Hi everyone. I'm not sure I have PTSD yet, I saw my psychiatrist scribble it on his notepad when I was describing my latest symptoms and I didn't ask him about it but after some online reading, I do appear to have several symptoms. I don't feel sad or depressed, just kind of numb and devoid of feelings. I'm going to make an appt for counseling soon, part of my delay is financial and part of it is that I've recently become really withdrawn and isolated and don't want to talk to people on the phone or go out in public around people.
In February this year, I was attacked and shot in my home by a friend's ex-boyfriend. She was trying to get out of an abusive relationship after 8 years when she found out the guy was cheating on her with her hairstylist, and she called me one day crying and begging me to take her out to get away from all her problems for a night.
We had a good time at her favorite bar and when it was over, she started shifting back into sad, weepy mode and wanting to go home to this dirtbag. I insisted that she should stay on my couch and worry about it tomorrow, and she reluctantly agreed. After I went to bed, I awoke to them screaming at each other on the phone. I took her phone away from her and told the guy he was 'the devil himself' and to 'stay away from my friend'. I sternly warned her not to call him back or answer the phone, and I went back to sleep. My partner was sitting up with her (I'm gay, been with the same guy 10yrs and her ex knew there was nothing romantic going on between us, that's usually the first question people ask).
Sometime after I went back to bed, they had a calm, civil conversation on the phone and my partner talked to the guy, determined that he sounded reasonable and rational, and he said he only wanted to come get my friend and take her home because she was drunk and wanted him to take care of her. So, my partner having never met the guy, gave him directions to our place. When he pulled up, my partner opened the door to let him in and was met with a .357 Magnum in his face, he was ordered to the ground and the guy started searching my house until he found me asleep in my bed. Then, he took the assault rifle strapped to his shoulder and fired a round into the celing to wake me up.
I jumped to my feet, screaming the same thing over and over again which was "Get the f... out of my f... house with those f... guns!". He started walking to the front and I was right behind him, in my boxer shorts screamin gfor him to leave. Then, he and my friend were fighting and when he said, "Now you're coming home with me" I said, "No she's not!" and he turned around to start pistol-whipping me with the Magnum.
I have vague and patchy memory of what happened next, but apparently I was running on adrenaline and survival instincts because my partner and friend told me afterward that when he hit me a couple times with the gun, I started fighting like a caged wild animal and was beating the crap out of the guy. I'm not a violent person... I was a Buddhist for 7 years before converting back to Christianity last year, and I don't believe in violence.
Anyhow, according to them he was still trying to pistol-whip me but I was on him too close for him to get a good swing. Then, she tried to get in between us and we all fell over a dining chair and broke it, tumbling to the ground. When we all stood up, he shoved me back away from him, turned the gun around, took aim, and as his girlfriend was screaming, "No, no, no, no, no..." he fired point-blank into my stomach about 1 1/2" above my navel. I took a step back with my hands over my stomach, and laid myself down on the kitchen floor.
I remember my attacker calmly saying, "he needs an ambulance" and hearing the thud of his combat boots as he walked out the front door to hide his assault rifle in his truck and wait for the police. Yes, he waited for them... and he's pleading not guilty on grounds of self-defense!!!! This has been dragging through the court system now for over 7 months and trial isn't expected to start until early next year.
I was in an induced coma for 3 days, mostly unaware of where I was or what was going on except for a few times the hospital staff let me gain consciousness to see my family and my pastor there with me. I couldn't talk because of the tubes down my throat. On the fourth day after 2 surgeries, they moved me from ICU to post-trauma recovery, where I spent 4 more days before they sent me home.
I lost about 1/3 of my stomach, a few inches of my small intestines, and my gall bladder in the shooting. the bullet he shot me with did not exit my back, but rather lodged itself just below the skin in my right-lower back, 3" to the right of my spine. Everyone says it's a miracle I survived a point-blank gunshot from a .357, especially since it was point-blank and so close to my spine, and that he also missed my liver. Some speculate the gun was loaded with a .38 bullet since the gun didn't blow a 10" hole clean through me and kill me instantly. I like to think God was with me and the guy who shot me really was/is the Devil or possessed by one. I won't know the calibur of the bullet until this goes to trial, but the doctor who removed it and the detective who took it as evidence both remarked that is was a very heavy slug. I don't know the first thing about guns but my dad said heavier slugs typically do more damage than lighter rounds.
Three days after I was released from the hospital, the guy who shot me was bonded out of jail by the cheating hairstylist and they apparently went to another state to get married. When I received a computerized phone call that he was released, I slipped into a state of absolute panic like I'd never experienced before. I've never felt afraid for my life like I did that day. I demanded my partner help me (I couldn't lift anything) and we packed our car as full as we could with everything we would need and left across town to stay with family. I was in a state of absolute terror.
