Doc
Member
This is a lengthy post. Sorry in advance.
I've kept this inside of me for all my life. I've never talked about it with anyone until now, and it's made me feel a bit more comfortable about it all, to an extent. I don't know exactly what any of these things happening to me have caused me to think about the world, or people; I don't know if it's PTSD or if it's just passing thoughts. I really don't trust what doctors have told me at all so I kind of just let all those kinds of things blow by, and I don't really think about them. But maybe I should, it might help.
I'm reaching out for advice on how to cope with how I've reacted or will react to these events in the future, sometimes I feel like I'm not 100% in control of my brain or my thoughts and it's scary. I probably sleep about 2 or so hours a night, and when I manage it it's not good sleep, it's tossing and turning in the night crying out to people who aren't there anymore, or even people who aren't real. It's not fun.
I'll start by saying not only do I feel fear and anxiety and paranoia when I think about some of these things, I'm also incredibly embarrassed by most of them. I was taught down south to "be a man" about things and... I definitely did NOT when it came to these events. I feel somewhat at fault for these events which just drive the guilt home further.
I was never very social even when I was very very little; I remember not being open or friendly towards the other kids. Not harshly or anything, just a bit anti-social. Typical sit alone at lunch type of deal. I wasn't being excluded I just secluded myself by choice. I met this other kid one day, Dillon. He was also a loner, but I'm not sure why.
Dillon was... slow. He wasn't mentally handicapped or anything but it was obvious enough and I think that's why no one really hung out with him. But he was really nice and always happy 100% of the time about everything. We became really good friends really fast and I loved him. We were very young though, I was 9 at the time, maybe it was just because kids make friends easily, I don't know. Me 'n' him were incredibly tight, we did everything together all the time.
To cut to the heart of all this, when we went into town (we lived in a small rural area) to buy some candy with money we got from allowance he was struck by a car running a red light while we were crossing the street. He died before the paramedics could show up.
Sometimes I cry out in the middle of the night because I remember it so vividly. I wake up a teary mess and I can't fall back asleep. It is always gut-wrenchingly awful to think about this because he was such a happy-go-lucky kid and I turned into this mess. I always wish I had been behind him instead of him behind me, because he would have probably lived a better life than me. I feel discomfort when I talk about this but I trust the support of this forum enough to feel somewhat okay about it all.
After that, I was an emotional wreck for years and my parents through around the term "disappointed" all the time. About a day after it all my father was telling me to get over it and when I was still a horrible wreck my mother wouldn't even pay me any mind so I just sat for almost a year horribly sobbing and worrying about all that honeysuckle.
After about a year of that, I settled down into a "nothing matters" state of mind and went through life with a robotic fervor. I guess things were okay, besides at night when I had all my thoughts to myself. Around the age of 13 we moved to a more rural area and I was about to start highschool.
I decided I was going to try and make the best of things. I was going to try my hardest to make some friends and go on with life. When I started highschool I made friends with a kid name Timmy almost immediately. He was a sophomore and I was a freshman. Throughout the year I met his other friends and we would always hang out by the gas station up the street on weekends. We weren't like, loitering or smoking or anything. It was just a large area where we could play football or soccer or just hang out. Some of the kids smoked, though.
I worshipped these kids practically. I'd never known friendship like this. I was a part of something. In hindsight though, it was pretty awful, I was just blissfully unaware. I let the seniors of the group put cigarettes out on my shoulder to make them think I was cool. I'd go home in pain but I'd look at the drag marks in the mirror and think about how much it meant to them blah blah blah. I was a dumb kid. Even despite all that crap I still thought of them as the closest people to me, I trusted them with my life.
Well about halfway through the school year I go up to the station like usual but there are some new faces; two seniors I'd never met before. They talked about some plan that I don't really 100% recall, but it involved robbing some teacher's house or something. Me and a couple of the younger kids were like "no that's bullshit" and the like, and after some arguing we didn't do it.
The very next week, I get called on Sunday by Timmy to meet him at the old abandoned office building. It wasn't unusual really, we used to hang out there all the time when we didn't have a lot of kids show up. It was cool and there were a lot of places to be and relax or play cards or anything.
I show up and it's just Timmy and the seniors and one other kid who I don't even remember. They told me how they were thankful we talked them out of it yada yada.
