I have lived the larger part of my life with Post Tramatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. The first showing of this disorder was called “shell-shock”, with soldiers who’ve gone off to war. Over the years, shell shock has been researched, and it has been discovered that many people suffer from it. Thus, it has been named PTSD.

My story about how I came to have PTSD is one that I haven’t shared with many up until this point. But, I am going to share it with you, in the hopes you might come to understand what it is like living with PTSD. My PTSD started when I was six years old. I was sexually molested by two people as a child. One was my best friend’s older brother. Any time we were alone, he would grab on me, or touch me inappropriately. There were several occasions where he grabbed my hand and forced me to give him a handjob. This carried on for two years, and only ended when he and my best friend moved away.

The second was my older brother. He lived with my grandmother and grandfather. There would be times when he would force a kiss onto me, throwing his tongue down my throat. He too, found pleasure in touching me when he had the chance. As we grew older, there were several times where he tried to hold me down and rape me. My older sister lived with him, and it makes me sick to even think of what he did to her.

The most fucked up part of it all was my grandmother knew about it. She did nothing to stop it. He was her precious grandson, and he could never do any wrong. If my grandpa had known, he would have put a stop to it. But he was always at work when it happened, and she always kept her mouth shut.

For a long time, several years, my coping method was to simply forget about it. Yet, it was there in my subconscious, and it affected my life greatly. I was not comfortable around anyone who was male. Not even my own father. For years I jumped away when he tried to hug me. It felt awful, not even trusting my own father to hug me.

Why didn’t I, or any of the other girls in our neighborhood, go to our parents about the molestations? Because we were never told it was wrong. It was a small town that we grew up in, where child molestation was simply unheard of. Our parents regret it now.

I didn’t start having the flashbacks until I was older. When I was eleven, the brother of my childhood best friend came walking into a friend’s house, and that triggered it. I hadn’t seen him since he moved when I was eight, and the trauma came flooding back. Since then, numerous things have set it off.

Many people will say that your sexuality (lesbian, gay, bi, transgender) is something that you are born with. I agree with this fully. I also believe that it can also evolve out of childhood experiences. I am bisexual, and I believe that’s because of my negative experiences with the male gender as a child. I had a bond and an attraction to the female gender until I was 16. I didn’t date boys at all. I started dating my friend Christina when I was 12, and continued to until I was 18. We had sex when we would have our sleepovers, and no one ever knew. It was great while it lasted. When I turned 16 she and I both started dating men. They didn’t know that she and I were dating too, and looking back, I probably shouldn’t have kept that a secret. We all do things we regret in our lives. I was a closet bisexual for many years because I was afraid of the torment I would be put through if I was found out. This was the same fear that I had while I was a teenager about sharing my sexual abuse.

I am not a parent. At least, I am not one yet. I do plan on having kids one day, and when I do, I am going to make sure I tell them what my parents didn’t tell me. I want my kids to know that having someone else touch them in their “naughty bits”, or in any way that makes them feel uncomfortable, is not acceptable. Growing up with PTSD because of being molested as a child is not a good feeling. It affects how you interact with other people, who may not understand what happened to you or what you are going through. No child should ever have to go through what I did, or what others have.

I mentioned that my parents never told me that molestation was wrong. Molestation was honestly the least of their worries, having grown up in a very different time than I did. My mother is currently 65, and my dad, may he rest in peace, died last year at 73. I was not born late in my mother’s life, I was adopted by my grandparents on my birth mother’s side. I went straight home from the hospital to my adopted mother’s arms, and they have been mother and father ever since. So please do not think harshly of them for not worrying about the molestation that happened to me when I was younger. It was simply a misunderstanding of the times, and it was something they never expected.

That wasn’t the only trauma in my life that caused me to get PTSD. When my father passed away in May of 2010, he had been fighting stage four lung cancer for two and a half years. He spent four days in bed dying. I was there with him parts of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I would have to return to campus in the evenings. His passing happened at a horrible time, as deaths usually do. I was in the process, at the time he took his death bed, of moving out of my campus apartment. And my boyfriend was trying to move out of Lenexa Kansas. The real topping on the whole cake was the fact that it was finals week at college. The end of that week was my Dagorhir, or medieval type reenactment, as well.

I received a call from my mother around 12:30 am Tuesday morning, May 4th. I knew what had happened before I even picked up the phone. I don’t believe that I have ever in my life cried as hard as I did that night. My boyfriend, Eric, was there with me. He took me over to a friends house, where we sat up until four am drinking coffee and talking. At nine am that day I had a final, the University I attend wouldn’t let me reschedule my finals, so I was forced to either throw away a semester of college, or tough it out and take them. I spent Tuesday night in my house for the first time with Eric. Wednesday brought another final and that evening was my father’s visitation. We met at my sister’s house. Where my just so lovable sister pulled me a side and told me if I lost it and started crying, or did anything to upset my mother, she would see to it that I didn’t even attend my father’s funeral. So, I bottled all of my emotions up and threw them away, in order to be the leaning rock for the rest of my family, because none of them were handling my father’s death very well.

Thursday was the funeral. It was small, but it went by very easily, despite my family crying and needing me to be their rock. I hugged them and told them it would be alright, that nothing was their fault, and that Dad still loved them. That, even now, our father was still watching over them. After the funeral we had a family dinner, and then it was off to my Dagorhir event. I proceeded to spend the next four days lost in the woods, completely drunk out of my mind. That was how I dealt with it.

