Hello to the PTSD Community,
I am new on this forum/community, but not new to social media or PTSD. Where do I even begin? It has been such a long and painful road, yet I am here, yet I am strong (even when I feel or am in fact weak), yet I am determined to actually LIVE and not just survive this. Writing is one of my coping mechanisms and I have not been writing, I have not written at all our about this in 5 years. I must speak if I hope to get through this...
Why I picked this Username - ZeroPTSD
Because I strive to reduce my symptoms of PTSD to...well...ZERO! Because I strive to let PTSD have ZERO effect on my life. Because I want this damn condition to control NOTHING of me or my life. Because I will not let this altered brain chemistry OWN me. Because I won't ALLOW this thing that I somehow randomly got against my will through experiencing a horrible event, destroy every relationship which I have now, like it did for the 10 years of my life (from ages 15-25). Yes I am very very angry at the things PSTD has taken from me (now looking back on my life) I just won't allow it to take even one more thing from me. Not one more thing, not one more moment.
A Dose of What My PSTD Feels Like
It feels so strange to be battling over and over again this hidden enemy inside of me. Everything I think I have killed it, it creeps back in silently one symptom at a time. I can't even see it. Then it's behind me, next it's on me, on me again, suffocating...sapping emotional energy, irritating me at every turn, breaking my body down slowly but surely. So difficult to FEAR sleep and knowing what I will see if I dream. Feel like there is no rest, no relief from the chronic fatigue. I just want to sleep.
The Accident - My Firsthand Account
In 1993 I was 15 years old and in high school. It was the weekend before Halloween and a friend was throwing a party near the newly built town hangout spot. I met up with a group of about 8 friends at the hangout and we were all going to go walk to Party together...
Never Made it to the Halloween Party
After we met up and got tired of hanging out at the spot we left to go to the party. We had to cross a four lane highway (two lanes in each direction with a median in the middle) it was dark and there was no real good place to cross the road because no lights or walkways had been built yet. My friends did not want to walk to the nearest light because it was too far and would take to long. They just began to cross the road and I followed, I did not think too much about it, I felt was OK because all of the car lights seemed very far off. Some of my friends ran across very quickly and a few others just casually walked. I walked across the first two lanes, waiting up for the stragglers...I was in the middle of the pack BUT when I got to the grassy median something changed.
Run, Run, Run
For no reason, a voice welled up inside me and told me to run. Over and over again "Run! Run! Run!" it was compelling me. But I did not perceive ANY danger at the moment. The voice was illogical, but I decided to heed it because it was such a compelling feeling. That was the difference between me living and them dying...
Imprinted On My Soul Forever
So I just ran across the last two lanes. Two of my guy friends (Adam and Chris) were running in front of me and two friends (Lang and Christina) were trotting behind me. I jumped the ditch on the far side of the road and scrambled up a small knoll. When I got to the top, I turned around to call out to L&T...and BANG! It happened. A minivan hit both Lang and Tina going 45-50 mph 5-10 feet right in front of me. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. An series of moving images imprinted, burned onto my soul forever, playing out over and over in my mind to torture me when I sleep. Like a broken record, my mind skips. I tried so hard to forget those pictures playing out in my mind, but I never could...
The Sound
The driver of the minivan she did not even break before she hit my friends, because she had been drinking earlier that night. So there was no precursor, no warning, no screech like what happens typically right before two cars hit. There was just: THE SOUND. The sound of shattering glass, breaking plastic, twisting metal and the bones of my best friend Lang and Tina (who I just 30 minutes) shattering. It was the sound of death.
Knocked Out of Her Shoes
Christina was hit SO hard she came out of her shoes, and a windshield wiper impaled her through the torso, piercing her liver (that was what the ER doctors told her mother). She went up over the top of the minivan tossed violently like a limp rag doll, ten feet straight up in the air back flipping three times...she hung there for a moment like she was weightless. Lang disappeared from my line of sight. Time slowed, it stilled, everything going frame by frame. When she came down (still flipping) her skull was the first thing to connect with the ground. The back of Tina's head smashed into the pavement, I was staring directly at her as it happened. She laid there like a tattered heap of rags with her head split open.