So, I remember being asked to pull some cokes out of the cooler, but that's about it. I remember a huge metal whack on my head, and the rest is a blur really. I had the honeysuckle beaten out of me with pipes and rocks. We moved away shortly afterwards. I don't like talking about that too much.
Now I could trust no one, make friends with no one, talk with no one. My mother saw I was in even worse shape and kicked me out to live with my dad. My dad's a hardass and thought that I should have stood up for myself, and he's probably right.
So I went to a new highschool at age 14 but I made every single attempt to either not show up to class, or even school. I isolated myself as much as I possibly could. This went on until I was a junior, and I tried to kill myself by jumping in front of a moving bus. I was expelled by the school.
So ever since then I've been wallowing in doubt and guilt but I've been getting better about handling it. Kinda..
I recently got my government I.D. and my GED (basically one step below a highschool diploma) and I've been back to sitting at home dealing with swirling thoughts every day.
If I ever see my own scars I have a panicky breakdown, and I just usually am very fearful or paranoid about everything and everyone. It's awful.
Recently I've been taking steps to get things in order, to try and figure out what works and what doesn't. Last weekend I walked to the local mall and spent an hour or so just walking around the crowds. It seems pretty trivial when I see the words for myself, but crowds genuinely unnerve me and make me lose control of my emotions. I plan to keep doing it until I am very comfortable, last weekend was alright, nothing went wrong.
I took a small step back I think because I recently hid in my apartment bathroom from the maintenance folks who were just there to fix the fireplace.
I'm checking around for job opportunities and I'm taking daily walks around the gardens the apartment complex has. A lot of times I picture myself there with someone, just sitting or talking, and it's okay. I get lonely but nothing serious.
Even though I'm trying all this stuff I still have panic attacks, and sometimes I do very bad things to myself, and dangerous thoughts creep into my head. I am full of fear, and I'm not even sure anything I'm trying to accomplish will help at all. And I know I said I'd join some of y'alls chats or message some of you guys and haven't, and I'm sorry about that. I don't mean it in a malicious way, I have a very hard time stringing the letters "h" and "i" together sometimes, and if I sometimes seem like I'm giving the cold shoulder to you or anyone else I don't mean it that way. I really like this place and anyone who is kind I will try my best to be kind back to them.
I've kept this inside of me for all my life. I've never talked about it with anyone until now, and it's made me feel a bit more comfortable about it all, to an extent. I don't know exactly what any of these things happening to me have caused me to think about the world, or people; I don't know if it's PTSD or if it's just passing thoughts. I really don't trust what doctors have told me at all so I kind of just let all those kinds of things blow by, and I don't really think about them. But maybe I should, it might help.
I'm reaching out for advice on how to cope with how I've reacted or will react to these events in the future, sometimes I feel like I'm not 100% in control of my brain or my thoughts and it's scary. I probably sleep about 2 or so hours a night, and when I manage it it's not good sleep, it's tossing and turning in the night crying out to people who aren't there anymore, or even people who aren't real. It's not fun.
I'll start by saying not only do I feel fear and anxiety and paranoia when I think about some of these things, I'm also incredibly embarrassed by most of them. I was taught down south to "be a man" about things and... I definitely did NOT when it came to these events. I feel somewhat at fault for these events which just drive the guilt home further.
I was never very social even when I was very very little; I remember not being open or friendly towards the other kids. Not harshly or anything, just a bit anti-social. Typical sit alone at lunch type of deal. I wasn't being excluded I just secluded myself by choice. I met this other kid one day, Dillon. He was also a loner, but I'm not sure why.
Dillon was... slow. He wasn't mentally handicapped or anything but it was obvious enough and I think that's why no one really hung out with him. But he was really nice and always happy 100% of the time about everything. We became really good friends really fast and I loved him. We were very young though, I was 9 at the time, maybe it was just because kids make friends easily, I don't know. Me 'n' him were incredibly tight, we did everything together all the time.
To cut to the heart of all this, when we went into town (we lived in a small rural area) to buy some candy with money we got from allowance he was struck by a car running a red light while we were crossing the street. He died before the paramedics could show up.
Sometimes I cry out in the middle of the night because I remember it so vividly. I wake up a teary mess and I can't fall back asleep. It is always gut-wrenchingly awful to think about this because he was such a happy-go-lucky kid and I turned into this mess. I always wish I had been behind him instead of him behind me, because he would have probably lived a better life than me. I feel discomfort when I talk about this but I trust the support of this forum enough to feel somewhat okay about it all.
