Depression Support Group
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This normally would be something that I journal about, which is what I prefer to do, usually...but this doesn't feel like it belongs there, at least at the moment. it's also going to be really long.
So, I know some of you really don't want to be reminded of this, and I apologize in advance for any triggering this might cause, but tomorrow marks a year after the bombings at the Boston Marathon. I wasn't at the race...but it still has had a bad effect on me.
At the time I got news alerts on my mobile...I don't really know why, maybe it was because it was WBZ Radio, well respected in Boston, and I just wanted to stay up to date. While the main race was held, these alerts were simply results of the wheelchair and elite divisions. This was okay, since me and my fellow staff where I work was curious as to who would win.
Then mid-afternoon came, and I started to get alerts practically every half hour or so, which is very unusual for this kind of thing. All of them first reported on, then updated, about bombs going off at the finish line of the marathon. My supervisor turned the news on the radio -- I doubt he had much of a choice -- and it was all they were talking about. the alerts kept coming on the phone, and finally I'd had enough and simply shut those alerts down. I did a headline check on New England Cable News when I got home, and it was still the only story being reported.
What had hit me -- and it still does -- really hard about this was this was in the Copley Square area of Boston, a place I had been to a few times, once for an interview, a few times just to shop at the Prudential Center, and I thought it was at least relatively safe because it was busy. The bombings shattered any sense of safety I had for the parts of the city I knew I could go to, because I couldn't help but think: If it can happen there, it can quite literally happen anywhere.
This has triggered nightmares, because it brings back a memory of when my high school was smoke bombed. Sometimes I dream that I was actually caught in the bombings. Sometimes it's me going to a place that I've never been before only to see it get blown up upon arrival. Then last night it extended itself again: Since I'm seeing a new therapist tomorrow, part of my nightmare was that she was armed and was looking to take me out instead of help me. This combined with the other two scenarios I just mentioned, creating a triple nightmare that I thought I would never ever see.
I can't say that I want to go out, except to work, anymore. My feeling of safety is gone, and I am starting to wonder if I have become essentially paranoid because just as I don't want to go out anymore, I don't want to meet anyone new face to face, either.
I'm scared. I know I need to move on from all this. But the images, the memories it's retriggering, the fears I have about safety that are being triggered...they won't go away. And I really just don't know how I am going to come to terms with this.
Vent is over now...
So, I know some of you really don't want to be reminded of this, and I apologize in advance for any triggering this might cause, but tomorrow marks a year after the bombings at the Boston Marathon. I wasn't at the race...but it still has had a bad effect on me.
At the time I got news alerts on my mobile...I don't really know why, maybe it was because it was WBZ Radio, well respected in Boston, and I just wanted to stay up to date. While the main race was held, these alerts were simply results of the wheelchair and elite divisions. This was okay, since me and my fellow staff where I work was curious as to who would win.
Then mid-afternoon came, and I started to get alerts practically every half hour or so, which is very unusual for this kind of thing. All of them first reported on, then updated, about bombs going off at the finish line of the marathon. My supervisor turned the news on the radio -- I doubt he had much of a choice -- and it was all they were talking about. the alerts kept coming on the phone, and finally I'd had enough and simply shut those alerts down. I did a headline check on New England Cable News when I got home, and it was still the only story being reported.
What had hit me -- and it still does -- really hard about this was this was in the Copley Square area of Boston, a place I had been to a few times, once for an interview, a few times just to shop at the Prudential Center, and I thought it was at least relatively safe because it was busy. The bombings shattered any sense of safety I had for the parts of the city I knew I could go to, because I couldn't help but think: If it can happen there, it can quite literally happen anywhere.
This has triggered nightmares, because it brings back a memory of when my high school was smoke bombed. Sometimes I dream that I was actually caught in the bombings. Sometimes it's me going to a place that I've never been before only to see it get blown up upon arrival. Then last night it extended itself again: Since I'm seeing a new therapist tomorrow, part of my nightmare was that she was armed and was looking to take me out instead of help me. This combined with the other two scenarios I just mentioned, creating a triple nightmare that I thought I would never ever see.
I can't say that I want to go out, except to work, anymore. My feeling of safety is gone, and I am starting to wonder if I have become essentially paranoid because just as I don't want to go out anymore, I don't want to meet anyone new face to face, either.
I'm scared. I know I need to move on from all this. But the images, the memories it's retriggering, the fears I have about safety that are being triggered...they won't go away. And I really just don't know how I am going to come to terms with this.
Vent is over now...
My second thought is:
Things like this always hit us harder and become more personal when it's somewhere that we have been. I used to live in New Orleans. I moved away long before Katrina..but....sigh..it's really hard to see a place you have lived and loved go through things that. To see pics of streets you have walked down. Buildings you have been in.
It's hard, but usually time has a way of helping these things fade in our minds again.
To answer a few of those thoughts:
* How long will it take me to overcome this? Honest answer is, I really don't know. What things like this do is force other bad memories that I still haven't been able to come to terms with back to the surface, and each time it feels like it's amplified a little bit more. It came out during the session that safety has become a major concern, in part because I realized if something like the marathon bombing can take place in an area that I thought was safe, it could conceivably happen anywhere. The result has been that I don't feel safe anywhere anymore.
Logically, I get that the odds I'll actually experience something like this again are very long. But emotionally, having experienced a smoke bombing firsthand and narrowly missing other things that are too many and too long to mention here, I've been desensitized enough over the years that I have a level of distrust that only someone who is paranoid would love.
A specialty counselor is in my future, we both conceded, and it looks like a social services worker will likely have to get involved to find something, anything to give me someone face-to-face who can relate. I don't like being alone. I especially hate feeling stuck. But this is where I am right now.