Blogged from my phone
I cried today, like a lot. I was feeling a certain way that I haven’t in many years now.
When I did my stcw it went fine, doing cpr on a doll went fine and yes I felt that it was a very difficult thing to do after everything that happened that morning but I still went through with it and I felt proud.
But today something happened during our medical drill. Watching videos of people performing cpr just made my breathing very heavy and I felt very claustrophobic. And when it was time to lie the doll down on the floor and for my crew to start performing I kinda felt like I lost it. I went in to this zone where I felt stressed, nervous and just so uncomfortable. I felt for a moment that I was back in the living room with Patrick right in front of me.
As people finished their rounds and it was time for me I just lost all my senses and burst into tears running into my cabin hyperventilating.
I think of Patrick everyday I think of that moment so many times of the day, without really being bothered. It’s just a constant reminder of what happened and that life is short and anything can happen at any time.
But I was back feeling exposed, helpless and I relived that morning over and over in my head. I’ve been feeling so confident lately and how that morning gave me a life lesson about how important knowledge and your actions can be.
I know for a fact that if it’d come to it and the situation would be right in front of me, I would for a fact perform. I know that because I’ve been exposed to situations to where I would’ve had to perform if necessary, after Patrick’s death. The little boy that got hit by a car very badly, I’ve found myself in situations I’ve thought was way worse than they were and I was just so ready to perform and ready to be helpful in any way possible.
That’s something I know for a fact that when it comes to it I’m no longer meaningless. But today I was, practicing these things are so extremely important but I lost myself into one bad experience and I’m so disappointed with myself. I’m angry for leaving the drill just to wipe my own tears, I’m angry that I didn’t practice because these things needs to be done. And I was useless, scared and in my head I went back to 6 years ago where I stood and had no clue what I was doing. No clue how to save this mans life, and just scared 22 year old me having this dead body in front of me. That’s all I could see as my officer introduced the steps of first aid, a dead mans body. I could once again feel the nausea that I felt that morning as I performed the fear of throwing up in is face from stress and panic, that’s how I felt today.
Not sure why I even put this on here but in someway I hope that someone might read it and might learn from it. CPR, first aid, everything that you learn in school and in courses afterwards are so fucking necessary and people have the same mindset as I did back in high school: “it’s not gonna happen to me it doesn’t matter I’m not gonna be a doctor”. Well straight up into my face, you don’t have to be a doctor to be put into a situation like that. That guy died and there I was had no freaking clue on what to do and without the 911 person on the phones guidance I’m not even sure if I would’ve thought of even doing compressions.
Somehow someway somewhere I hope that my little “feel sorry for me for going through something traumatic story” will help some people to realize the importance of both drug use and the practice of first aid. Because this shit is real, you can save lives if you actually know what you’re supposed to do and when.
That simple y’all, practice practice practice and trust your gut.
I talked to my officer afterwards that I will be doing these drills I will keep practicing because it wasn’t that I didn’t want to today, I was just too weak mentally and let my brain wonder off instead of paying attention.
I will be doing better next time, I will be showing myself and Patrick wherever he is that I am strong enough to learn how to help in situations that hopefully I don’t have to experience again, but actually might.