The guy was free for 2 months before he got arrested again. The girl he married called the police on him for domestic assault, and he was found to have guns in his home after I'd gotten an injunction from the court forbidding him to possess firearms and ordering him to surrender them to the police. His $100,000 bond was revoked on grounds that he violated the order and his wife's $10k went down the drain.
Some time after all of this, one of his wife's friends tried to befriend me on facebook and I am always suspicious of strangers sending friend requests, so I looked her up on myspace and the first thing I saw was her proclamation that my attacker's wife was her best friend and how all her friends at the tattoo shop he owns are sooo awesome. When I confronted her, she began to question my integrity and acuse me of being dishonest about what happened the night he came over and shot me. His story in the arrest report is that I threatened him with violence if he came to get my friend and he only brought the gun to defend himself... that I opened the door to invite him in and attacked him unprovoked when he entered.
Things actually happened the way I described them above, and the arrest report has statements from my partner and his ex girlfriend stating what really happened, so after taking a statement from his ex downtown, the state attorney upgraded the charge from aggravated assault to attempted murder, and 3 more aggravated assault charges (one for aiming the gun in my partner's face, one for pistol-whipping me, and one for putting the smoking barrel in her face after shooting me and stating that he should shoot her too.
After the facebook incident, I became worried that his wife must be as crazy as he is and took my photos down from facebook and myspace so she couldn't show people what I looked like. I felt like I was being stalked online and that's when I started having trouble sleeping and had to take a xanax before bed to rest through the night. I started worrying the tattoo parlor gang would send a death squad after me and that's when I started avoiding going out in public and staying indoors as much as possible.
My friend, the ex of my attacker, has bipolar disorder and she has taken all of this A LOT harder than I have due to her disorder. She actually stopped talking to me, returning voicemails, or responding to text & email from me back in April. That hurt my feelings tremendously but another bipolar friend tried to reconcile me that she's probably feeling at fault for what happened and having such a hard time coping that cutting me out her life was the only way to try and put things back together for herself.
So, I own a small pet care business and also work a part-time retail job. I was unable to work for over 2 months, and my business suffered greatly since I am the sole proprietor with no employees. Even after I was able to return to work, I've had a hard time getting back into the swing of things. My accounting has gone to heck, a lot of my customers found somewhere else to go while my business operations were suspended, and recently as I've become more withdrawn and isolated, I can't bring myself to answer the phone or return calls from potential new customers. So, my business is failing and my part-time job is barely getting the bills paid.
That brings me to where I am now. I have been through the entire spectrum of emotions, from sadness, depression, self-pity, to anger and frustration, and then one day something snapped. It was like someone turned off a switch in my head and I just stopped caring about everything. I can't describe how I feel because it's like a very dull, numb feeling. I feel like life has lost its luster, the passion I had for life and compassion for others had died. I just don't care about anything that used to be important to me! Starting my own business, watching it grow into a success, was the proudest moment of my life and now I feel like I could care less if it goes down the drain. My mind is constantly preoccupied with this monster who shot me and I have to check the court's website every day to make sure he's still in jail and the charges haven't been dropped (he's been arrested at least 38 times since he was 18 and almost every charge has been dropped with the help of his defense attorney).
I went and bought a video game after giving up games YEARS ago, to get mind mind off things. Now it seems like the game is the only thing I do care about, and it's the only time my mind isn't on all this stuff... so it has started to take up all my spare time and even time when I should be doing other things. Again, I just don't care. I've become increasingly irritable and moody toward my partner, which isn't right because we have a wonderful relationship and have never fought or had problems before now. I don't want to answer the phone, return calls from family or friends let alone potential customers for my business, and I just don't want to be around people or go anywhere or do anything.
Now it should be stated that I have a pre-existing diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder with social phobia, the result of a dysfunctional childhood with alcoholic and addict parents... BUT I worked all that out in therapy over the years and prior to getting shot, I had become somewhat social, going out on my own and seeking social interaction, making new acquaintances, etc. All the therapy to overcome my GAD and social phobia has gone down the toilet and I'm even more reclusive than I have ever been before.
My old therapist, who was so wonderful and helped me make a remarkable recovery, is unavailable for private practice as she's begun writing books and hosting a radio show. I dread the idea of starting over with someone new because I've had a few good ones and a few bad ones, including being sent to "reparative therapy" around age 13, which is when a crooked psychologist tried to turn me into a heterosexual and left me feeling more damaged and broken than I was before I saw him. I never wanted to be gay and I believed he could help me change, but when all my efforts to take his advice and change failed I felt like damaged goods.
