Here’s what I know about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and trauma: just when you think you’re “cured,” that you’re “over it,” that it no longer has any kind of hold on you…you’re wrong.
I do believe the majority of us carry around some kind of trauma. We have all experienced times of extreme hardship – whether it be from death, divorce, loss of a job, loss of friendship, heartbreak, recovery, illness…whatever it is, we’ve been there. And for some of us, those hardships are so excruciating, or an event is so traumatic, it does something to our psyche. It leaves a gaping hole inside of us that we have trouble filling.
For me, I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for as far back as I can remember. I’ve experienced trauma, whether it be through an event, a relationship, or generational trauma. And I’ve been to therapy for it all.
But there is one event in particular that has been on my mind lately, and in sharing my story, it is my hope that I can shed some light on the mystery of PTSD, trauma, and what happens to the brain when a person experiences a traumatic event. I’ll be sharing this story in three parts; one part a day until Wednesday – the seven-year anniversary. I haven’t written out my story like this since 2013. I hope it resonates with you even a little.
PART ONE
May 20, 2013. What started out as a typical Monday would quickly turn into the single worst day of my life. I worked at a junior high in Moore, Oklahoma at the time. If you google, “Moore, OK, May 20,” you’ll know exactly where my story is heading.
Anyone who lives in Oklahoma for any amount of time knows, instinctively, that from the months of April through June, the weather will be…interesting. I was born and raised in Oklahoma, so I knew from a very early age that springtime in Oklahoma meant more often than not I would have to take shelter from a tornado at least once a year. Even if a tornado never touched down near my home, I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve watched my dad clear out a closet, or how many times I’ve had to cram into a storm shelter. I grew up with Gary England, meteorologist and local celebrity around here, reminding me to “put a helmet on and get in the bathtub.” Every Oklahoman is an amateur meteorologist, and a typical evening in spring is watching the storm chasers on TV and turning it into a drinking game. This is Oklahoma. Tornadoes, hail, damaging winds…they just happen here. It’s a part of our life, our culture, probably even our identity. And yet still, until you experience it in real time, you don’t quite know.
Monday, May 20 was predicted to be a big severe weather day. The meteorologists had been forecasting a big severe weather event for days out, and I knew I needed to keep my eye on the weather that day. It was hot, muggy, overcast. Oklahomans know: if you walk outside in spring and it feels “soupy” out, storms are likely. May 20 was soupy. Around 1:30-2 in the afternoon, storms began “firing along the dry line” and I began tuning in from my classroom computer. I started to feel like something wasn’t right. It was getting darker outside, too dark for early afternoon. A tornado was developing to the southwest of Moore. Buses had been halted, students could only leave if a parent checked them out. We were told to move to our tornado-safe locations. For me, this meant a classroom down the hall with no exterior walls. I had about a dozen students left with me that hadn’t been picked up. I grabbed my purse, my water bottle, and my phone that had less than 15% battery life, and walked my students to our tornado-safe location.
We waited. Parents were allowed into classrooms with children – it was no longer safe to leave. We had no idea what was “out there.” Of the four teachers and dozens of students in the room, none of us had access to the weather. All we knew was a tornado was heading our way. I had no idea how large, where it was, or if we would take a direct hit. The only people I could get texts out to were my brother and my sister-in-law. Both were asking if we were below ground. Our building had no below-ground shelters, so no. This was such an odd question to me because growing up in Oklahoma, as long as you were in the interior part of your house, covered, you’d most likely be fine. So why should it matter if we were below ground?
Our principal came on the intercom, “teachers, take your tornado precautions NOW.” Click. The lights went out. We were all huddled under desks and up against walls. It got loud. Really loud. Freight train loud. We heard banging on the roof. I was squeezing my coworkers hand, both of us praying for God to keep us safe. “I don’t want to die.” She and I still argue about which one of us said it, but we were both thinking it. “Please God, don’t let me die here.“
It grew still. Very still. Quiet. We slowly started to get up. Was it over? Was that it? I told the other teachers in the room I would go out and check.
I opened the door to the classroom and was immediately hit with a wave of heat, humidity, and the smell of gas. I looked one direction and saw debris piled up on the side of the building outside. I looked the other direction and saw windows blown out. I walked a little further and looked down the main hallway. Our assistant principal was saying calmly, “we need to move everyone to the media center now.”
I went back and reported to the others, and we had the students walk single-file to the media center at the far west end of the school. From that moment on everything is a blur. I was running on pure adrenaline. My phone was dead, students were scared and panicked, and us teachers had a job to do. All any of us thought about for the next few hours were making sure all students were accounted for, that any parents taking students were properly checking them out with a teacher or administrator. As the student body was eventually ushered outside to the front of the school, I stayed with two students who came from our gymnasium – a separate building that was leveled by the tornado. I remember seeing destruction outside our building, but it didn’t really click with me at that point the severity of what had happened. We asked for a paramedic to check on one of our students, he was complaining of back aches (bricks had fallen on him as he was protecting another girl from debris). He looked at the child quickly, said he was fine and then said, “I have to go check on other people now, we have people really badly hurt,” it was the first time it hit me that maybe this was bad.
At one point I was able to make a call to my mom using someone else’s phone. I told her I was alright, and her response triggered my memory. My dad had gone to the ER earlier that morning. In the midst of all that was happening I had completely forgotten. She told me he was being admitted to the hospital. He’d lost all feeling from the waist down and they were running some tests. My response was so matter-of-fact, so casual, “ok, thanks for the update.” My adrenaline kept me from fully processing what she had just told me.
Late that evening, a coworker and her husband offered to give me a ride home, since my car was totaled. Walking to her husband’s car was surreal. He had to park in a neighborhood to the north, blocks from the school. Debris was everywhere. Power lines down, homes leveled, lockers from the gym laying in a crumpled heap in someone’s front yard. People were walking around with suitcases and pets on leashes. It felt like a war zone. Driving through Moore was even worse. We crossed over I-35 – saw the hospital that had been practically leveled. I distinctly remember the National Guard in the back of pick-up trucks. Police directing traffic away from the main destruction path. The radio reporting an elementary school had taken a direct hit, major casualties, children missing.
I made it home at around 10pm that night. Walking into an empty garage and into a still, quiet house felt strange to me. Survivor’s guilt was already setting in. I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, crawled into bed, and turned on the TV. And there it was. The monster that just changed my life in a matter of minutes. An EF5 tornado was barreling across the screen. Literally, it was so large it took up the entire screen. I flipped the TV off, rolled over, and screamed into my pillow.
The next day my sister-in-law came to pick me up. My dad was still in the hospital and had been diagnosed with a disease I had never heard of. Guillain-Barre Syndrome. GBS for short. A rare disorder in which your body’s immune system attacks the nervous system. Temporary paralysis is the most common side effect. If not caught and treated quickly, it will lead to the paralysis of your entire body, shutting down your organs. They caught it early with my dad, and he immediately began treatment to reverse the effects. The moment I arrived in the waiting room, I ran to my mom and my brothers. I fell into their arms and wept. I was alive. Thank God, I lived. But my dad. Would he be okay? Would he make it through this?
To be continued…
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