This is my first post so I hope I don’t ramble too much.
When I was living in a motel last year, I rendered aid to a woman who had been stabbed about 20-30 times. She was in the room next to mine, she was a total stranger to me and the only time I saw her was while rendering aid. I saw the man who stabbed her walk out of the room with his arms covered in blood. I gave his physical description and direction of travel to police, and I overheard them saying he was apprehended.
I couldn’t tell exactly how many puncture and slashing wounds. Her sucking chest wound was most obvious, especially the sound of it. She was losing blood so rapidly and losing consciousness. She was wearing green eyeshadow and the blood had gotten in it, and was mixing into it while she was crying.
How can I even begin to explain that to people who haven’t seen things like that except for in movies? The inability to explain it is really crushing me. The obsessive internet searches are leaving me with unfinished art projects, my camera is collecting dust. I go back and forth from burying myself in work to run away from my thoughts, and sitting alone in my apartment just thinking.
How can anyone understand this? It’s not like I can just talk about it with coworkers or something. The counseling resources in my area are so overbooked that the therapists themselves seem to not even care. I can’t just talk to some random citizen face to face and say, “hey, my name is _______. I held compression on a woman’s thorax while her lungs were collapsing, and held her hand while she called her mother on her broken cell phone to say what seemed like her last words.”
The worst thing is, I’m queer, and I found out that the lady was HIV+. I had a broken toenail at the time which had an open wound. The woman’s blood was all over my feet, since I was wearing sandals that night. So, there’s some more isolation and obsessive Googling and test kit ordering. I don’t know how to stop thinking about her. I’m really alone even when friends are around. I just feel like nothing will ever feel normal again.
I ranted enough for now, so, hopefully someone can read this and offer any advice. Anything please.