That's my life in a nutshell. What gets me by from day to day is reminding myself that no matter how bad I think my life is, someone has it worse than me and they're still getting through it. That's a sad way to live. So, where do I begin putting the broken pieces back together? I need help.
In February this year, I was attacked and shot in my home by a friend's ex-boyfriend. She was trying to get out of an abusive relationship after 8 years when she found out the guy was cheating on her with her hairstylist, and she called me one day crying and begging me to take her out to get away from all her problems for a night.
We had a good time at her favorite bar and when it was over, she started shifting back into sad, weepy mode and wanting to go home to this dirtbag. I insisted that she should stay on my couch and worry about it tomorrow, and she reluctantly agreed. After I went to bed, I awoke to them screaming at each other on the phone. I took her phone away from her and told the guy he was 'the devil himself' and to 'stay away from my friend'. I sternly warned her not to call him back or answer the phone, and I went back to sleep. My partner was sitting up with her (I'm gay, been with the same guy 10yrs and her ex knew there was nothing romantic going on between us, that's usually the first question people ask).
Sometime after I went back to bed, they had a calm, civil conversation on the phone and my partner talked to the guy, determined that he sounded reasonable and rational, and he said he only wanted to come get my friend and take her home because she was drunk and wanted him to take care of her. So, my partner having never met the guy, gave him directions to our place. When he pulled up, my partner opened the door to let him in and was met with a .357 Magnum in his face, he was ordered to the ground and the guy started searching my house until he found me asleep in my bed. Then, he took the assault rifle strapped to his shoulder and fired a round into the celing to wake me up.
I jumped to my feet, screaming the same thing over and over again which was "Get the f... out of my f... house with those f... guns!". He started walking to the front and I was right behind him, in my boxer shorts screamin gfor him to leave. Then, he and my friend were fighting and when he said, "Now you're coming home with me" I said, "No she's not!" and he turned around to start pistol-whipping me with the Magnum.
I have vague and patchy memory of what happened next, but apparently I was running on adrenaline and survival instincts because my partner and friend told me afterward that when he hit me a couple times with the gun, I started fighting like a caged wild animal and was beating the crap out of the guy. I'm not a violent person... I was a Buddhist for 7 years before converting back to Christianity last year, and I don't believe in violence.
Anyhow, according to them he was still trying to pistol-whip me but I was on him too close for him to get a good swing. Then, she tried to get in between us and we all fell over a dining chair and broke it, tumbling to the ground. When we all stood up, he shoved me back away from him, turned the gun around, took aim, and as his girlfriend was screaming, "No, no, no, no, no..." he fired point-blank into my stomach about 1 1/2" above my navel. I took a step back with my hands over my stomach, and laid myself down on the kitchen floor.
I remember my attacker calmly saying, "he needs an ambulance" and hearing the thud of his combat boots as he walked out the front door to hide his assault rifle in his truck and wait for the police. Yes, he waited for them... and he's pleading not guilty on grounds of self-defense!!!! This has been dragging through the court system now for over 7 months and trial isn't expected to start until early next year.
I was in an induced coma for 3 days, mostly unaware of where I was or what was going on except for a few times the hospital staff let me gain consciousness to see my family and my pastor there with me. I couldn't talk because of the tubes down my throat. On the fourth day after 2 surgeries, they moved me from ICU to post-trauma recovery, where I spent 4 more days before they sent me home.
I lost about 1/3 of my stomach, a few inches of my small intestines, and my gall bladder in the shooting. the bullet he shot me with did not exit my back, but rather lodged itself just below the skin in my right-lower back, 3" to the right of my spine. Everyone says it's a miracle I survived a point-blank gunshot from a .357, especially since it was point-blank and so close to my spine, and that he also missed my liver. Some speculate the gun was loaded with a .38 bullet since the gun didn't blow a 10" hole clean through me and kill me instantly. I like to think God was with me and the guy who shot me really was/is the Devil or possessed by one. I won't know the calibur of the bullet until this goes to trial, but the doctor who removed it and the detective who took it as evidence both remarked that is was a very heavy slug. I don't know the first thing about guns but my dad said heavier slugs typically do more damage than lighter rounds.
Three days after I was released from the hospital, the guy who shot me was bonded out of jail by the cheating hairstylist and they apparently went to another state to get married. When I received a computerized phone call that he was released, I slipped into a state of absolute panic like I'd never experienced before. I've never felt afraid for my life like I did that day. I demanded my partner help me (I couldn't lift anything) and we packed our car as full as we could with everything we would need and left across town to stay with family. I was in a state of absolute terror.
