Ten Years Ago Today...

Wow, I can't believe it's been ten years. But it seems appropriate that this anniversary falls just days after we've elected a new president.  A president who not only ran his campaign on a foundation of hate and intolerance, but who also brings with him a vice president who has spent most of his political career legislating against LGBT rights, including supporting federal funding to "provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior," most often interpreted as gay conversion therapy.  Don't worry, this post won't be political, I think we have all had enough of everything being turned into a political argument.  I bring up these points only to lament that 10 years later, we are STILL dealing with intolerance and arguing over what rights people of different classes should have. 

That is part of the reason I continue to share my story.  To put a face to something that is still an issue.  But also because I have taken solace in others sharing THEIR experiences.  Not in a misery loves company sort of way, but more in a sharing of strength sort of way.   And the last reason is that whether or not I share it, this particular day for me has more importance to me than even my birthday.  Today is the day I celebrate the me that I've become because of what I have gone through.  Today is the day that I acknowledge my strength, my resilience, my growth. 

Ten years and one day ago, I had a completely different life.  I had a wife, four dogs, 3 cats, a happy three bedroom house with a swimming pool and two car garage, a music store business I'd started earlier that year, a greyhound rescue group I started at the same time with a friend, and a whole different set of friends.  For the sake of clarification, my relationship with my partner wasn't a legal one, since same sex marriage wasn't legal then.  But we'd been together for 7 years, we owned the house together, we had a joint checking account, and for all intent and purposes other than the legal ones, we were wife and wife.   

Ten years ago, we went to meet up with friends for dinner, then to GirlBar in West Hollywood. I so didn't want to go, I was tired, I had been putting in a lot of hours in my new store that had only been open for a handful of months, and I had been busy planning a large inaugural event for my greyhound group later that month. But Chris was intent on going, and had already made plans with our friends, and so we went.  She was driving, so I poured my glass of after-work wine into one of the yellow plastic cups we'd bought for pool parties, and brought it with me as my consolation prize.   

We went to dinner, we went to GirlBar.  We didn't make it home.  Chris must have fallen asleep at the wheel;  at around 3:00am, we hit a tree head on, at an estimated 60mph.  There were no skid marks on the road indicating that she tried to brake before the impact. 

On the second anniversary, I blogged about what happened, as I was still trying to figure things out.  I pasted part of what I had journaled into that blog, to share my perspective, and I am going to repaste it below, for continuity. Because I left some things out.  Things that didn't seem important until much later.   So if you read that journal entry, the first two sections below are a repeat.  

