Disney nightmare
I know nobody looks at this. Whatever. If by chance someone is reading this and wants to comment, then please, go ahead <3 But I just wanted to get this out of my head and down onto paper, and no one in real life knows me on here, so, ideal.
Bit of background: I was assaulted by a male that I trusted more than anyone else when I was 14. I have PTSD as a result of this. I'm now 17. My triggers include crowds (which is much exacerbated by enclosed spaces when I can't get out), people coming up/touching me from behind, and especially being close to any male I've started to trust now.
Anyway.
So, to kick off Spring Break, our school band took a trip to Disney World. I've never loved amusement parks, even before I got PTSD, but I'm a senior, and all my friends were going, and we love our directors to death, so, what the hell, I decided I would go. I was a little worried for a while before I went- I foresaw my PTSD being a little bit of a problem. But hey, I thought, it shouldn't matter; it's a minor problem for me almost once a day at school in the small, crowded hallways between class changes, and it always takes just a few deep breaths and then I'm okay. I thought I'd be perfectly fine.
I was SUCH AN IDIOT.
The trip begins with over a twelve hour long bus ride to get down to Florida. If you've ever been a trip with a bunch of teenagers, you know that no one can stay still and just sit where they started out, there's constant moving about and you're almost positive to end up with more than two people to a seat, etc. etc. etc. I got lucky in that I ended up sitting next to one my best friends- a female who is much physically weaker than me. Let's call her E. Not in any way a trigger. I also got the window seat, which doesn't help with my crowds/enclosed spaces problem, but I was totally fine with it- no anxiety at all. It only bothers me if I'm having an episode.
And I was fine for the rest of the day and had a great time. For some reason, my friends and I are pretty popular with the younger kids who were also on this trip, so freshman and sophomores kept on roaming through our section of the bus and hanging out for a while. Things got bad when a freshman, let's call him B, decided to take E's place and sit next to me.
Oh god. He's much taller than me and much physically stronger than me and it was just panic city. It didn't help that E also decided to lay across our laps to go to sleep. So I have a girl sitting on me and a trigger trapping me there and I was freaking out. I could barely breathe for an HOUR, literally, and every motion E made gave me goosebumps and I was cramming myself into the window to try and get away from B. It also didn't help that we had chosen seats near our directors- let's call them SS, and they're going to be important. SS are both 28 year old males in relatively good shape- which coincidentally happens to be around the same age as my attacker is now. Known them for a while now, like them a lot- even trust them. Remember when I said one of my triggers was physically stronger guys who I trust? Yep.
So one of SS was in the seat across from us, B was trapping me in my seat and E was on me and I couldn't move if I had to defend myself, and two seats in from of me is the other half of SS.
It was horrible.
Finally, though, B moves, and I'm able to calm down relatively quickly. We get to our hotel, blah di blah, and I never sleep well on band trips- ever since I got PTSD, every little sound wakes me up and I'm constantly waking up on my own anyway, but nightmares haven't been a huge problem with my PTSD (which I am soooo thankful for; the one nightmare I DID have about what happened was absolutely terrifying) so I wasn't too worried about how the night would go. I was right, everything went okay except for the usual "let's stay up until we can't keep our eyes open!' nonsense. The less sleep I get, the worse my PTSD is- one of the reason I HATE band trips now. They always want to stay up until god knows when in the morning and it just makes thing so much harder for me. But otherwise the night was without incident.
Skipping onto the next day. We play our instruments for the first half in a workshop, then it's off to Magic Kingdom we go. Like I said, I never really liked amusement parks, so I was pretty much just along for the ride, metaphorically and physically. I went along with my friends to three different rides, it was pretty fun, we failed at selfies and had lots of laughs. No PTSD here :)
Trouble hits in Space Mountain.
