Hello,
Not sure how to start this so I'll guess I'll just start. 2019 was a golden year, lots of friends around, had a great dog, and a couple good flings, it was just a good time all around. However as the year came to an end, two friends moved out of the house, leaving my best friend, dog, cat, and myself.
Then in January my dog was killed by a train next to my house, and it was devastating. My friend and others really tried to help me through it, and they did help me a lot. But as we know, spring of 2020 rolled around and things started to change with the lockdowns, social anxiety, just so much confusion and fear, and it really took toll on my best friend/housemate. To the point where he had a manic episode that left me and others a little shook. I didn't really know what to do, but luckily another friend moved in for a short while, while transitioning out of the city. I live on a farm by the way, lots of space, isolated. But I found myself in an odd caretaker position, when I needed to be grieving.
Anyway, I told our new housemate about what was going on, and that our friend was acting a little strange and had had this episode. But a few weeks go by, and my best friend continues to get worse and worse, and I realize that I'm going to have to take him to the hospital, and decide one night that if he doesn't sound better the next morning or if he still didn't sleep, that's what I was going to do.
Well that night he comes crashing into my room at 3 am screaming that his head is exploding and that he had to go the ER right then. I tell him to go sit in my car and we'll go after I got dressed. I get in the car and start driving. He's screaming bloody murder, I mean screaming.
I should mention here that I have a seizure disorder, I'm medicated for it now, but one of my biggest fears is having another one. My best friend and I are both Navy veterans and have injuries both physical and emotional from our service, that created a strong bond between us. And one of the side effects of my injuries, is a propensity for having seizures.
Anyway, I was so stressed and keyed up I was terrified I was going to have another seizure and crash the car. I kept driving and found myself going back into the mental mode I was trained for in the Navy. All of the sudden I was back on the boat with guns going off. And I resigned myself to the situation and made some decisions that still haunt me. I was genuinely scared for my life while driving, not from the potential seizure though, from my friend, he was acting so extreme and unpredictably I was terrified he was going to grab the wheel and pull us off the highway.
So I grabbed his hand, and made a decision. I was back in fight mode, and decided that if he went for the wheel, I was going to hit him as hard as I could with my elbow as many times as I could, without regard for how much it could hurt him or even kill him. I can still picture it, where we were on the highway, the sound of him screaming and making me promise to do weird manic things he was asking me to do. And knowing that if he crossed that line, I was going to take care of business, and deal with the consequences later.
Got him to a closed medical center and had to call an ambulance. While waiting he went unconscious and started having a small seizure. This was extremely triggering, and took a lot of discipline to stay with him. But I was in go mode, and I went into combat first aid mode then, doing sternum rubs and checking his pulse to make sure he was still with me. The ambulance came and got him.
What followed was a mess. To tell this part of the story would take too long. Lots of yelling at hospital staff, dealing with police, getting him home, him getting worse, and ultimately and after literally dozens of phone calls between me and his family, my family, multiple doctors, and the police, I had to have the sheriff come and take him away.
I'm not the biggest fan of police, no offense to anyone, so this was really hard, like really hard. And luckily I had enough people in my ear agreeing it was the thing to do to help me make another hard decision. They came and got him, and to their credit did an incredible job, and took him to another hospital somewhere else. This was followed by many more days of intense drama, as trying to find space in a hospital during a pandemic was a little tricky.
Finally they got him to a state hospital, but he was still off. I told him he couldn't come back here after what happened, and he said he understood that even though it was very upsetting for him. What followed was a couple weeks of him slowly dragging me through the moving out process and caused multiple panic attacks that only made me more mad at him.
I was lucky to have another friend around, who went through most of it with me, and could really empathize with what happened. But a few weeks went by and he also had to move, for different reasons.
Then I was alone. For a long time. I was so triggered by the event, combined with the stress and insecurity of the pandemic, I retreated into my own world. I hear people talk about how hard lockdown was for them, all those weeks without being able to see each other. I went fourteen months. I don't mean to discount anyone's experience, I know how hard it was for everyone to be cut off from their community. It was just so extreme for me. Over a year I spent alone out here on my farm, looking around and wondering, what happened? I would go weeks sometimes without even leaving to go to the store, just living like a ghost haunting this old farmhouse.
I became scared of everything, everyone, even at home I was still in fight mode. Paranoid of my friend coming back, paranoid of anyone coming, paranoid about going out to get food or whatever. I started carrying a gun again for a short while, redid all of my fencing and put up a driveway gate. Anything to make me feel safer, and to keep my dogs close, as them wandering also gave me intense anxiety after my last dog was killed. I did get another dog sort of early in the pandemic, and then another more recently, and they've really helped me get through this in one piece, physically at least. But as much as I love dogs, they're not the greatest conversationalists, and can't replace what can be provided by another person.
But now here I am, the pandemic is hopefully coming to an end, and I find myself scared to death of going back to "normal." I feel even less prepared to go back into the world now than I did when I got out of the military a decade ago. I did so much work in my 20's to improve my mental health, and grapple with the rage that's lived in me my whole life, and this past year and a half has torn so much of that apart. I don't want to be so scared. I like people, usually, not all the time. But even though I already spent a lot of time alone before the pandemic, this pushed me far beyond my limits of being alone and staying sane.
I need help. I'm seeing a therapist which is really good and helpful, and I'm trying to be honest with my family and friends and communicate to them what's been happening, and why I was so out of reach for so long. But I still have a long way to go. I joined this group so I could share this story and hopefully connect with some folks who might have had similar issues, or not, I don't know. I'm not sure what I expect, I just needed to share this. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
Lost! 
Feeling Alone and Lost
Newly divorced and lost
I feel lost, defeated...