I woke up, with a stillness so heavy it hurt my head. With an uncharacteristic lack of thought flowing through my brain, I operated completely on autopilot.  Without consciously thinking it, I knew I had passed out in the car, time had passed, and now the car was no longer moving.  Reaching to grab my cell phone from the console, I gave pause when it wasn't there to be grabbed. Instead, my fingers, touching over objects like a spider, grazed across my Bluetooth wireless headset.  Without conscious thought, my hand brought the Bluetooth to my head, and looped it over my ear to put in place.  Again, my spidery fingers grazed, seeking the cell phone.  Pure darkness was all around me, and my head throbbed with the pressure of the stillness. I could hear the blood flowing though me, sounding like fuzzy static. Giving up the search for the missing phone, my fingers stopped searching.  I felt something solid resting against my left heel.  Thinking it was my cell phone, I reached down, blindly, picked it up.  I brought it closer to my face so that I could see it.  I was shocked to see that it wasn't my phone, it was the rearview mirror in my hand, and the multi-colored wires were running from the severed end that had once connected it to the windshield.  The static in my head grew louder, my thinking was so slow, every thought was a revelation to be explored in wonder that I could even form the thoughts in my head.  The meaning behind the thought was an afterthought, less important than the actual words that ran through my head. The silence was deafening. I realized the situation wasn't okay, it was bad. It was very bad. In slow motion, my eyes moved from the rearview mirror in my hand up, up to look out the windshield, up to see where I was, praying to see the familiar cream-colored garage door of my house, with it's badly chipped paint and loose handle.  Instead, my eyes drew to the grey fabric in front of me that had exploded from the dashboard of my Highlander.  Before I could even form the conscious thought that my airbag had deployed, I marveled that it was completely deflated, and even mused at how it had inflated at the impact with its whiff of chemicals that can quickly wreak havoc with a person with asthma, then deflated, laying limply against the dash. My eyes continued their path upward, I saw the empty spot on the windshield where the mirror had once been fastened. The fuzzy static could no longer hide the sense of panic that began welling inside of me. With animal instinct taking over, my only thought was to get out of the car.  I had to get out, right that minute.  I reached for the door handle, and turned slightly; the pull against my hip reminded me that my seatbelt was still securely fastened.  I reached to push the red button to release the belt, and I realized I wasn't alone in the car. Chris was still belted in the driver's seat, her belt was holding her upright, but she was leaning, leaning towards me, slumped over as I had never seen her. She was sleeping, why was she sleeping in the car? Why didn't she get out of the car and go into the house and go to bed? "Chris, we have to get out of the car," I said to her, with a hand on her arm that didn't feel warm, it felt cool. It was cold in the car, we must have been here for awhile.  "Chris," I said, louder this time, shaking her arm.  Her body moved with my shaking, her head wobbled, but she didn't stir, her breathing didn't get louder, she did not respond to me at all.  The panic overtook me, I came unglued. I shook her HARD by the shoulder, screaming her name, over and over and over.  "CHRIS!!! CHRIS!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT!!!! CHRIS!!!" My screaming degenerated into wild sobbing, I slapped her face, panicking, I couldn't do this alone, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know where I was, I didn't know why Chris wouldn't wake up. Hysterically sobbing, I opened my door, and stumbled out of the car, away from the car, behind the car.  Headlights were illuminating the back of the Highlander, someone else was here.  "Help me," I tried to moan.  "Oh my god, you are alive!" she said, too loudly.  "Are you okay? I've called 911, they are on their way."  "I don't know, I don't know if I'm ok. My girlfriend is in the car. I think she might be dead. I don't know." I stumbled towards the girl.

I looked up and saw the fire engine, the lights were rotating, there was no sound from the sirens.  Idly, I wondered why they didn't use their sirens. Slowly, I looked beyond the fire engine, and saw more red fire trucks, two ambulances, and several police cars.  Where had these vehicles come from, how did they arrive so suddenly and so quietly?   Standing alone in the middle of such a scene, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  I wished someone would come to me, tell me everything was going to be okay. I had a deep sense of fear that Chris was dead.  I wondered what life would be like without her.  I wondered why I didn't feel sad. I felt deep shame at myself for not being more upset that she was dead. I told myself I didn't deserve her, I didn't even have the decency to have my first reaction be shock and horror, instead, it was apathy. I wandered in circles, clutching my arms about myself, trying desperately to comfort myself.
 

A sheriff approached me, a woman sheriff.  She had blond hair, pulled back in a lazy ponytail.  “What is the driver’s name?” she demanding in a loud, rude voice.  “Chris, um, Chris…”  Panicky, I searched my memory for Chris’s last name, there was nothing in my head, only emptiness.  “TELL ME HER NAME!!!” the sheriff demanded. “I don’t know!” I whined back, crying again.  Why couldn’t I remember her name?