The guy was free for 2 months before he got arrested again. The girl he married called the police on him for domestic assault, and he was found to have guns in his home after I'd gotten an injunction from the court forbidding him to possess firearms and ordering him to surrender them to the police. His $100,000 bond was revoked on grounds that he violated the order and his wife's $10k went down the drain.
Some time after all of this, one of his wife's friends tried to befriend me on facebook and I am always suspicious of strangers sending friend requests, so I looked her up on myspace and the first thing I saw was her proclamation that my attacker's wife was her best friend and how all her friends at the tattoo shop he owns are sooo awesome. When I confronted her, she began to question my integrity and acuse me of being dishonest about what happened the night he came over and shot me. His story in the arrest report is that I threatened him with violence if he came to get my friend and he only brought the gun to defend himself... that I opened the door to invite him in and attacked him unprovoked when he entered.
Things actually happened the way I described them above, and the arrest report has statements from my partner and his ex girlfriend stating what really happened, so after taking a statement from his ex downtown, the state attorney upgraded the charge from aggravated assault to attempted murder, and 3 more aggravated assault charges (one for aiming the gun in my partner's face, one for pistol-whipping me, and one for putting the smoking barrel in her face after shooting me and stating that he should shoot her too.
After the facebook incident, I became worried that his wife must be as crazy as he is and took my photos down from facebook and myspace so she couldn't show people what I looked like. I felt like I was being stalked online and that's when I started having trouble sleeping and had to take a xanax before bed to rest through the night. I started worrying the tattoo parlor gang would send a death squad after me and that's when I started avoiding going out in public and staying indoors as much as possible.
My friend, the ex of my attacker, has bipolar disorder and she has taken all of this A LOT harder than I have due to her disorder. She actually stopped talking to me, returning voicemails, or responding to text & email from me back in April. That hurt my feelings tremendously but another bipolar friend tried to reconcile me that she's probably feeling at fault for what happened and having such a hard time coping that cutting me out her life was the only way to try and put things back together for herself.
So, I own a small pet care business and also work a part-time retail job. I was unable to work for over 2 months, and my business suffered greatly since I am the sole proprietor with no employees. Even after I was able to return to work, I've had a hard time getting back into the swing of things. My accounting has gone to heck, a lot of my customers found somewhere else to go while my business operations were suspended, and recently as I've become more withdrawn and isolated, I can't bring myself to answer the phone or return calls from potential new customers. So, my business is failing and my part-time job is barely getting the bills paid.
That brings me to where I am now. I have been through the entire spectrum of emotions, from sadness, depression, self-pity, to anger and frustration, and then one day something snapped. It was like someone turned off a switch in my head and I just stopped caring about everything. I can't describe how I feel because it's like a very dull, numb feeling. I feel like life has lost its luster, the passion I had for life and compassion for others had died. I just don't care about anything that used to be important to me! Starting my own business, watching it grow into a success, was the proudest moment of my life and now I feel like I could care less if it goes down the drain. My mind is constantly preoccupied with this monster who shot me and I have to check the court's website every day to make sure he's still in jail and the charges haven't been dropped (he's been arrested at least 38 times since he was 18 and almost every charge has been dropped with the help of his defense attorney).
I went and bought a video game after giving up games YEARS ago, to get mind mind off things. Now it seems like the game is the only thing I do care about, and it's the only time my mind isn't on all this stuff... so it has started to take up all my spare time and even time when I should be doing other things. Again, I just don't care. I've become increasingly irritable and moody toward my partner, which isn't right because we have a wonderful relationship and have never fought or had problems before now. I don't want to answer the phone, return calls from family or friends let alone potential customers for my business, and I just don't want to be around people or go anywhere or do anything.
Now it should be stated that I have a pre-existing diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder with social phobia, the result of a dysfunctional childhood with alcoholic and addict parents... BUT I worked all that out in therapy over the years and prior to getting shot, I had become somewhat social, going out on my own and seeking social interaction, making new acquaintances, etc. All the therapy to overcome my GAD and social phobia has gone down the toilet and I'm even more reclusive than I have ever been before.
My old therapist, who was so wonderful and helped me make a remarkable recovery, is unavailable for private practice as she's begun writing books and hosting a radio show. I dread the idea of starting over with someone new because I've had a few good ones and a few bad ones, including being sent to "reparative therapy" around age 13, which is when a crooked psychologist tried to turn me into a heterosexual and left me feeling more damaged and broken than I was before I saw him. I never wanted to be gay and I believed he could help me change, but when all my efforts to take his advice and change failed I felt like damaged goods.
That's my life in a nutshell. What gets me by from day to day is reminding myself that no matter how bad I think my life is, someone has it worse than me and they're still getting through it. That's a sad way to live. So, where do I begin putting the broken pieces back together? I need help.
