The Reality of Moving Forward After Gun Violence

This blog post contains mentions of PTSD and gun violence.

I often find myself struggling to put into words what it is like to navigate life as a survivor of gun violence. I want to use this platform to educate others on the impact gun violence has on this country beyond just those it physically injures, so I am going to do my best to articulate what survivors like myself have to deal with daily.

The Washington Post’s database of gun violence incidents reports that as of May 2022, over 300,000 kids had survived school shootings since Columbine. This number isn’t even including the hundreds of thousands of more kids who have witnessed gun violence on the daily in their communities. Yet, all of these children and teenagers now live with the mental burden of continuing to live life after such a traumatic event. In me and many others, that manifests in developing PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

For me, this has manifested in many ways. For the first 2-3 years after my PTSD began, I had constant paranoia when in school. I would always pick my seat in class strategically as to not be near the door but also in a location where i can successfully hide from any threat. Every time there was an announcement on the loudspeaker or a phone call, I would panic in fear that it was a lockdown. During lockdown drills, I would dissociate and have flashbacks of that day. It was not only terrifying, but also embarrassing.

Even outside of school, I became much more hyper aware of my surroundings. I always had my eye on the nearest exit when in public. I stopped going to movie theaters in fear of something happening. I started to become easily overwhelmed in loud spaces. Construction noises, motorcycles, clapping, sudden laughter, all of these once mundane background sounds would trigger a sharp pang of anxiety. I also began to get weekly nightmares recounting the same event again and again. I felt dysfunctional and controlled by what I survived.

However, over the years and with lots of therapy and support from fellow survivors, I’ve learned not only how to manage my PTSD, but also how to accept it. I found that I was ashamed of the mental scars the shooting left on me. I felt less than, weak, sensitive, and selfish. But I realized that by accepting my reality of living with PTSD and reminding myself of the validity of it, I took a huge leap towards healing and coping with my symptoms. My nightmares became less frequent and I learned to segregate my thoughts about safety to the back of my brain. Whenever I feel anxious, I let myself tell others so that I can go to a quieter environment or find a distraction. I have allowed myself to finally open up about the weight of moving forward from gun violence, and in effect, I have allowed myself to heal.

For fellow survivors, it can make us feel guilty to move forward, but also guilty to suffer in the first place when others have been through what feels like much worse. This juxtaposition can be incredibly frustrating and also painful to deal with emotionally, yet serves as just another burden on top of PTSD that survivors like myself deal with on the daily. In order to enact change regarding gun violence, those opposed to such measures need to understand just how far gun violence can impact entire communities and individuals. Although the media might move on, the communities and families left behind do not. And while this might only exacerbate feelings of isolation in the sense that it can be easy to feel misunderstood, by connecting with one another and raising awareness about our lived experiences, survivors can come together as a force for good.

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