But I didn’t really deal with it. I kept everything bottled up. I stopped taking care of myself. I soon lost my job, and was without work for three months. In that time frame I gained weight, chopped my hair off, and was steadily going downhill. It took a good kick in the ass from Eric to get me to realize what I was doing to myself.

Even now, months later, I still have nightmares about my father’s death. I beat myself up daily for not having been there for him when he passed. Let me tell you, watching a person as they die is not a pretty sight. Especially when their lungs are shutting down, making it so they can barely breathe, and you know they are in pain. It is a sight I hope I never have to witness again in my life.

Overcoming PTSD is a very long, emotionally draining process. There are medications that help manage the symptoms of PTSD, and are usually paired with therapy. There are many symptoms that come with having PTSD. Some of them include: very upsetting memories of events, flashbacks, nightmares, the feeling of distress and despair when reminded of the trauma, and other more physical reactions to the events. Physical reactions can include: a pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, and even sweating.

Many people with PTSD will avoid, or become numb to, things that remind them of the trauma. Many times they’ll avoid certain activities, places, or even thoughts in their brains. Sometimes they can’t remember the important aspects of the trauma. A person who suffers from PTSD can also lose interest in activities and life in general. They may develop a detachment from others and be emotionally void. In even more extreme cases, people will think that their future is limited. No normal life span, never get married, or even have a career, are some of the ways that people with PTSD limit their futures. Other symptoms of PTSD might be insomnia or difficulty staying asleep. They also may be irritable, or have random outbursts of anger. PTSD can also cause difficulty with concentrating, being “hyper-vigilant”, or being jumpy and easily startled. Even though I have received therapy for my PTSD, I still suffer from being jumpy, a pounding heart, rapid breathing, nightmares, flashbacks, and insomnia.

One of the main problems with PTSD is that those who have it will ignore it. They won’t recognize that they have a problem. PTSD is just like an addiction. You cannot get better, or overcome it, until you acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place. Many people choose not to acknowledge it because of several reasons. Some think that they will not be understood by those they go to for help. Others believe that if they are diagnosed with it they will be persecuted, or even fired from work. Neither of these are true. Disability laws have been modified to include mental disabilities too.

Those who suffer from PTSD also worry about what the world outside of their inner circle will think of them. There are many people in the world who don’t understand just how disabling a mental disability can be. So PTSD victims are afraid of being persecuted by their fellow peers because of it as well. Those who do not have PTSD, or any other mental disability, do not understand how it intrudes on the life of someone who does have these issues, because it is not a physical disability that they can visualize.

I am an avid online role player. If there is an RPG out there, chances are I have at least tried it. In one situation, I was playing a character that entered a molestation/rape roleplay with another character. When it began it started to trigger my PTSD, causing horrible flashbacks and worse. I finally pulled the player of the other character aside. I told them I would no longer continue the role play with the characters because I have PTSD, and that it triggered it. The next thing I knew, I had this other player emotionally abusing me over backing out and not wanting to do it. I had to block them on my messenger because they had me crying hysterically. They did not understand why I couldn’t do this role play with them, or anything else about PTSD in general. There are some pompous assholes out there that will treat you like the scum of the earth because you won’t do what they want you to. It is their flaw for being so uneducated, not yours for refusing to make yourself relive a trauma that happened to you, just to suit their pathetic needs.

In the three months that I had no work, I could not go out in public. If I did, it was for a very short amount of time. And if it was any longer than I planned, I would literally go into a state of panic. My blood pressure would rise, my heart thundered against my chest so hard that it was painful. I would feel dizzy, get sick to my stomach, and feel like I was in an enclosed room with tons of people. I am not the only person who has felt this. When I was working at Walmart, I had someone walk by that looked like my best friend’s older brother who molested me. I was in the Deli slicing meat, and it sent me into a panic, causing me to have a flash back. While having said flash back, I cut off a small part of the tip of my thumb with a meat slicer. Not a pleasant experience, let me assure you. It makes it hard to work every day, because I don’t know when I’ll have a flashback, or when another symptom will arise. However, I am a stubborn ass, I refuse to apply for disability. I couldn’t sit around all day in my house because I would go crazy.

PTSD is not something that should be ignored. If you fear you may have PTSD, and you suffer from the symptoms I listed, on any level of intensity or frequency, you should seek help. Living your life with the pain and suffering you went through every day, in the form of PTSD, is no way to live a life. I have lived the majority of my life untreated, because I only started receiving treatment after I turned 20. It isn’t a pleasant experience, and it will hinder the way you live your life. You may not realize it now, but down the road it will become clear what aspects of your life are affected by having PTSD.

If you are afraid you can’t afford the treatment you need, there are many programs that can help you. I don’t have any insurance, but I was able to get myself free help through Pathways because of my income. I pay for my medications, but that is a small price to pay compared to the cost of therapy sessions. You are not alone, and there are people who want to help you.

If, by chance, you took the time to read this, but do not suffer from PTSD or any other mental disability, I hope you can understand the limitations it puts on one’s life. That, while listening to me rant, you have learned at least a little about PTSD, including some of the causes of it, and what to do if you suspect a loved one or a family member to have PTSD.

My fonder hope with sharing my story, is to raise awareness of child molestation. It is one of those topics where you tend to “preach to the choir” again, but it is a subject that not enough could ever be said about it. It is among one of the most horrifying, life altering experiences that you can go through as a child. I hope that there will be a day where no child has to go through what I had to growing up.