Forgotten Trauma, Explained Childhood

Even as a kid, I always felt just outside the circle of my peers. I never understood why I had this feeling that nobody else seemed to have. It was a constant feeling of insecurity and worry, with a tenseness that consumed my body. Sometimes I thought I was good at hiding it, or tell people when noticed, but who really knows.

Then, later in life, when I finally put all the puzzle pieces together it started to form a clearer image. I started to learn things about my past and I have completely forgotten. Things so big, that one wouldn’t expect to forget, but somehow I did. I know now forgetting traumatic events isn’t something that only happens to me, but it actually is a frequent phenomena. But still, to block a memory that is so huge out like it never happened is a very unique and an indescribable feeling. What else am I forgotten? Do I even want to know? And how could something so easily forgotten, now be so hard to forget? I almost wished I had never started that damn puzzle.

So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start from the beginning. I hope to hold your attention long enough to read until the last story, because that is the one that defined me as a person, the one that changed my life forever.

There are 3 traumatic events I remember, so please try to stick it out, thanks. It always helps to let them out.

So the first one happened when I was 3 years old. I was sitting with my father on the front porch of our house in CT, just spending some time watching the people around the neighborhood. It was rush hour and we lived on a busy road in Fair Haven, an area of New Haven that isn’t ideal to raise kids. There was always a lot going on around us. It was a pretty bad area, and still is. In fact, it seems it’s gotten worse since I left about 20 years ago.

As I was saying, it was rush hour, and there was a line of traffic from the traffic light at the end of the block. The last car in the line just happened to be stopped right in front of my house.

In the distance you can hear the roaring sound of a motorcycle. Definitely going way too fast for this part of the neighborhood, but this sound is unfortunately a familiar one.

It got closer, and closer, with no sign of letting up on the throttle. I don’t know if this motorcyclist was daydreaming or not looking forward, but he hit the back of that car in front of my house at full speed, was thrown off his motorcycle and his body flew over the entire length of the car.

Because he wasn’t wearing a helmet, he ended up cracking his skull open right in front of me and my father.

Stunned for a second, my father rushed me into the house, but I’d already seen everything. I remember small parts of that incident, but I only remembered after it was told to me later on in life.

I have my suspicions, that just possibly, that day has played it’s part the anxiety I dealt with in my childhood.

However, it wasn’t until the next experience I remember that really cemented, trauma = anxiety, as fact for me.

I couldn’t have been much older than 10 or 11 years old at the time of this next incident. I was still living in the same house in the same house, 394 Blatchley Avenue New Haven Connecticut.I would frequently take trips to the corner store at the end of the block, the song penny candies, and $0.10 juices, some of you may remember those things being around.

Anyways, I was walking back home when it happened. A car stopping at a stop sign on the corner of an intersecting road, rolled a little to far beyond the sign. At the same time another man, again on a motorcycle, was headed in the direction of my home, the same direction I was walking.

I’m unsure if this man was speeding or just didn’t have time to stop, it all happened so fast. I had already passed the intersection so I didn’t witness the actual accident, but I turned after hearing the unmistakable sound that a car accident makes. He had crashed his bike directly into the front corner panel of this car.

After I turned around, I seen this man lying in the middle of the road bleeding from his head.

His sunglasses were thrown towards the gutter, and his ponytail was soaking in blood as his body laid motionless. Within minutes the fire engines, police cars and EMTs we’re at the scene tending to the man.

To this day, I don’t know if the man died, but it didn’t look promising.

Now, this 3rd event, is the night that changed my life forever because I was directly involved and involves the love of my life, Deanna.

When I was 15 I finally moved from the city of New Haven, to the suburban town of Guilford Connecticut.

After spending my freshman year at Wilbur Cross High School, Guilford High could have been another country, even though it was only 20 minutes away from my old house.

After being in Guilford for a only year, I met the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. Her name was Deanna Boudreau. The way we met could be nothing less than fate, too many things lined up perfectly. From our first date we were inseparable.

Fast forward 3+ years, I was 19 years old, and Deanna had just turned 18 a week and a half before this night. We had just met a new couple and we’re on our way to meet them at the bowling alley the next town over. Deanna was driving, she had just recently gotten her license, and still tended to hug the side of the road as many new drivers do, so I was a little nervous to begin with.

We were in a part of town with no street lights and it was dark and drizzling. There were teenagers walking on the side of the road, goofing around. I had only noticed them because I happen to be staring out my passenger window and one kid had a white shirt on, the other 2 were in dark clothing.

I knew Deanna did not see them, and I reacted by grabbing the wheel so she would not hit them. It was a poor reaction on my part, because it caused her to jerk the wheel in the opposite direction. She lost control of the car and we started spinning because of the wet roads. The car came to a stop by hitting a telephone pole directly on Deanna’s side.

I hit my head on the windshield and got some glass in my eye, but we were wearing our seatbelts so it prevented me from going through the windshield. Wearing a seatbelt made no difference for Deanna though.

I thought we were all right until I looked over and noticed she was bleeding from her mouth and making a gurgling sound. I kicked my way out of the car and ran over to her. She was unresponsive, and I felt the position she was in would cause her to choke on her own blood. So I pulled her through the window of the car held her on the side of the road trying to get her to respond to me while trying to take the blood out of her mouth with my fingers.

Sitting down, I cradled her until the ambulance came. People started coming out of the woodwork to try to help, but there was nothing anybody can do. I was told she died three times on the way to hospital, until they put her on life support.

After days at the hospital, her family made the decision to pull the plug because the doctor said there was too much damage to her brain stem. And just like that she was gone.

After 3 years of feeling as if I was part of her family, some of them started to blame me. I lost contact with all of them until recently when I ran into her sister at a supermarket and we became friends on Facebook. She told me she doesn’t blame me, and that made me so happy, but I feel the rest of them still do. I dealt with the situation alone, I had no real support from friends or family because nobody knew what to do for me.

So I went years without therapy years of pretending I was having fun with friends who would take me out. I now feel it was out of pity, because I never hear from any of them anymore. So I’m starting to wonder if I ever really had any friends to begin with, or maybe they just grew up and moved on.

Yet, I’m still here.