CHAPTER 11
Leaving her sister’s house after three days, Anne was finally in her own home. It had been nearly a month. She felt as if each day brought with it a glimmer of hope and, at the least, the opportunity to get back her strength and will. Anne was on the mend. It would take time, of course, but she was going to overcome her physical injuries, heal, and begin to rebuild her life.
“My sister came by those first few days I was at home to make sure I got showered and could move around okay,” Anne remembered.
You get home, you begin to heal little by little. I had to get my strength up and knew that to do that I needed to move around. I had no other choice: My son needed me healthy and to be there for him.
Anne’s son and mother provided vital support and encouragement during her long and difficult recovery. (Photos courtesy of Tom Johnson)
Anne’s mother, then heading into her eighties, stayed with her. Anne’s son, who was more than happy to have his mother back home, helped, too. Everyone pitched in.
“My son was incredible. He was so worried about me.”
Anne started to go out at night after becoming more mobile and was able to walk on her own again. She might pop over to her post office box to pick up her mail or run other errands, all under the cloak of darkness. Though the town she lived in had only two thousand residents then, in those early days of being home, it just felt better to Anne not to be seen. She didn’t think too much about it. When the sun went down, Anne hopped into her car and went out.
“You okay, Mom?” her boy asked one night as she was leaving. “You all right going out at night by yourself?”
“I’m fine.”
As the weeks passed, Anne wound up swapping bedrooms with her son. She could not sleep in her old room, for some reason. The walls began to close in on her. She felt out of place. She could never figure out why, exactly, other than it being a bedroom she did not want to be in. Something was happening. She felt anxious all the time. A bit of paranoia crept up on her from time to time. Sounds of people walking inside the house, the creaking of stairs or a door opening, cars driving by the house, were magnified and made more intense by a sudden realization that she was hearing all of it with a profound sense of detail. More often than not, Anne recognized where people were inside the house.
When I came home, after those first few weeks, I needed night-lights. I needed to keep my bedroom door open. I had to have the bathroom door down the hallway open, a light on in there. When my son came in at night, he needed to come into my room and let me know he was home.
Anne even wanted her mother to sleep with her at night.
“It was like reverting back to being a child. I hated the nighttime. The first time I actually went out in public at night with my sister and brother-in-law, I was shaky and nervous.”
Weeks went by and Anne developed sleep paralysis. A terrifying condition, when you are just waking up or even falling asleep, you are aware of your surroundings and what is happening, but you are unable to move. What’s even more alarming is that while this is happening, you might hear, see, and even feel things that just are not there.
“I still have nightmares to this day,” Anne added. “I am on medication to help me sleep. I am terrified of guns. Fireworks send me under covers, with a pillow over my head. I have my bodily scars I see every day, along with my emotional scars.”
* * *
Anne would soon learn that during those early days of being home from the hospital she was experiencing the beginning of severe PTSD, a mental-health issue (as of this writing) growing by almost 3 million new cases per year in the United States.
A normal reaction to a life-threatening event, such as a natural disaster, terrorist attack, car accident, rape, sexual assault, military combat, violent incident, robbery, or any number of additional traumatic episodes, would be to have trouble sleeping, a feeling of always being on edge and anxiousness. You might have a hard time managing daily activities, such as working, going to school, spending time with loved ones. For many, the symptoms gradually subside after a few weeks or months, and life starts to feel pretty much as normal as it did before the incident. But for others, especially those who have suffered injuries during the incident, that is not the case. When the symptoms carry on, and your life is entirely disrupted, and you cannot seem to overcome the distractions brought on by the incident, you might be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Many PTSD sufferers experience bad dreams, terrifying thoughts, anxious flashbacks of the event, reliving it in their minds, while enduring a racing heart, sweating, and other symptoms of chronic anxiety. The event, or events, can feel as real as it did when it took place, even months or years afterward.
What’s important to note is that experiencing PTSD is not a sign of weakness. None of it is under your control. None of it is your fault.
“I started to not want to go out at night and even be inside a car,” Anne recalled.
It had been months after the incident for Anne and her symptoms were not diminishing at all. In fact, they were escalating. She’d go a few days without noticing many intense symptoms and think she had it under control. Yet she actually had no idea how bad her PTSD had become.
“To this day,” Anne added, “all this time later, there are nights when I still have nightmares about him.”
In the dream Jimmy is always coming after her and she is running away from him.
I always considered myself a very strong, independent woman, iron-willed, and able to take care of myself. I don’t like to admit defeat or show weakness. I don’t put up with rude people. I step away from people if they are going to cause me any trouble.
But this . . . this was something else entirely. I was a different person. I was suffering. I was tarnished by it all. I had escaped death and survived, but I was not myself any longer.
I thought I could handle it. I thought this was something I could handle with enough time between me and what had happened. I had no idea what was going on. But sooner or later, I began to see, I had to face reality.
And here is the honest truth of the matter: I never thought something like this would happen to me. A cliché, I guess you could say about that. Like teenagers, for example, who are fearless and think they are indispensable. I was the same way. Yet there I was, still being victimized by him—long after the actual incident had occurred.
Anne had faced the violent side of the real world. Another intense feeling she began to experience was that she had allowed this to happen. Anne was a person who had always believed she could read people, would never allow herself to be put in a position where something bad could take place.
Blame and shame: two additional symptoms of being victimized.
It was going to be a hard fight for Anne Bridges.