REAL SCARY STORIES

27. How I got PTSD

Bonus! Here’s some mood music to listen to while you read (if you’re brave)

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I was sleeping at 3am in my basement room. Wake up to the sound of someone moaning in agony on the couch. The way my room is laid out I couldn’t see him, so I just assumed I was hearing things and tried to go back to sleep. Didn’t go away. Five minutes later, leaned up and saw his legs and shoes. Oh, same as a friend who had been over earlier. Nope.

Lean up farther, he’s Hispanic (friend is Greek). I sit there for thirty seconds and my first thought is to attack the fellow (I had a 3″ knife on my nightstand, he hadn’t noticed me, weird room). Instead, I remember my room locks from the outside (converted basement). I move, he hears me and chases me out of the room. I get there first, and lock him in.

I sprint up two flights of stairs to wake up my parents (I’m fifteen) and they just think I’m having a bad dream or something. They walk downstairs and right as they approach my room, the edge of a 10lb weight from my room breaks through the door. Oh, there’s actually a guy in there. My mum reached for the phone and called 911, while my father (with her) went up to the middle floor of the house a drew a broadsword from the mostly decorative suit of armor in the living room, and tells me to fetch the cavalry saber from the umbrella stand (weird family, kay?).

Five minutes later police arrive, open the door and arrest the poor fellow, who was drugged out of his mind (PCP). Apparently he got in diving through a window. I take sleeping meds so it didn’t wake me when it shattered. They inform us it’s technically a citizen’s arrest because of the confinement.

It’s been a few months later and I was diagnosed with PTSD mid-August. The hallucinations/flashbacks are brutal. But the worst part is the shame (“…you got PTSD from that”?).