***********************************

She shoved Chris’s driver’s license in my face, and shouted questions at me.  I recognized the license, wondered why Chris gave it to her. I remembered Chris was unconscious, I wondered why they went through her wallet.  The sheriff was still in my face, yelling at me.  Unable to comprehend her, unable to comprehend the situation, my mind shut down. I could make no sense of her words.  “Your friend is going to die, and it’s going to be all your fault if you don’t help!” she yelled at me.  Sobbing, I turned away from her, unable to deal with her any longer.  She followed me, and yelled again, “Your friend is going to DIE, and it’s going to be all YOUR fault if you don’t help!”  I tried valiantly to fix the situation. I tried to appeal to her sensitivity. “Look, I’ve just walked away from a really bad accident, I’m really scared, and I don’t know if my girlfriend is dead or not.  I can’t understand you when you are yelling at me. Please have some compassion.  How would you feel if you were me?”  Deciding I was uncooperative and belligerent, the sheriff yelled at me to shut up and sit down on the curb.  I looked at her in shock, and she repeated herself, “SHUT UP AND GO SIT DOWN!!!”  Puffing her chest and approaching me threateningly, I decided I had had enough of this power hungry inhuman bitch.  Looking at her smaller male partner who stood behind her, I asked him, “Are you seriously going to let her treat me like this?”  His response told me all I needed to know; his slight, non-caring shrug told me he was powerless to stop her, whether it be by resignation or agreement. As she yelled at me again to sit down and shut up, I raised my hand to her in the universal sign for “stop”, and said to her, ‘I can’t understand you when you are yelling at me like that. I can’t deal with you right now.” And then, I walked away from her.  I belatedly realized I was walking in the direction of the car. I heard the rattle of her equipment as she lunged at me, I felt her shoulder strike me between my shoulder blades. Before I could react, my hands were behind my back, the cool hard steel of handcuffs on my wrists. 

***********************************

I tried to belligerently stare her down, I did not want to go sit by myself on the curb.  She moved again towards me, threateningly.  I gave in. My gaze dropped, I turned.  I sat on the curb. 

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The handcuffs were gone, my hands were in my jacket pockets. My Bluetooth was in my hand. I wished for my cell phone, I wanted to call someone.  I realized I had no one to call.

***********************************

A male cop approached me, “are you okay, do you need to call someone?” “I need my cell phone, I couldn’t find it in the car,” I whispered. He left, returned a few minutes later with Chris’s razr phone. “I found this in Chris’s pocket, I didn’t find your phone,” he said to me, handing me her phone.

***********************************

I flipped the cover, scrolled through her contact list, trying to think of someone to call.  Her mom will know what to do, I thought, I will call her mom.  The low battery icon was flashing.  I found Sharon’s name, pressed send.  Ring, ring, ring, the phone kept ringing. I realized it was 3:42am.  Her voicemail came on, she wasn’t answering the phone. Trying to remain calm, trying not to think of the dying battery, I left a message, we were in a bad accident, Chris is hurt, they won’t tell me if she is okay. They are taking her to Henry Mayo Hospital, please come, please help.

***********************************

I felt a cold wetness between my legs, I had wet my pants.  I saw the transmission fluid running down the gutter, under my legs. I wondered idly if there was blood mixed in with the transmission fluid. I realized I had wet my pants in the impact, maybe when the seatbelt pressed against my abdomen. I realized, then, that I had been in that accident, that I was hurt.  I wished someone would come to me, would tell me it was going to be okay. I was cold, my pants were wet. I put my hands on my face as I sobbed, rocking back and forth.

***********************************

I flipped the phone open again, I called Sharon again.  She answered this time, I could tell she was in a panic. “I’m on my way,” she said. “I have Tracey with me, we will be there as fast as we can”.

***********************************

Two paramedics came to me, they kneeled by me.  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?  Do you want to come to the ambulance so we can check you out?” they asked me.  I wanted to go, I tried to stand up.  Screaming pain stabbed in my lower back, I couldn’t get to my feet. I dropped to my knees.  “I’m hurt, my back is hurt,” I cried.

***********************************

A backboard was set on the ground, on the wet pavement. I wondered that modern technology had created nothing better for a person with an injured back than a board on the ground that I would have to crawl painfully to get into.

***********************************

I was in the ambulance, they were putting an IV in my arm, the light was bright. I was scared, I was crying.  They worked silently on me, trying to make sure I was okay.  I felt so alone, in spite of the two men who worked over me. I put my arm over my eyes to block everything out.