We Shared a Moment
Christina shared the moment that she died with me, it was like I was chosen or fated to be the one to see, to watch up close and personal. Her skull fractured, her brain smacked the inside of her skull. And just like that, Christina bled to death in front of me...a stream of blood, turned into a gigantic pool, then a river of dark red flowed across the pavement from where she lay down flowing steadily into the gravel. I saw it all. I was transfixed my feet glued to the ground. I could not move. I could not speak. I was a stone witness. It seemed like so much blood, I thought it must be something else...how could one body have that much blood in it? But I knew it had to be blood because a car had stopped instead of running over her, the headlights illuminated the scene as the driver crouched near Tina and called 911.
Too Late to Save Her
The Paramedics got there fast because the Hospital was only 2 minutes from the accident site. But it was too late. They said later she died instantly on impact, but I just don't know. I know she didn't move after impact, but it did not feel that way somehow...it felt different I know that it makes no sense. The EMTs cut / tore Tina's cloths off desperately trying to revive her with CPR but to no avail. She looked so pale, lying there lifeless with her bare breasts exposed the chilly autumn air....she was just gone. I never got the chance to know her.
"Hello. Nice to meet you. Let's go to the Party. You get hit by a car. You're dead. Goodbye."
So weird how life can give you something and then take it right away. How can you lose something you never had? I will never know. I will never know her.
The Silent Movie Plays, Muffled
It was so horrific, beautiful, terrifying and gorgeous at the same time, completely serene watching her die...the phenomenon of sudden violent death is the most anguishing indescribable experience one can ever know, I wish it on no one...ever. Everything was just like a muffled silent movie, after I saw that, nothing was real. I was outside myself, it did not even feel like I was there. Detachment. Separation from my physical body. The shredding of a soul, my childhood innocence stolen from me by death, him a bastard thief in the night. It was like I was just watching the entire scene from outside myself like one watches a movie. It had to be someone else, but it was not. It was me.
Lang Caught The Full Force
My best friend Lang was hit by the minivan at the same time as Tina, but Lang caught the full force of the minivan. The impact flung Lang 100 yards to my right down the highway and she disappeared from my line of sight into the dark of the night. Apparently after flying many feet through the air she hit the road, slid into the gravel and finally came to rest in the ditch, which was full of Oak leaves. Lang sustained major road rash, all of the skin was torn off one side of her face, her arm, hands and much of the skin was missing from her leg. Her pelvis was broken in 5 places, and her leg was broken in 3 places. She was so completely broken and torn to pieces...when they put her in the emergency vehicle I did not know if she would make it, she was critical.
A PTSD Nightmare Brought Back The Moaning
Until three nights ago I did not remember the sound of Lang regaining consciousness after being hit. After THE SOUND it was like there was no sound, even thought I know I must have heard everything. I had forgotten. Blocked? Suppressed? I don't know. Three nights ago I woke up in a cold sweat from a yet another PTSD nightmare as October is a very hard time for me and I remembered the SECOND SOUND...the one of Lang coming too. It was a low moaning. A guttural groaning which turned to long shrieking howls as she must have begun processing all of the pain in her body. Land sounded like a wounded or dying animal, almost an inhuman sound. If you have ever heard the sound you know exactly what I am talking about. A primal shrieking of something critically wounded attempting to fight for it's life.
Losing a Best Friend, Not Once But Twice
Lang was my Best Friend at the time and I loved her. She was a beautiful young woman feisty and full of vim, with a killer smile that always got the guys. I can still remember it now...it still makes me cry that she is not here and I won't ever see her again. She listened to The Violent Femmes all the time "Let me go on, Like a Blister in the Sun" she sang it to me over and over again. She was always in trouble, she took crap from no one, she was poor, her Father had left, she had been raped once, she did some drugs, she had sex, her mom was always gone working two jobs just so they could survive. She was not perfect, but she was beautiful nonetheless I liked her just the way she was. But she was a good person inside and I saw through her defenses and armor she put on everyday. All she really needed was someone to talk to. Someone to listen to her problems and just be there for her. That was what I did. I called her every night, we talked until late, she always telling me of her crazy mis-adventures, and I would just listen and didn't judge her.
Lang survived being hit full force by the minivan. She was a survivor and she survived it. She lived. She was broken badly but the doctors put her back together again slowly, one piece at a time. Over six months she many surgeries, skin grafts, traction for months, screws in her leg, she had to learn to walk over again. But she walked fine again with only a slight limp, she lost weight and the plastic surgery fixed her face to look almost the same. After the accident I had horrible repetitive flashbacks over and over again for I don't even know how long. I went to the hospital to see her, but the flashbacks got so bad when I saw her missing all of that skin, her wounds seeping yellow ooze, I could not go back again. Flashbacks over and over. I could not talk to her or see her without it them coming back.
