comparing traumas is not something we encourage, here.
I hope you find comfort and support here.
Welcome @Craig76 :-).
 
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