***********************************

At the hospital, I asked the first nurse I saw, “is my girlfriend okay?” The nurse averted her eyes from me. “I can’t tell you anything, HPPA laws.”  “Why? Can’t you even tell me if she is alive or dead?” “HPPA, it’s the privacy act for patients. I can’t tell you anything.”  I started crying. “Please, just tell me she is alive.”  The nurse bent under my distress. “She’s here, they are working on her now.”  She disappeared down the hallway, out of my sight.

***********************************

Still strapped to the back board and still wearing the protective cervical collar, they wheeled me down to an x-ray room that seemed miles from the emergency room.  Like a horror movie, the hall seemed darker than it should, and I could see or hear no other people save the two x-ray technicians who steered my gurney into a dark and silent room.  The female technician turned on the lights and started adjusting the machinery as I stared at the ceiling. I became aware of my full bladder, and I asked her if I could use the restroom.  She looked at me in the backboard, and said, “Honey, you aren’t going anywhere until we get some x-rays to make sure you aren’t seriously injured.”  She offered me a bedpan, and I declined, trying to protect the little dignity I had left.  Leaving the machines to warm up, she then took her leave, along with the male technician.  I started to panic, I felt a million miles from anyone, and did not want to be left alone, stranded down a long empty hallway, strapped to a hard backboard.  After several minutes passed, I gave in to my need to use the restroom, and I began unstrapping myself from the board.  I undid the fastener that held the cervical collar on, and I managed to woozily slide off the board and stand on my own two feet.  Luckily for me, there was a restroom within 10 feet of the x-ray room, and I was able to relieve myself and wash my hands and face.  I quickly returned to the x-ray room, intending to lay on the gurney before anyone was any the wiser, but the technicians returned before I was strapped back in.  The female technician walked in before I was done, and I looked guiltily at her. “I was hoping to not get caught at escaping,” I joked with her.  She lectured me half-heartedly, and then asked how I was doing, as she and the male technician transferred me to the x-ray table.  She had seen Chris being worked on by the trauma team, and knew that we had been in the same accident.  I told her I didn’t know how Chris was, nobody would tell me anything, and she said it was because they were still working on her.  She took the x-rays, returned me to the gurney, and they wheeled me back down the hallway to wait for a doctor to review the films. 

***********************************

I was in and out of consciousness when Sharon came up to me.  She looked like she was in shock.  She gave me a hug, and started crying.  Chris had come into the trauma center unconscious, they thought she was going to die.  Her hands were facing in the wrong direction, Sharon said, which is indicative of a massive brain injury.  She wasn’t reacting to pain stimulus, either.  All we could do was sit and wait for more information.  Nervous, pacing, and clutching her purse to her chest, Sharon told me that Tracey would come by to sit with me, then she returned to hover near the trauma team that was working on Chris. 

***********************************

I must have been transferred off the backboard at some point; I came to and was laying on a regular gurney with clean white sheets.  My core temperature had dropped, and I was chilled to the bone. I was covered in several blankets, and I was curled up, trying to warm up.  Tracey came to see me, she hugged me, and asked me what happened.  She looked tired, and scared, and in shock. I told her the little I knew, we had gone to a club, we must have gotten into the accident on the way home, Chris was unconscious in the car. I started to cry, telling her what it was like, coming to after the accident, seeing Chris strapped in her seatbelt, slumped over, and not waking up. I couldn’t stop crying. Tracey sat with me while I dozed in and out.  A nurse came by to wheel me off for more tests, they needed to do CT scans of my head and abdomen to check for injuries.  Tracey told me she was going to go find her mom, to see if there were any updates on Chris’s condition, and that she would sit with me again when I came back from the tests.

***********************************

They wheeled me outside, to a trailer where the temporary CT machine was housed.  Up a rickety-feeling ramp, and into a narrow space.  “I’m going to inject contract dye into your IV line, you are going to feel like you just peed your pants, so don’t worry, you didn’t.”  The nurse smiled at me, and asked me if I was okay.  I nodded at her, and closed my eyes.  Minutes later, I felt a strange warm and wet feeling between my legs, like I peed my pants.  I remembered what the nurse said, and tried not to worry.  I let myself drift off into the grayness.

