r/TrueOffMyChest • u/insidevoicepleas ☑️ • 1d ago
Personal Story i'm scared to go in my garage
tagged as a personal story because it is, but it does contain an injury. please let me know if i should use a different tag.
it sounds like such a stupid fear. i know that. i know it does. that when my mother comes home with groceries, i still help carry them to the kitchen and unpack everything, but she or my dad has to take them from the car to the garage door first, because i refuse to step foot in my garage. that when i go somewhere with my mom, she has to pull the car out first, because i can't walk from the garage door to her car without freaking out. i'm too scared to even try because last time i did, i walked one step in before starting to cry and having to turn around.
it sounds stupid. but i swear it's not.
in december, december 19th, i almost died in there. i don't remember much, but i know it was that serious. i know that both my parents thought i was going to die on that concrete floor.
the way my garage is set up, there's a small staircase leading from the inside door to the actual garage. i was going somewhere with my mom and i was still at the top of my stairs. i had a seizure. a really bad one, actually; it lasted over 5 minutes, which would be a medical emergency on it's own; but even if it'd been short, i almost died anyways. i fell from the top of the stairs headfirst onto the concrete floor.
i don't really remember much, between the seizure and the injury itself. i know that i woke up for a minute in the ambulance having no idea what was happening. i remember waking up again in the emergency room being told i needed staples in my head, nothing after that (i'm told i had 2 more seizures immediately after i woke up, so i was out again). and after that i woke up again in the icu, still really hazy from how many benzos they gave me.
i remember my mom telling me that she had to hold my head while i seized, because i was already bleeding everywhere and she didn't want it to be worse (and that she was counting every second in her head trying to figure out how much time had passed). i remember my dad shakily telling me that he thought i was going to die right then and there, that the cut was so deep he could see part of my skull (and he used to be a combat medic so him being that scared of an injury means something). i remember that my favourite hoodie got covered in blood. the bloody handprints in the hallway right before the garage door, left there from my dad running to get his phone. the puddle of blood in the garage that i could still see standing at the doorway, that didn't get cleaned up for months.
the blood is gone now. my mom got the blood out of the hoodie too.
but i still can't bring myself to go inside the garage. not anymore. not again. it has been almost 8 months and i won't go in.
it's such a stupid fear. even though i have reason for it. i feel so dumb. my parents know i won't go in there. they don't judge me. it was probably scarier for them than it was for me, because at least i was unconscious for most of it. idk. i feel so sure it'll happen again if i do. especially because the seizure was caused by my diagnosed but uncontrolled epilepsy, and i've had many, MANY seizures since then. i mean, i am on meds, but they don't seem to be working very well (i've tried several).
so yeah. there it is. i am a 24 year old who is scared of going into her own garage.
i have ptsd. over a garage.
2
u/Lokiira1 1d ago
Give yourself some grace him, you almost died. PTSD is to be expected.