Lost Once After the Accident....
She survived the accident and recovered 95% with 6-9 months. But I lost her as a friend because I could not physically talk to her anymore, and now I had no one to talk to either. I lost Lang in part because of my severe PTSD symptoms. After the accident and my parents divorce I spiraled out of control into the darkness. It is only because I started writing poetry and playing guitar that I survived those dark times. I lost some mutually friends too because I was completely changed by the experience, I withdrew and avoided Lang, but they were not there, they didn't have my experience, they did not see what I saw. They had never seen death, faced death literally I mean stared it right in the face, peered directly into the dark. The only reason I lived and they died is because I ran and they walked. Every night I had wished that it was me and not them, I begged a God I did not believe in for me to switch places with them.
Then Lost for Good
I lost Lang once after the accident, even though she had survived and was living. That was worse then if she had just died on the road (or so I thought)...a year later Lang took an entire bottle of sleeping pills, went to sleep and never woke up. She committed suicide after surviving the accident and recovering from it. In some ways I will never forgive myself for not being there for her after the accident, like I was before. I know it's not my fault or that I am not "technically" responsible...but I know a simple truth as well: that perhaps if she still had a best friend to talk with maybe she would not have gone that far or all the way. I was not there for her, she needed me more then ever and I was not there. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder took that from me.
Do you know what it is to see someone die?
Do you know what it is to lose them twice?
Do you know what it is to hate something that is inside of you, but will most likely never stop?
This is the beginning of my story. This is the story of a Zero. Or perhaps it is the story of one...one man suffering this banshee nightmare that everyone has come to call PTSD.
*Since the start of the IRAQ war in 2003 4,400+ American soldiers have died to date. I am not a soldier (my father is vet and so is my brother) but this is my war: 45,000 people die on the roads of America due to traffic accidents EVERY YEAR, that is like 10 IRAQ's EVERY YEAR. Hundreds of thousands more are injured by but survive auto accidents, many of them will develop and will SUFFER from severe PTSD. There is more walking wounded in America then we know and they are suffering in plain sight everyday...just like me.
I am new on this forum/community, but not new to social media or PTSD. Where do I even begin? It has been such a long and painful road, yet I am here, yet I am strong (even when I feel or am in fact weak), yet I am determined to actually LIVE and not just survive this. Writing is one of my coping mechanisms and I have not been writing, I have not written at all our about this in 5 years. I must speak if I hope to get through this...
Why I picked this Username - ZeroPTSD
Because I strive to reduce my symptoms of PTSD to...well...ZERO! Because I strive to let PTSD have ZERO effect on my life. Because I want this damn condition to control NOTHING of me or my life. Because I will not let this altered brain chemistry OWN me. Because I won't ALLOW this thing that I somehow randomly got against my will through experiencing a horrible event, destroy every relationship which I have now, like it did for the 10 years of my life (from ages 15-25). Yes I am very very angry at the things PSTD has taken from me (now looking back on my life) I just won't allow it to take even one more thing from me. Not one more thing, not one more moment.
A Dose of What My PSTD Feels Like
It feels so strange to be battling over and over again this hidden enemy inside of me. Everything I think I have killed it, it creeps back in silently one symptom at a time. I can't even see it. Then it's behind me, next it's on me, on me again, suffocating...sapping emotional energy, irritating me at every turn, breaking my body down slowly but surely. So difficult to FEAR sleep and knowing what I will see if I dream. Feel like there is no rest, no relief from the chronic fatigue. I just want to sleep.
The Accident - My Firsthand Account
In 1993 I was 15 years old and in high school. It was the weekend before Halloween and a friend was throwing a party near the newly built town hangout spot. I met up with a group of about 8 friends at the hangout and we were all going to go walk to Party together...
Never Made it to the Halloween Party
After we met up and got tired of hanging out at the spot we left to go to the party. We had to cross a four lane highway (two lanes in each direction with a median in the middle) it was dark and there was no real good place to cross the road because no lights or walkways had been built yet. My friends did not want to walk to the nearest light because it was too far and would take to long. They just began to cross the road and I followed, I did not think too much about it, I felt was OK because all of the car lights seemed very far off. Some of my friends ran across very quickly and a few others just casually walked. I walked across the first two lanes, waiting up for the stragglers...I was in the middle of the pack BUT when I got to the grassy median something changed.