***********************************

Later, back in my gurney, Rick came to sit with me.  Sprawled in his chair, contemplating the hospital floor, he asked me what happened. I told him what I told Tracey, which was so little.  I told him that I needed to get out of the hospital, it was after 6:00am, the dogs had been left alone all night and needed to go outside.  Rick said, “You aren’t going to get out anytime soon, they are waiting on your test results. Give me your keys, I will go let the dogs out.”  I realized then that I had no belongings on me, no phone, no keys, no purse.  “The keys were in the car, I don’t have them,“ I told Rick.  He went to confer with Sharon and Tracey, and came back to me.  “I’m going to go to the accident scene to see what happened, and see if I can get the keys. Then I’ll go take care of the dogs.”  I drifted off again.  A bit later, a doctor was shaking me awake.  My test results had come back; other than bumps, bruising, and a sprained lower back, I was okay.  He gave me an injection of morphine for the pain, and left me with prescriptions for vicodain and ibuprofen.

Sharon came up to me, said Chris was down the hall, and I could come see her, if I was up to it.  I told her I absolutely wanted to see Chris, I was so relieved I finally could. I followed her down the hall, to where Chris was laying in another bed.  She had a cervical collar on, and had tubes all over her, and was surrounded by beeping machines.  I had the wild thought that she would wake up, and we could go home. I sat in the chair at her side, and held her hand.  So many emotions ran through me right that minute, relief that I could see her, and touch her, a deep regret that we had the accident and she was so injured, disbelief at the gravity of the situation, the loneliness of not having her there with me to help me through the aftermath.  Suddenly, I started feeling very hot, and dizzy; the room swayed around me. I felt the floor lurch up to meet me. Heavily, I sank into the chair, as Sharon called for a nurse. It must have been a combination of the morphine and the stress, my blood pressure had dropped.  The nurse made me lie down on my gurney again, where I faded off into sleep.

***********************************

Around nine that morning, they came to me with release papers.  I signed them, and asked what was happening with Chris. Sharon told me they were moving her up to the ICU unit upstairs, they just had to prepare a room for her.  When I got off the gurney this time, the pain caught up with me. I could barely walk.  My lower back had tightened into a position that was neither standing nor sitting. I felt like I had been hit by a Mac truck.  I could only imagine how Chris felt, if she could feel anything.  We waited just a short while, and then the nurses told us they had moved Chris.  Together, we all went up to ICU. 

I’d never been in an ICU unit before.  The room was surrounded by cubicles created by curtains, and every bed had a patient in it, surrounded by tubes and machines.  The middle of the room was mostly desk, and ICU nurses were everywhere. I learned, in the next few days, that ICU nurses had only two patients per shift, as they required more care than typical post-surgery patients, who were staffed at 16 per nurse.

Our nurse, Jay, came into the “room” with us, and explained what he knew; Chris was in a drug-induced coma, and intubated so a machine could help her breathe.  Her right heelbone, the calcaneous, was completely shattered, her left eye orbit (the bones around the eye) was fractured, and there was a laceration on her left temple.  She had a head injury, there was some swelling in her brain, and some bleeding.  One of her ribs on her right side was fractured, and her right lung was punctured.  In short, she was a mess.  Jay wasn’t sure how long she would stay in the coma; they had scheduled a neurologist to come look at her, as well as an orthopedic specialist (for her foot), and opthamalagist, an ears/nose/throat specialist, and a plastic surgeon (for the laceration on her temple).  Because it was a weekend, the doctors would be coming as soon as they could, but we couldn’t be given appointment times.

I took the information Jay gave us for granted; I soon learned that as neither a spouse nor a family member, I would have no rights as far as Chris was concerned. The doctors refused to talk directly to me, and I was to have no say in Chris’s care.

