Denial

[Casey_03]

Since my one main trauma, the one which I think affected me the most, I have gone back and forth between thinking it didn't damage me that badly and realizing it has destroyed any chance I have for ever being happy. I was trying to save someone I loved, someone who had told me more than once that he was a lost cause. He'd started using drugs and I was too afraid to walk away. I thought he'd kill himself. I remember actually praying (which is weird because I don't believe in God). I prayed and said I would be willing to take anything, any pain the universe could throw at me, as long as he would be okay and pull through. Now, 10 years later, I realize that happened. I saved him, but at the price of losing myself. He now has a child and a family. I could never hope for that much. I saved two lives that day -- his and the guy he was trying to kill. But I lost my own. Even as he tortured me and shouted at me during his psychotic break, asking why I wouldn't die faster, I honestly believed in love and compassion, that warmth could pull him out of the psychosis and make him realize what he was doing. I remember saying "I love you" even as he left me there to bleed out and kicked me, breaking my ribs. I don't want to be angry. I want to believe that I saved someone else. I just don't know how to get myself back now.