If you haven't been inside Space Mountain, here's the rundown: it's dark inside everywhere, but not too dark to see; the line is just this long single file thing for most of it, but then, when you get up to the actual ride, there's more than one line in that tiny space so we're just packed in like sardines up there. Anyway. I was fine when we got in there and for about ten minutes maybe, after that. Then out of utterly nowhere, I get extraordinarily nauseous. Wasn't gradual at all, just BAM 'I think I'm going to be sick'. At first I didn't realize it was the crowds and what had happened yesterday with B, I thought maybe I felt sick because I had just had a lot of water and it was so hot outside. So I didn't say anything, and we waited in line for maybe 40 minutes while I waited for it to pass. It just got worse. Finally, we get to up to where I mentioned before, where there are multiple lines and huge crowds. I still don't feel one lick better; quite the opposite. I still think it's maybe heatstroke, especially because my head feels so unnaturally hot, and it wasn't hot inside Space Mountain. As we move through the line, I catch sight of SS in line as well maybe a dozen people back. Finally, my friends pick up that something is wrong (they don't know I have PTSD, I'm really not trying to complain that they weren't observant or anything at all here, they were wonderful considering what they thought was happening). And a couple minutes after that, I throw up. We leave the line, I clean myself up, E buys me a Gatorade because we all think it was just too much water after all the heat. The Gatorade doesn't help. We decided to go get dinner someplace inside. I still feel nauseous so I just say I'll get us a table while they order; but I'm suddenly so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. The moment I've waved my friends over to the table and one sits down, I'm asleep.
When I woke up sometime later, I thought I should feel better; never had heatstroke before but sleep always worked well with nausea for me. I doze for a little while longer just in case but by this point by friends are really starting to get worried. When I finally make myself sit up and wake up and realize I don't feel better, I realize it must've been PTSD- and that it's not about to go away with a nap.
My friends are still worried, like I said. They finally give me a choice of staying at the first aid station to sleep some more, or they're texting SS to tell them what happened; I panic and grab E's phone and tell her she can't (SS doesn't know I have PTSD either). I tell them fine, I'll just go by the first aid station- I figure I'll tell the person there that I'm not really sick, I had a PTSD episode, and they'll be able to provide some medium of assistance.
They start walking me to the first aid station; I start texting my friend back in TN, the only person who knows I have PTSD. I tell her what happened, and she can't really do anything where she is, but she did try, and while it didn't help as much as I thought it would, it certainly didn't hurt, and I was glad to be able to have her there as an asset :)
Anyway, we get to the first aid station, find out that since I'm 17 I can't stay there without a chaperone. Well I'm trying to keep my episode a secret, not tell even MORE people about it, so I insist we leave, and voila, there's a chaperone OUTSIDE. I just keep insisting I'M FINE I'M FINE I FEEL BETTER and finally, we get to leave.
And once again, the situation gets worse. We run into SS on our way to the next ride. I saw them first and almost lost it; my panic got worse and I turned away and tried to make it so they didn't see us but of course they did and we started talking and being so close to two physically stronger guys that I trusted was horrible. I just kept nodding and smiling and praying my group wouldn't say anything about what had happened.
Finally, we got away, and went to out next stop: Haunted Mansion.
I was a bit worried it would be full of jump-scares, which was something I really didn't need right then, but it's not; it's just a bunch of 'ooh that's good special effects' stuff. It was still horrible because in the beginning, all the lights go out (and this is real darkness, not oh it's dark but I can still see you stuff') I literally got ready to fight. I got in a seat with my friends, which was good, but felt nauseous for the whole thing. It didn't help that the ride broke down three times while I was on it. Not. At. All.
My friends see I'm feeling worse and I manage to back out of all other rides and just wait for them at the exits after that. It works surprisingly well. I'm able to wait away from other people (relatively) with my back to a wall and have hours to myself. It was REALLY helpful, actually- loud noises don't bother me unless they're unexpected AND from behind me so the sounds of the rides were okay, and screams only bother me if they're unexpected or I'm already having a terrible episode, so the screams from people were okay, too. I was feeling moderately better as the day went on; even tried to eat a small dinner. It didn't go well with my nausea but I was able to get some down and didn't throw up :) I was still counting the hours until we could leave, though.
