Once simply named ‘Shell Shock,’ Posttraumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is most what survivors of violent crimes or natural disasters have to overcome. The symptoms can range from flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, depression, anxiety/panic attacks, and fear of leaving the house. With that said, the question now is: “What qualifies me to write this article?” While I am not a licensed clinician or a psychiatrist, I was trained as a crisis counselor and more importantly I was recently a victim of a violent crime. What follows is my final step in recovery. Admitting to myself that I was a victim. Because before the idea to write this came to me, I had never before said out loud that I was a victim. I always left it up to my therapist to say, “You were a victim, Keith. You need to face that fact.” My last thread of denial was not admitting to myself that I was a victim. So, here is my story. My battle. Parts of my past that will give me insight I can use to help others.
For the longest time, I refused to refer to myself as a victim. I put myself in denial of sorts. I mean, I knew that I was in a potentially life threatening situation but refused to surrender to being labeled ‘Victim’ and thus another statistic. I just could not bring myself to say it. My therapist had pushed, almost to the point of badgering me to attend a Victim Support Group. Having the preconceived notion that I would have to stand up and say, “Hi. My name is Keith and I, too am a victim” just did not sit well with me. Though, from what I was told all I had to do was just attend a meeting sit quietly and listen. Yet, for some reason I guess I saw attending these meetings and becoming a part of a brotherly victim-hood group I saw as a step backward not forward in my recovery.
My recovery. Sitting in my counseling classes trying to wrap my mind around the concept of PTSD, I can remember all but laughing and thinking that people who supposedly suffered from this disorder were nothing more than lonely people seeking attention from anyone who would listen. “He who laughs . . .” or so the saying goes, right? Well, I laughed and found out the hard way. Needless to say I found myself sitting in a chair opposite a therapist discussing what had landed me in her office.
The first thing she wanted to know was what had actually happened. I think I started by saying something along the lines of, “I wound up staring down the wrong end of a gun.” I guess the question you are all asking now is . . . “Did the person fire the gun at me?” No, fortunately the gun never went off. So, was there even a crime? Yes, there was. The person in question had broken onto the facility where I happened to be working at the time.
I was working as a graveyard staff at a halfway house for prison inmates serving the last three months of their sentence. It was not a great career move, granted, but like all jobs, it paid the bills. I just never thought it might almost take my life as well.
July 9, 2001 that early Monday morning will be forever etched into my memory. During the course of the shift my partner and I share the task of walking through the facility on hourly checks. Midnight was my turn to walk the grounds and have my life forever changed. Seconds. Just a few seconds was about how long the encounter was. A few seconds of my life. A few seconds to stare death in the face and walk away alive. If you could call how I was afterwards alive. The way the facility is set up is a main walkway with apartments on either side, sliding glass doors facing the walkway giving staff a clear view of the living room to each apartment.
Besides the flashlight I was carrying, the only other source of light was two halogen lights on the buildings and the hallway lights to illuminate the stairs. Which, if one can imagine, there really was not much to see by. Now that you have an idea of what it was like walking down this walkway, looking into the apartments through the glass doors all one would see is vague shapes and shadows. So, when I glanced into the first apartment on my right, I guess I knew on some level that something was amiss. I mean I knew that all the residents in that apartment had to wake up early to catch their bus to make it to work on time. Yet, when I saw a person in the apartment looking like a deer caught in a pair of headlights, my mind said it had to be one of the residents up looking for something they forgotten or had just woke and need to smoke a cigarette before going back to bed.
