Friday, 7 October 2016

Fighting PTSD.



I was 15  years old when it happened. I was on Blake Street in Barrow in Furness (my home town) & I was calling for a friend as I did most nights, but on this night he wasn't in, & as I was walking away I came across two brothers & a women in a car all shouting & screaming. so me being a 15 year old, I decided to have a "nosy" & stand out of view, to see what they were arguing over. what happened in the next 10 minutes, has haunted me ever since.. 

The young lad was stood in front of a young girls car, he was shouting for her to run him down, she was obviously refusing to do so, & his brother was stood in the road also shouting at him to "calm the fuck down" he then shouted back "well if you won't run me down, I will find someone who will" & in those seconds, everything moved so quickly, before anyone could do anything, the lad walked away & to the side of the road, he stood at the curb & waited for an oncoming car to go over the speed bumps, he was stood there as if he was waiting to cross the road, but that didn't happen, instead, he waited until this car was meters from him & dived under the bonnet headfirst whilst the car was moving! the person driving obviously put on their breaks on but it was too late, the young lad went straight under the car & was dragged a few meters down the road underneath said car until it came to a stop.

everything around me blurred, fear totally overtook my body, I couldn't believe what my eyes had just seen! the boy was laid in the road, the driver got out of the car & was in tears & the lads brother was in hysterics, screaming! he then dash off, & I don't know what happened, my first reaction was to dash over to him, but the scene that greeted my eyes was not pretty. the lad was messed up, he was covered in blood, he was shaking & he was making a gurgling, rattling noise. I covered him in my coat, & I told someone else who was just gawping to call an ambulance! then his best mate came to his side & I stood back, just watching this scene unfold. his family slowly swarmed around him & then the police & an ambulance arrived, I was pulled to the side of the road by an officer, but I couldn't speak, all I could do was shake, so he put me in the back of his car, he covered me with his jacket, because mine was around the young lad laid in the road, & I just then sat in the police car, with the door open asking if the lad was okay.... nobody knew. for the next half an hour I watched as the ambulance arrived & attended to the boy & the police spoke to the driver & witnesses that were jotted around the street. about an hour later, the police officer kindly offered to take me home & visit me in a few days time. 

School for the following few days was awful, the lads name was revealed to be Paul Price, a lad I had gone right through junior school with. he was a year above me & although I didn't know him as a friend as such, I knew of him & how much of a lovely guy he was. he was plastered all over the papers for about a week, & then the worse news came. after 2 days in hospital, due to Paul's serve head injuries, he lost his battle & passed away. this shock me more than I ever expected it would. everyone in school was talking about it, talking about him & this accident, & yet nobody knew that I had been there, I had watched him end his life. 

Soon came his funeral, & I think this is when it really hit me hard. I was 15 & had never been to a funeral before, but I wanted to go, I wanted to pay my respects to his family & hopefully get some closure for myself, but this wasn't the case. I am pretty sure now that me attending that funeral & my brain realizing that the accident that I had watched unfold had put an 18 year old boy in a coffin & I was now having to watch his heartbroken family having to say goodbye to him, it totally broke me. a few days after his funeral I was visited again by the officer that had put me in his car the evening of the accident. He interviewed me & got my version of what happened - because the papers were saying he "slipped off the curb" how does someone slip off the curb & end up in the middle of the road under the bonnet of a car? slipped, no, he dived. plain & simple. I told the officer everything that he asked & then I asked him a few questions because a few things by this point were already haunting me. I told him that when I ran over to him he was shaking & making a gurgling noise... the officer than told me that this noise is known as "death rattle" it is a noise that a human makes when they are dying & their organs are slowly shutting down. this of course traumatized me even more because then I couldn't stop thinking about how he was laid there dying in the road right in front of my eyes.

The case was eventually closed by the police as a suicide & that was that, for them at least. for me, I have been haunted with nightmares ever since. I have had numerous counselling to try & help, I have nightmares & they are so real, but they ain't of him, they are of my children, or my family members, laid in that road, making that horrible noise. I wake up shaking & sweating & it messes me up for days. I can't think straight, I can't concentrate & I can't sleep, in fear of having another nightmare. I am now 29 years old & those nightmares still haunt me, I have tried so hard to move on from it, but it's like my brain won't let me. 

I am now looking into having therapy for PTSD, in hopes that this may help me, because it has been 13 years since Paul died, & to me, it still feels like it was last week, the dreams are so real, when I think about it, it all plays out so clearly in my head as if it was yesterday, I hear his brother screaming, I hear the car breaks screeching & I hear him making that horrible gurgling noise & see him covered in blood. I don't want to see or hear it anymore. 

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