##########

I stopped journaling at this point, I couldn't revisit the memories long enough to write them down, it was too painful. Later, I learned that my lapsing in and out of awareness was from a combination of shock and a concussion; I would continue to have issue with memory and recognition for weeks after the accident. I couldn't remember who some of the newer teachers were at my store, teachers I had hired. It was as if I had never seen them before. I was so embarassed that I hid my memory lapses as best I could, I didn't know it was a side effect from the impact of the crash. 

They brought Chris out of the coma four days later, when the risk of swelling in her brain had passed, and the bleeding in her brain had stopped.  When she regained consciousness, they ran more tests.  They diagnosed her with a severe traumatic brain injury.  She had no spontaneous speech, she recognized us, but couldn't talk to us, and didn't seem to have anything to say.  She wasn't scared, thankfully.  She was just a shell of a person.   

I still can't write this out.  I'd intended on sharing how the hospital staff treated me, making me feel ashamed because they disproved of my relationship with my girlfriend.  How the trauma therapist met with me and drew a diagram with three circles, one circle to represent me, one circle to represent Chris, one to represent her mom.  The mom circle was in the center, and our two circles were underneath, all three overlapping.  "If Chris was my husband, and I was the wife, would you still record our relationship as three equally related circles??" I asked the counselor.  She looked at me, unable to answer.  I don't, for the record, know what the appropriate answer is, but I do know that it was clear the hospital did not view my relationship with Chris the same as they would a traditional marriage. 

Her family and I started having issues, from the stress of the situation, from not knowing how things were going to end up, from sending too much time together when we all had such strong personalities.  They started having discussions when I wasn't there, they scheduled doctor appointments and tests for when I was at work.  They made it clear they didn't want me there, almost from the beginning. While Chris was in a coma, I was terrified to leave her side, I was afraid she would die and I wouldn't be there with her.  Chris's mother kept telling me to go home, there was not point in my being there. No point??? I still didn't grasp what was yet to come.  

After Chris had been in the hospital for about six weeks, her brother pulled me aside, told me that they were convinced I caused the accident, and that the reason that wouldn't let me be alone with her was because they were scared I was going to try to kill her.  I have NO idea why they thought that, other than one or more of them having a mental illness.  I tried to fight back, but after being threatened, I knew I had little choice.  I tried one last time to fight for my relationship; I went into Chris's room, and told her that her family was ordering me to leave the hospital, and her, and to never come back. She had regained some of her speech, and some of her memories at that point, but her cognition was still not fully regained. So when she shrugged at me, and looked at her mom and her sister, I knew there was nothing I could do.  Sobbing, I hugged her, and told her that I loved her, and that I was so sorry, and then I left. 

I went home to the cold, empty house, and I started crying, which then turned into a rage.  I had been standing in front her of dresser in our bedroom, and I started kicking it.  I wasn't even thinking, I just kicked and kicked and kicked until the bottom drawer front broke into several pieces. 

The saga wasn't over yet, there was still the matter of the house, the animals, all our stuff.  That was covered on the second anniversary blog.  And if you are curious about more of my very slow processing, there is also the fourth anniversary, and a fifth anniversary blog.  It wasn't until after the fifth anniversary that I realized the issues I was having were actually PTSD, and that I needed help.  That's all in the seventh anniversary blog.

