I reach my home and I am a mix of thankful and agitated. Restless and at the same time just want to sit down and sleep forever. My home has never looked messier or more home than any other day.
I also did not want to confined in a small room again. Calypso was excited to know I was home but she was even stand offish. I wish someone would come and see me or just check on me. I decide they still needed me to do more. And so I call the local crisis center for which I know many people there. Also I am close friends with the director there.
I call and tell them all that transpired and ask if they can send someone to go speak to the group of people in the room. No one is available to talk to me so I leave a message. No one ever returns a call to me. I felt so alone and I was alone.
No one ever taught anyone how to handle the after effects of a gunman on campus. So I decide to sit in my home and make choices for the next few days that allow me to stay in my comfortable prison with my mattress on the floor and loose floor boards.
I left the house the next day to go to therapy. We talk about the event but only cursory because I am still dealing with the shock of being in another situation that made me feel like my PTSD will never subside. Or that my agoraphobia was a true common sense effect of safety.
Here I was trying to make my life better and on the day I tried I felt like I was held hostage to some idiot with a gun. I had to have those difficult emotions of am I dying today or this next minute. We all had to try and decide what we would do if we saw someone get their heads blown off or try to remember how to tie off a wound. All because someone decided to bring a gun to a campus.
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About Brian Cardoza
Brian Cardoza is a State Certified Peer Support Specialist. The author of The Unexpected Victim, founder Survivor Knights and Chasing Immortality, and a motivational speaker for survivors. Learn more at www.brian-cardoza.com
