***TRIGGER WARNING*** lengthy post, also involves fatal vehicle collision

[AmandaB30]

Hi, it is Amanda again. I made a general post a few days back and I found the feedback helpful. This post is very specific this time to things I have seen in the last three days in a row and I'm feeling really...weird. It started Tuesday with me accidently hitting a beautiful, large snake sunbathing on the road (I live in the country and make frequent drives to the city) anyway, I immediately got out but saw his injury was fatal, but he was not dead. (This is the first animal I have hit and I am extremely sensitive) Nobody was around and I just burst into tears and kept apologizing, but I could NOT leave it there to suffer a slow, agonizing death, so I gently held him in my lap for the ride hope (I am not scared of snakes, so please don't think this was weird of me.) When I got home, I was somewhat hysterical and asked my husband to get me gauze. I pointlessly tried wrapping him up, but then saw he was bleeding from his mouth and paralyzed halfway and would not survive. I then made the agonizing choice, the first time I ever had to, to ask my husband to put it out of its suffering...no details but thankfully it was immediate and he buried him for me with a flower from my garden. So the rest of that day was a guilty, anxious blur of staying in bed. The very next day, very same road (I'm no longer taking that road in the future) I come across a turtle that had been badly run over, but at the last second I notice it kicking its back legs. I felt like I was going to literally be sick and again, I couldn't leave it in such a horrifying way to die (apparently the person who hit it doesn't feel the same) so I had to run over it again about 4 times, to be absolutely certain, it was extremely disturbing to have to do, but it had to be done. So then I get home, cry about it to my husband and STUPIDLY ask "are more bad things going to happen??" Two days later, I end up driving up to the scene of an accident before the OPP had arrived. I saw 4 cars to the side, an ambulance and a woman waving to me, saying "You need to turn around, there's been a serious accident" and before the damn tractor pulled across to block my view, I saw it. Immediately I froze when i saw the yellow tarp and a victims feet. I got really dizzy and it felt it took me forever to turn around, but I know it was seconds. In my head, I knew what I saw, logically I knew the man was gone, but a tiny part of me was still in denial, like maybe the tarp was covering blood and the shoes but that the person was rescued and on the way to the hospital. I knew not, but part of me hoped. I then read yesterday that it was a motorcycle and he died. Now I can't hope. I feel guilty to say this, as if I don't care about him, but I wish SO badly that the OPP trucks that I passed on the way back, who weren't even rushing or driving with their lights because they knew he was dead, still had half a heart for his sake and for us who saw him, because only after did they block the roads in both directions. Maybe they are used to death and can handle it, but I'm not and I just can't. I feel like horrible in this way because I stopped for the animals, and even though I was told to turn around, I feel this sickening guilt for driving away from a person who just lost their only life and was laying alone under that horrible yellow tarp. Is it weird that I feel like I wanted to just sit beside him so he wasn't alone? I just don't understand why or if it's normal to feel this way. I don't know if it's because before I was living partially dissociated from things/my body/feelings and now I just can't get that back. I know my psychiatrist said that it's a good sign, because I am feeling things again and becoming more connected to my body, but I honestly hate these overwhelming feelings. I am terrified that everyone is going to die and or that I'm cursed or something and am going to keep encountering death and I don't know why. I have always lived with the sensation that something very bad was going to happen and now it's coming true. I just don't know anything right now, it feels. I'm so sorry this was so long and I hope it was okay, I just have been trying to push it away away away and today I kept having weird panic attacks out of the blue and feeling physically sick and weak and just awful and I think it might have to do with these events, especially the poor person. I keep seeing him in my mind and I thought maybe if I talked about it, maybe it might help. Thank you so much for reading this and I'm sorry again.

[Kizzie]

I had a tough time reading your post Amanda so I can only imagine how you are feeling.    I relate so much to what you have written about that it stopped me in my tracks.  I react in much the same way as you and have found it so hard to deal with.  I haven't gotten far in understanding it myself, but I suspect situations like you wrote about take us to that place that is filled with raw, deep feelings of being  alone, abandoned and in utter pain at the core of our being.  We suffered (and suffer) so much alone that we cannot abide allowing that to happen in others.  We do not want any other living thing to feel what we felt/feel alone, without someone there to care, to say that their suffering matters.   

Just my thoughts on what this brought up for me.  Does any of this resonate?

[arpy1]

hi amanda,i was so sorry to read all the horrible stuff that has been going on for you. i can imagine how deeply upsetting it has been. i just wanted to send  you my support becos i  know how overwhelming it is when our empathic, raw souls are hit with this kind of stuff. no wonder you feel so rough with it all.  i totally resonate with what Kizzie says - i have experienced it too and it is shattering.  and also with what you describe about living waiting for something awful to happen, i didn't know anyone else was like that too.

anyway, i want to share something that helped me at a time similar in some ways to you.
it is just privately to do something to honour the ones whose lives were so suddenly lost. not even becos you knew them but simply becos they were themselves, living and breathing and so of immeasurable value.  for example, i have pots in my garden with a particular variety of rose, some Hidcote lavender and some tulips of a particular colour.  these are 'in memoriam' of a daughter we lost.  i have heard of people writing to the person and burning the letter so the heart of it goes up 'into heaven' or floating it down a river to the sea or painting a stone, or planting a plant, whatever means something to you in your heart. anything that makes you feel you have done honour to the lost person/creature and their lives.

anyway, it really helps me so i thought i would share. much support 

[AmandaB30]

@ Kizzie- thank you so much really, it resonated completely ,actually 100%. I remember when I was crying, I was saying to my husband "I can't stand seeing the suffering, I know how it feels in other ways and I hate this" I kept thinking about what they were feeling or thinking and with the person even more about the family too and the people involved in the accident. So it really also has to do with the helplessness too, I think, the defensless. My psychiatrist brought it up in the past,sensitivity to helplessness, but I wasn't so aware. Now I really see it, rather feel it. This has only all come out mostly in the last month and therapy is never fast enough I guess so I just feel super confused, terrified and overwhelmed.

@arpy1- thank you also so much! Those were very beautiful ideas and reminded me of doing that with my miscarriage 2 years ago. I never thought to do it also with animals and other people I didn't know. It actually REALLY helps, it feels like I can at least do something. I am so extremely sorry to hear you lost a daughter...I can not even imagine. <3 thank you for sharing your experience with me <3

[arpy1]

 

[Kizzie]

Yes, helplessness and defenseless -  that would definitely be us as children wouldn't it?  And I don't know about you but it is only in recovery that I have learned just I felt as a child, how utterly terrifying those feelings were. 

I didn't want that to ever come back into consciousness and yet I know now that I must allow myself to feel those feelings if I am to recover.  If I continue to run from them they will take me down in EFs whenever I am triggered. 

That you did write about your feelings might be a sign that one part of you is ready to look at your feelings (while another part is creating a fuss and for good reason - the feelings are tough to face). 

Perhaps by being here and talking about our trauma we are finally honouring our Inner Children, we are bearing witness to their abandonment and pain.  And as we do, those feelings will become part of us instead of being shoved down.