Trauma, heartbreak, devastation

I put my head through a windshield and became a God.
 
Quite traumatic, one day a mortal near death...The next, immortal.

 

She's crazy. I still deal with her and we been broken up for about 6 months. I dated her for a year, spent so much time and money on her. Seriously thought she was the girl for me until I found out she was cheating on me. She still texts/calls me to this day trying to get me back. I've moved on. I still love her and care for her, but a relationship without trust is no relationship at all Sent from my iPod touch using Grasscity Forum

 

lost my 16 year old daughter in car crash never get over it

 

4 years with a physically and mentally abusive boyfriend. Possible PTSD.

 

The most painful thing by far I have ever had to deal with is a breakup. And its why I started smoking weed

 

sorry man, I can only empathize.


Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum

 

If I had to pick one, sole painful experience to speak about, I suppose it'd be losing my best friend. It was kind of a freak accident that killed him, he was working on an old Camaro in the garage, and had taken the fuel tank out. There were gasoline fumes in the air, and when he removed the battery, it sparked. Their garage literally exploded, and the rest of the house went up. After it happened, one of the neighbors said something about, "a man on fire, and a ball of fire shooting out of the garage." The man on fire was his stepdad (who miraculously lived), the ball of fire was him. His tennis toes were still melted to the driveway.
 
I remember his older brother calling me, and telling me what had happened. I didn't believe him. I literally thought he was joking with me, and Jacob was probably standing behind him laughing about it. He kept repeating it, I told him, "that's not funny." Then I heard his voice cracking and a sob, and realized he was telling the truth.
 
As soon as I could get a ride, I headed down to the hospital to see him. I couldn't drive at the time, I had gotten in a nasty car wreck about two months before. Still couldn't even walk either. He and two other of our friends were in the wreck with me, the other two and I ended up hurt pretty badly, he walked away from it, literally without a scratch. A week or two before, I was busting his ass about how fucking lucky he was for that. I think back on saying that, and even though I had reason to say it at the time, it sounds so fucking sick in my head now.
 
When I saw him, he was sedated and intubated (breathing tube). He had severe second and third degree burns, and also had burns to his airway and lungs, from inhaling all of the hot air and smoke. They said he'd lost a lot of blood when they were debriding the burns. 95% of his body, they told me. At the time, I had never seen severe burns. It blew my mind. The smell, I can't describe it exactly, just burnt I guess. Even after years now of working in fire and EMS, I've still never seen burns that bad, at least not on a live patient.
 
I went back and saw him the next day, and he looked even worse. The combination of the burns and all of the blood and fluids he'd gotten caused severe edema. His head was almost the size of a basketball. And I literally could not recognize his face.
 
On the sixth day after it happened, his parents told me that he had a severe infection from the burns, and he was in early sepsis from it. It was Thanksgiving. I spent the whole day there with them. A friend from our old high school brought us leftover food. My friend was still sedated, they kept him deeply sedated the whole time, but the swelling had gone down. He couldn't talk of course, we got a few fingers moved in response to what we said to him.
 
The next day I got the dreaded phone call. I saw the number, was scared to pick up the phone. I finally got the nerve to, but I never said a word. Just listened. He kept getting sicker through the night and the next morning, even with all of the meds he was on to bring his blood pressure up. He went into shock from it, and they couldn't do anything that fixed it. His parents decided for them not to do anything further, and to take him off the ventilator. He died about twenty minutes later.
 
And the biggest insult to his injury? My best friend got his last week of life filmed and put on cable TV. His mother was told about her husband and her son's grave injuries, and the poor prognosis he had, and immediately had a camera stuck in her face. Of course, these producers can't film and broadcast these things without the family's permission, but what kind of mental state is a person going to be in, in a situation like that? You're preying on the weak. I find it a little twisted.
 
 
I can't believe I just typed all of that. That memory is generally stuffed into the back of mind, off my radar on a regular basis, but when I think back to it, it's like replaying a movie, with all of the sights, the sounds, the smells, the things that ran through my head going back through it. My only daily reminder is the tattoo on my arm. Which while it sounds a little mean to say, I sometimes wish I never got. Not because I don't like it, but because people always notice, and ask, and it's like picking at a scab. It's a decent tat though, I guess it's nice to think that he would probably dig it.
 
Would talk about childhood experiences, but I'm kind of iffy about doing it with strangers. And not sure if it's a book I want to re-open at the moment. Guess it feels good to get a little off my chest now and then, though. Kid meant a lot to me, I honestly don't think I'd be sitting here today if it wasn't for him.

 

Heading back to work the week after 9/11.
 
My office at the time was on the corner of Wall and South streets (that's like 4 or 5 blocks east of WTC,) and we were allowed access to the building on 9/18. I'd normally take the E train from Penn Station down to WTC and then walk to my office, but the E trains weren't running because of all the damage. The C train was pretty much the same thing, with the exception of terminating at WTC, so that was an easy alternate. The walk from the Fulton St. C station down to my office was like a war zone, and I'll never forget the smell that was in the air.
 
The office I worked in was towards the top of the building and we had full access to 2 wrap-around balconies. My office didn't have a door to the balcony, but my window went out to it, so I'd just climb out when I needed a bit of fresh air. I headed out for my normal morning break, looked down, and saw a pile of burned stock certificates (or some other type of financial document) and a piece of human scalp.
 
Yeah. Scalp. About 4 blocks away, 29 floors up and in a place not even facing WTC. I saw a lot of other things in subsequent weeks and months, but I think that shook me the most. I lot of questions hit you at the same time when you realize you're holding a piece of someone else's flesh.
 
There was a bomb threat/evacuation in my building that afternoon (turned out to just be a case of soap that was delivered,) and considering how fucked everything was in the area at the time, my boss and I ended up walking to Penn Station. There was no way we were going to get on the subway, in such a confined space, after seeing what we did that day.
 
For the next 2 weeks or so, I received word on people I knew or worked with that were gone (I dealt with a lot of companies in WTC at the time,) and I stopped keeping count after 70 or so. The company that I worked for didn't suffer any casualties, but several coworkers were injured and one or two never came back.
 
Prior to my time at that job, I lived in a dorm starting in 1999 that was just on the other side of WTC. Between school and that job, which I left in 2007, I spent the better part of a decade in the neighborhood and absolutely hate going back there now.
 
@[member="puds"] - that tornado was insane. A friend/former coworker of mine is from Joplin and her family lost 3 homes that day. All I remember is seeing footage on the news, getting a txt from her saying she was OK but everything as gone, and then running to Walmart and sending as many supplies as I could.

 

Man, this threads is serious like really serious

 

I work as an EMT so trauma isn't anything new to me. The sight of blood doesn't even phase me anymore.That being said, I would cry like a bitch if one of my grandparents died lol.