August 18th, 2014, changed my life; and not for the better. 90 seconds is all it took. The time it took a traffic light to change from red to green, my life, as I had known it, lived it, no longer existed.
It was around 6:30pm, the tail end of rush hour traffic made the street busy and I stopped for a red light at an intersection I have travelled through literally thousands of times; it’s on my route to everywhere I go. I looked up to see a man walking toward me, arm outstretched. It took a few seconds to realize there was a gun in his hand. My first thought was I was being car-jacked. He stopped four feet from me with the gun pointed at me, then turned and fired into the car in front of me. I watched in horror as the car slowly veered off the road.
I stopped breathing. My logical brain was saying “remember the details so you can tell the police” while my emotions were telling me I was about to become, what’s known as collateral damage. I blinked. The shooter was gone. The light turned green. The cars that had been in front of the car that had been shot were gone, other people were rushing to the people who had been shot. My mind was still trying to come to grips with what happened. It made no sense. Then again, trying to put a rational explanation on an irrational act isn’t going to make sense. I could hear the sirens as they raced to the scene. The next five and a half years were the hardest, darkest days of my life.
I had always loved life. I always had a suitcase half packed because I could, at a moment’s notice, take a trip. Often by plane and sometimes by car, driving thousands of miles alone. I was independent and free. Prior to this incident, I ran 5km regularly and worked out. Suddenly I found I was afraid to walk out my door. Driving anywhere was terrifying. Traffic lights, road construction, stop signs, jaywalkers all sent my anxiety soaring to the point where I did my best to avoid driving anywhere. I used to love driving now it was one of my greatest fears. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus. I gained weight, a lot of weight. I apologized for everything…all the damn time. My life and my world had closed in on me and I mourned the life I lost and hated the person I had become.
I sought help and got help and was thankful for it. However, every time I started to feel better, an officer of the court would show up at my door with a subpoena to testify. In total, I testified at five separate homicide trials in four years all relating to this one incident. Each time I was subpoenaed, I relived the trauma and the symptoms it invoked. The fifth subpoena broke me. It broke my faith, my hope, my will.
After the fifth trial, I received word that it may be retried due to some point of law and that I may be called to testify again. To say I struggled with this information would be a mild understatement. I actually told them I couldn’t do this again, that it was killing me. Their response was, “well, it would probably be two years before we could bring it back to trial, so you will have time to recover before you have to go through it again.” At this point I felt this nightmare would never end. My grandmother had a saying that went “No good deed goes unpunished”. That’s how it felt; that I was being punished for doing the right thing; for coming forward and testifying.
I had grown used to surviving on less than three hours of sleep a night and the constant exhaustion. I felt brittle all the time, as though all it would take was one more small thing to shatter me completely. I was clinging to threads while trying to pretend, for the sake of others, that I was OK. I didn’t want them to worry about me. I didn’t want them to ask what they could do to help because I had no idea how they could help; I had no idea how to help myself.
I was afraid to feel happy because whenever I did, a subpoena would arrive. Somewhere in my mind, I had created and anchored the belief that if I didn’t feel good, the subpoena wouldn’t arrive.
I did what little I could do. Unconsciously, I was waiting for the officer of the court to show up again. It was pointless to even try to feel better because I was going to relive the trauma yet again. Time ticked on. The two-year period the court had mentioned had come and gone without a subpoena arriving. Once that happened, I began to think this nightmare was finally over. At that point I began to get four hours of uninterrupted sleep a night; something that I had not experienced in almost 6 years. It was a start, a turning point, something to give me hope.
A consistent amount of sleep a night has done wonders for me. While it took me a couple of months to really begin to feel mentally and emotionally better, there has been a definite change. I was able to focus. I was able to go out on my own once in a while without feeling anxious.
In May, I decided I wanted to start to run again though to do that I would have to start by walking as I was so out of shape. I didn’t have the confidence to walk outside alone, so I opted for the treadmill doing 5 kms most days. Two months went by and I continued to do 5 km on the treadmill.
July 16th, I did something I never thought I would be able to do again, I went for a 5km run in my neighbourhood. It wasn’t a fast run, it was more of a run, walk, run, walk thing, but I did it and I did it alone. Granted it was at 5:30 in the morning when no one was around (which made me feel safe) but I did it and I continue to do it. My time is improving, a lot less walking, a lot more running and a feeling of being free. Oh how I have missed that feeling of being free! With freedom came a sense of happiness and hope for better days ahead. In the last month I have felt better than I have in six years. I have finally broken through the darkness of my PTSD and am moving towards a brighter tomorrow.
Has it been easy? Hell no. Has there been setbacks? More than I care to count. Last year I had thought I had a breakthrough only to hit a major setback. What I have learned (and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn) is there is no going back to the life I had before. It doesn’t exist because that person no longer exists. The incident affected my mind, my emotions and my body without a doubt. It also shattered my spirit. The core of my being, my sense of right and wrong, of justice, of the goodness of people, my faith. This kind of moral injury is life changing and there’s no going back; the only way is forward.
To heal and move forward, I had to do let go of that life and that version of me. I picked up the most important pieces of both and they became the foundation of my new life. I have a new clarity on who and what matters to this new me. I have become very selective about how I spend my time and with whom. I have no interest in arguing over petty, little things that will be of no importance a month from now. There is peace in my life. The people in my life mean the world to me; they are who I want to spend my time with. Being of service to others, helping them find their way through the darkness is what I want to do. I have a new appreciation for the simple beauty in life; for the blessings in my life…and for my life. With each new day, I am slowly beginning to love the me I am becoming. I lost a life I loved, yet, like the phoenix, I have risen from the ashes with a sense of joy and wonder about this new life I am creating.
There is no going back. You have to find your way through the PTSD darkness to the light and life that awaits you. I am walking the path. I know you can too and if you need me to, I’ll walk it with you.
Blessings to you.
~ Bren
