Today I accompanied Detectives to the scene where I was attacked to go over what happened, retracing my steps to the beginning and then back again. I had to relive the event blow by blow. We started out at the crime scene in broad daylight to see if there were any cameras etc. that captured the attack. When they methodically retraced my steps to where it all began. Where I first was made aware of that I was the attacker's target and prey.
In spite of all the support I've been getting, visiting the place where I was brutally beaten, was not easy. But showing the police step by step what happened, including the blow by blow description of the attack was worse. I kept thinking to myself what could have I done differently. The little training I remembered was never for an attacker that was 7-9 ft away.
I just hope the flashbacks and nightmares don't return or at least as intensely as they did at the start. At the beginning every time I closed my eyes I would see the attacker's face and my mind would immediately fast forward to the attack causing me to startled and jump. Its gotten a bit better over the last few days. I'm not jumping out of my skin every time I start to doze off.
This morning I was finally able to get a few hours of un-interupted sleep after my doctor picked me up and went with me to the gym just so that I could walk-off the anxiety, fear and stress out of my body. He was right and it worked, because I got 3 hrs of sleep. As we slowly walked on the treadmill side by side, we talked about music and politics and raising kids. All of it meant to distract the mind long enough to interupt the PTSD brain-loop pattern. He's a former active-duty veteran, so he knows what works and this is working well for me.
He knew that even though I've improved, I'm still in full PTSD mode. His objective is to get me better as soon as possible so I can go back to work. I'm hoping that with the daily acupuncture treatments for the pain, taking long walks, and receiving continued support (like I've been getting) that I will be able to have the symptoms reduced enough for me to return to work monday. Today was my first train ride with the Detectives and I was relieved they were with as I rode the subway.
So in order to create a mind-shift of my own, I think I'll take an inventory of the positives:
- I have less body pain than I did yesterday.
- I was able to sleep for at least a few hours.
- My Dr. helped me get some exercise and told me he had arranged for me to receive free self-defense classes for when my body is healed.
- My Acupuncturist gave me an extra 30 minutes treatment to help alleviate the pain.
- People from the Temple stopped by to bring me food (so I wouldn't have to make dinner and gave me a spiritual book to keep my mind occupied.
- My downstairs neighbors stopped by to visit to offer to drop off and pick-up laundry or go grocery shopping for me.
- My next door neighbor made some really delicious Thai food for my son (I'm a vegetarian).
In the end I do feel grateful and blessed.