I've still struggled since with the PTSD crap, with leaving my house, anxiety, blah blah blah.  But I did manage to get back to ballet, so I AM leaving my house several times a week, that's progress for me!  And that's where the next step in healing came from.  Not from ballet itself, but in a remark that my ballet teacher made to me in a discussion after class, with something that had nothing to do with ballet.  She was talking about her own personal growth, and how some of us don't always trust our own insticts, and that it was an important skill for us to learn.  I thought about what she said, it really resonated with me, because it's been an ongoing theme for me for my entire life.  I don't trust my own feelings, I second guess myself, I let others convince me of things I wouldn't have believed on my own.  That dresser of Chris's that I kicked and broke? She was MAD after her family came to get her stuff and she saw the broken drawer.  MAD.  Which is sort of a funny thing to be mad about after such a traumatic ideal.  (She was also mad that I gave a small chest freezer to HER friend after he helped me move my stuff out of the house before it foreclosed, that was actually the WORST thing to come out of the whole situation).  My take away from everything was that it was all my fault.  The accident, the aftermath, my struggles with PTSD.  All my fault. If only I'd dug in my feet and not let us go out that night. If only I'd not drank and had stayed awake on the drive home and kept her awake. If only I'd been more understanding with her family while she was in the hospital. On and on.  Whenever my conscious reminded me I couldn't control them or her, only me, I shut it down. I didn't trust my own feelings, but I trusted hers when she blamed me for the dresser, the chest freezer, the whole breakup. 

So I kept going back to my ballet teacher's words about trusting myself. But I couldn't quite put it together with all this and make it work. I had been reading a book about PTSD, and why some people are more likely to struggle with it than others, and the author said his research showed that a common denominator was GUILT.  Whether it was warranted or not, if a person had feelings of guilt regarding a traumatic experience, they were more likely to struggle with PTSD issues. Reading that made me go through my mental catalogue of things from the accident, see all the instances of guilt I had logged away, and I had a bit of an a ha moment.  A few nights later, my subconscious put the trust concept with the guilt concept, and I had a profound dream that changed how I felt.  Ironically, I still couldn't trust my actual dream self, so I had to dream another person up to tell my dream self up the things I needed to hear. I don't know why that cracked me up when I finally realized that, but I guess with as slow as I process everything else, why wouldn't I be slow to utilize new realizations?!?  In my dream, I met another person, at an art gallery, at a showing. I have no idea why my subconscious picked that setting. But this person I met, this man, had a large disfiguring scar that ran diagonally across his face.  He was very tense with me, in a polite but stiffly guarded way.  I was SO curious, and so I talked to him, not about the scar, but just about things.  And he told me his story. He had been in a car accident with his wife, and she was killed.  The guilt he carried from having killed her nearly overtook him, and it was all he could do to keep living his life. The scar on his face was the outward show of the damage that had been done to his heart and his well-being, and he saw it as a representation of the damage he had caused others, his punishment that he would bear the rest of his life, a warning to those who became close to him.  My heart hurt for him, that he would carry so much shame and guilt from an accident that wasn't his fault, it was just a horrible unfortunate thing that sometimes happens to people.   And that's when I realized what my subconscious was trying to tell me.  I woke up the next morning, feeling lighter in my heart, feeling like I finally understood, feeling like I could finally let go. 

I think one of the reasons guilt leads to a higher rate of PTSD issues is because if I had a part in causing something, then it wasn't just a random accident, I enabled the situation to become what it was. And if I could do it once, I could do it again.  And holy shit, who wants to go through something like that more than once?!?!?! Enter all the avoidant behaviors, and isolationist behaviors, and pretty soon I have managed to really minimize the chance of anything like that happening again.

I've sort of rambled through several different points in this long long blog, I think because I don't have a solid point to make.  I think I just want to share it all.  I want people to not forget that we are ALL people, and we all deserve the same fair and equal treatment.  I want people who are going through tough situations to know that they aren't alone, and that we DO get through our situations, even if it takes ten years.  And I want people to know that we all have an impact on the people around us, even when we don't think we do.  It's that whole 'it takes a village' thing, even if we feel like we are sometimes alone in our experiences.

This week, thanks to the presidential elections, a lot of Americans have had a really challenging week filled with sadness, frustration, disbelief, and for some of us, resignation and acceptence.  It's been a roller coaster of emotions, and so many of us have shared the experience together, and that has given me so much solace, and hope.

I am so very fortunate to be where I am in life, and I am so grateful.  I am grateful for my friends, who have supported me when I needed it and uplifted me when I needed it.  I am grateful that we get to experience this life together.  And I am grateful for those who have shared their stories to me.  I hope there is more of that.  It helps all of us.  We are not alone. <3