After that, I was an emotional wreck for years and my parents through around the term "disappointed" all the time. About a day after it all my father was telling me to get over it and when I was still a horrible wreck my mother wouldn't even pay me any mind so I just sat for almost a year horribly sobbing and worrying about all that honeysuckle.
After about a year of that, I settled down into a "nothing matters" state of mind and went through life with a robotic fervor. I guess things were okay, besides at night when I had all my thoughts to myself. Around the age of 13 we moved to a more rural area and I was about to start highschool.
I decided I was going to try and make the best of things. I was going to try my hardest to make some friends and go on with life. When I started highschool I made friends with a kid name Timmy almost immediately. He was a sophomore and I was a freshman. Throughout the year I met his other friends and we would always hang out by the gas station up the street on weekends. We weren't like, loitering or smoking or anything. It was just a large area where we could play football or soccer or just hang out. Some of the kids smoked, though.
I worshipped these kids practically. I'd never known friendship like this. I was a part of something. In hindsight though, it was pretty awful, I was just blissfully unaware. I let the seniors of the group put cigarettes out on my shoulder to make them think I was cool. I'd go home in pain but I'd look at the drag marks in the mirror and think about how much it meant to them blah blah blah. I was a dumb kid. Even despite all that crap I still thought of them as the closest people to me, I trusted them with my life.
Well about halfway through the school year I go up to the station like usual but there are some new faces; two seniors I'd never met before. They talked about some plan that I don't really 100% recall, but it involved robbing some teacher's house or something. Me and a couple of the younger kids were like "no that's bullshit" and the like, and after some arguing we didn't do it.
The very next week, I get called on Sunday by Timmy to meet him at the old abandoned office building. It wasn't unusual really, we used to hang out there all the time when we didn't have a lot of kids show up. It was cool and there were a lot of places to be and relax or play cards or anything.
I show up and it's just Timmy and the seniors and one other kid who I don't even remember. They told me how they were thankful we talked them out of it yada yada.
So, I remember being asked to pull some cokes out of the cooler, but that's about it. I remember a huge metal whack on my head, and the rest is a blur really. I had the honeysuckle beaten out of me with pipes and rocks. We moved away shortly afterwards. I don't like talking about that too much.
Now I could trust no one, make friends with no one, talk with no one. My mother saw I was in even worse shape and kicked me out to live with my dad. My dad's a hardass and thought that I should have stood up for myself, and he's probably right.
So I went to a new highschool at age 14 but I made every single attempt to either not show up to class, or even school. I isolated myself as much as I possibly could. This went on until I was a junior, and I tried to kill myself by jumping in front of a moving bus. I was expelled by the school.
So ever since then I've been wallowing in doubt and guilt but I've been getting better about handling it. Kinda..
I recently got my government I.D. and my GED (basically one step below a highschool diploma) and I've been back to sitting at home dealing with swirling thoughts every day.
If I ever see my own scars I have a panicky breakdown, and I just usually am very fearful or paranoid about everything and everyone. It's awful.
Recently I've been taking steps to get things in order, to try and figure out what works and what doesn't. Last weekend I walked to the local mall and spent an hour or so just walking around the crowds. It seems pretty trivial when I see the words for myself, but crowds genuinely unnerve me and make me lose control of my emotions. I plan to keep doing it until I am very comfortable, last weekend was alright, nothing went wrong.
I took a small step back I think because I recently hid in my apartment bathroom from the maintenance folks who were just there to fix the fireplace.
I'm checking around for job opportunities and I'm taking daily walks around the gardens the apartment complex has. A lot of times I picture myself there with someone, just sitting or talking, and it's okay. I get lonely but nothing serious.
Even though I'm trying all this stuff I still have panic attacks, and sometimes I do very bad things to myself, and dangerous thoughts creep into my head. I am full of fear, and I'm not even sure anything I'm trying to accomplish will help at all. And I know I said I'd join some of y'alls chats or message some of you guys and haven't, and I'm sorry about that. I don't mean it in a malicious way, I have a very hard time stringing the letters "h" and "i" together sometimes, and if I sometimes seem like I'm giving the cold shoulder to you or anyone else I don't mean it that way. I really like this place and anyone who is kind I will try my best to be kind back to them.