Run, Run, Run
For no reason, a voice welled up inside me and told me to run. Over and over again "Run! Run! Run!" it was compelling me. But I did not perceive ANY danger at the moment. The voice was illogical, but I decided to heed it because it was such a compelling feeling. That was the difference between me living and them dying...
Imprinted On My Soul Forever
So I just ran across the last two lanes. Two of my guy friends (Adam and Chris) were running in front of me and two friends (Lang and Christina) were trotting behind me. I jumped the ditch on the far side of the road and scrambled up a small knoll. When I got to the top, I turned around to call out to L&T...and BANG! It happened. A minivan hit both Lang and Tina going 45-50 mph 5-10 feet right in front of me. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. An series of moving images imprinted, burned onto my soul forever, playing out over and over in my mind to torture me when I sleep. Like a broken record, my mind skips. I tried so hard to forget those pictures playing out in my mind, but I never could...
The Sound
The driver of the minivan she did not even break before she hit my friends, because she had been drinking earlier that night. So there was no precursor, no warning, no screech like what happens typically right before two cars hit. There was just: THE SOUND. The sound of shattering glass, breaking plastic, twisting metal and the bones of my best friend Lang and Tina (who I just 30 minutes) shattering. It was the sound of death.
Knocked Out of Her Shoes
Christina was hit SO hard she came out of her shoes, and a windshield wiper impaled her through the torso, piercing her liver (that was what the ER doctors told her mother). She went up over the top of the minivan tossed violently like a limp rag doll, ten feet straight up in the air back flipping three times...she hung there for a moment like she was weightless. Lang disappeared from my line of sight. Time slowed, it stilled, everything going frame by frame. When she came down (still flipping) her skull was the first thing to connect with the ground. The back of Tina's head smashed into the pavement, I was staring directly at her as it happened. She laid there like a tattered heap of rags with her head split open.
We Shared a Moment
Christina shared the moment that she died with me, it was like I was chosen or fated to be the one to see, to watch up close and personal. Her skull fractured, her brain smacked the inside of her skull. And just like that, Christina bled to death in front of me...a stream of blood, turned into a gigantic pool, then a river of dark red flowed across the pavement from where she lay down flowing steadily into the gravel. I saw it all. I was transfixed my feet glued to the ground. I could not move. I could not speak. I was a stone witness. It seemed like so much blood, I thought it must be something else...how could one body have that much blood in it? But I knew it had to be blood because a car had stopped instead of running over her, the headlights illuminated the scene as the driver crouched near Tina and called 911.
Too Late to Save Her
The Paramedics got there fast because the Hospital was only 2 minutes from the accident site. But it was too late. They said later she died instantly on impact, but I just don't know. I know she didn't move after impact, but it did not feel that way somehow...it felt different I know that it makes no sense. The EMTs cut / tore Tina's cloths off desperately trying to revive her with CPR but to no avail. She looked so pale, lying there lifeless with her bare breasts exposed the chilly autumn air....she was just gone. I never got the chance to know her.
"Hello. Nice to meet you. Let's go to the Party. You get hit by a car. You're dead. Goodbye."
So weird how life can give you something and then take it right away. How can you lose something you never had? I will never know. I will never know her.
The Silent Movie Plays, Muffled
It was so horrific, beautiful, terrifying and gorgeous at the same time, completely serene watching her die...the phenomenon of sudden violent death is the most anguishing indescribable experience one can ever know, I wish it on no one...ever. Everything was just like a muffled silent movie, after I saw that, nothing was real. I was outside myself, it did not even feel like I was there. Detachment. Separation from my physical body. The shredding of a soul, my childhood innocence stolen from me by death, him a bastard thief in the night. It was like I was just watching the entire scene from outside myself like one watches a movie. It had to be someone else, but it was not. It was me.
Lang Caught The Full Force
My best friend Lang was hit by the minivan at the same time as Tina, but Lang caught the full force of the minivan. The impact flung Lang 100 yards to my right down the highway and she disappeared from my line of sight into the dark of the night. Apparently after flying many feet through the air she hit the road, slid into the gravel and finally came to rest in the ditch, which was full of Oak leaves. Lang sustained major road rash, all of the skin was torn off one side of her face, her arm, hands and much of the skin was missing from her leg. Her pelvis was broken in 5 places, and her leg was broken in 3 places. She was so completely broken and torn to pieces...when they put her in the emergency vehicle I did not know if she would make it, she was critical.
A PTSD Nightmare Brought Back The Moaning
Until three nights ago I did not remember the sound of Lang regaining consciousness after being hit. After THE SOUND it was like there was no sound, even thought I know I must have heard everything. I had forgotten. Blocked? Suppressed? I don't know. Three nights ago I woke up in a cold sweat from a yet another PTSD nightmare as October is a very hard time for me and I remembered the SECOND SOUND...the one of Lang coming too. It was a low moaning. A guttural groaning which turned to long shrieking howls as she must have begun processing all of the pain in her body. Land sounded like a wounded or dying animal, almost an inhuman sound. If you have ever heard the sound you know exactly what I am talking about. A primal shrieking of something critically wounded attempting to fight for it's life.
Losing a Best Friend, Not Once But Twice
Lang was my Best Friend at the time and I loved her. She was a beautiful young woman feisty and full of vim, with a killer smile that always got the guys. I can still remember it now...it still makes me cry that she is not here and I won't ever see her again. She listened to The Violent Femmes all the time "Let me go on, Like a Blister in the Sun" she sang it to me over and over again. She was always in trouble, she took crap from no one, she was poor, her Father had left, she had been raped once, she did some drugs, she had sex, her mom was always gone working two jobs just so they could survive. She was not perfect, but she was beautiful nonetheless I liked her just the way she was. But she was a good person inside and I saw through her defenses and armor she put on everyday. All she really needed was someone to talk to. Someone to listen to her problems and just be there for her. That was what I did. I called her every night, we talked until late, she always telling me of her crazy mis-adventures, and I would just listen and didn't judge her.
Lang survived being hit full force by the minivan. She was a survivor and she survived it. She lived. She was broken badly but the doctors put her back together again slowly, one piece at a time. Over six months she many surgeries, skin grafts, traction for months, screws in her leg, she had to learn to walk over again. But she walked fine again with only a slight limp, she lost weight and the plastic surgery fixed her face to look almost the same. After the accident I had horrible repetitive flashbacks over and over again for I don't even know how long. I went to the hospital to see her, but the flashbacks got so bad when I saw her missing all of that skin, her wounds seeping yellow ooze, I could not go back again. Flashbacks over and over. I could not talk to her or see her without it them coming back.
Lost Once After the Accident....
She survived the accident and recovered 95% with 6-9 months. But I lost her as a friend because I could not physically talk to her anymore, and now I had no one to talk to either. I lost Lang in part because of my severe PTSD symptoms. After the accident and my parents divorce I spiraled out of control into the darkness. It is only because I started writing poetry and playing guitar that I survived those dark times. I lost some mutually friends too because I was completely changed by the experience, I withdrew and avoided Lang, but they were not there, they didn't have my experience, they did not see what I saw. They had never seen death, faced death literally I mean stared it right in the face, peered directly into the dark. The only reason I lived and they died is because I ran and they walked. Every night I had wished that it was me and not them, I begged a God I did not believe in for me to switch places with them.
Then Lost for Good
I lost Lang once after the accident, even though she had survived and was living. That was worse then if she had just died on the road (or so I thought)...a year later Lang took an entire bottle of sleeping pills, went to sleep and never woke up. She committed suicide after surviving the accident and recovering from it. In some ways I will never forgive myself for not being there for her after the accident, like I was before. I know it's not my fault or that I am not "technically" responsible...but I know a simple truth as well: that perhaps if she still had a best friend to talk with maybe she would not have gone that far or all the way. I was not there for her, she needed me more then ever and I was not there. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder took that from me.
Do you know what it is to see someone die?
Do you know what it is to lose them twice?
Do you know what it is to hate something that is inside of you, but will most likely never stop?
This is the beginning of my story. This is the story of a Zero. Or perhaps it is the story of one...one man suffering this banshee nightmare that everyone has come to call PTSD.
*Since the start of the IRAQ war in 2003 4,400+ American soldiers have died to date. I am not a soldier (my father is vet and so is my brother) but this is my war: 45,000 people die on the roads of America due to traffic accidents EVERY YEAR, that is like 10 IRAQ's EVERY YEAR. Hundreds of thousands more are injured by but survive auto accidents, many of them will develop and will SUFFER from severe PTSD. There is more walking wounded in America then we know and they are suffering in plain sight everyday...just like me.