We ended up staying for the fireworks at Magic Kingdom; the crowds only caused me minor discomfort a few times and the show was fantastic. Got back to the hotel without incident and by this point, SS was just as utterly exhausted as we were and gave us an extra hour in get up the next day, and we all went right to sleep when we got back to the hotel. I still woke up a few times but the extra sleep really helped a lot, I think :)
So, day two. Was still a little nauseous; ate a piece of bacon and bread for breakfast (and this was some reaaally good food). Then off to... Universal we go! (Universal? Idk. Not the place with Harry Potter World, the place with the Aerosmith roller coaster. Ugh, I don't know...) So, E and I had had the plan for months that we were going to go with SS and they were going to take us on an upside down roller coaster- we'd never gone upside down before and were pretty scared to do it, and, like I said, we trusted them and thought they would help. Well, trouble starts the moment we get off the bus and SS joins us.
Being that close to them was like panic city. I almost threw up again. It didn't help when two other young, male, physically fit chaperones joined us. They took us to a kiosk to get fast passes and there was a crowd and just aJDSKFLJSDKLJFLKSJKJSKL. Couldn't couldn't couldn't do it. The moment I saw some of my other friends there, I split and ran to join up with them. Getting away from SS helped immensely. Which really makes me sad... we love them to death and I hate that I can get so jumpy and scared around them when they've done nothing to deserve any type of reaction like that. They hugged me when I got waitlisted from Uchicago and told me I could stay in their office as long as I needed to, didn't comment or call me out on my crying, gave us the 'it's their loss' speech so sincerely- and I get freaked out just standing near them. I hate it.
Anyway, the people I'm with now were also the people with me at Magic Kingdom when I got sick. I decided to play it safe and not go on anymore rides and risk the crowds, enclosed spaces, etc. setting me off again. So I tell them I'm just really claustrophobic. Which I HATED doing. I finally managed to stop lying, at least to the friend I mentioned earlier, and told her everything- the abuse AND the PTSD. I had promised myself I wouldn't do it again and then... I had to. I still can't see another way out of the situation because I wasn't even good friends with some of these people, no way was I ready to tell them I was abused and had PTSD. But I'm still upset about it. My friends, however, were understanding about it and let me wait for them outside the rides without being too worried about me. The fact that we were at one of the less popular parks and that it was drizzling lessened greatly on the crowds which also helped; aside from the first few minutes when I was with SS, the first half of the day- and the second, at Epcot- went mostly without incident. I was able to get a lot of time to myself to think and calm down; even when a guy in Starbucks accidentally kicked me (he slipped on some water, blah blah) I didn't freak out. I was unable to stomach more than a fourth of dinner but I think the second day was the best day of the trip.
So, onto the final day.
Ugh. More sleep deprivation, and back to busy busy parks and huge huge crowds. AGH. COULDN'T DO IT. It was weird. My biggest annoyance throughout the first half of the day was my friends kept trying to find rides that wouldn't be a problem with my 'claustrophobia'; I couldn't tell them it wasn't the rides that I had a problem with, it was the lines in enclosed spaces I couldn't get out of that I didn't want to risk dealing with. It also didn't help that they seemed to confuse claustrophobia with 'gets scared easily' when it came to roller coasters. On the few rides I went on Magic Kingdom, I learned something- once you're scared that someone could legitimately killed you, that they could be legitimately trying to KILL you, a roller coaster just isn't that scary anymore. At least, it wasn't for me. Ugh. Anyway.
Like I said, was fine PTSD wise for most of the day. Started having some minor problems with crowds, as well as barely even being able to finish a pretzel for lunch, but survived until we went to Jurassic Park. I had issues, for some reason, with the fact that all the fake greenery closed off my surroundings- the moment we stepped in there I was breathing faster. And then they dropped me off in the middle of a three way intersection type of thing while they went to ride the attraction, and I went over to the side and... panic came back full blown.
So many people. They were coming from all directions and so many of them could've hurt me if they wanted to. And the crowds never stopped they just kept coming!!!! In the free time I had, just like I had been for the past three days, I was on my phone, googling PTSD and disney and reading the horror stories and advice that came up but this was one of the times when I couldn't concentrate on my phone because it wasn't safe, there were too many people and AGH!
Needless to say, the rest of my day was not fun.
When we finally left, it was for an overnight bus ride back to TN. If I don't sleep well in a nice hotel bed on these trips, of course I don't sleep well on a bus. It took me several hours to calm down enough after the parks and with SS so near me that every faint touch from E (asleep the entire time) didn't make me jump. But I finally got some sleep. Kept going in and out, but... it happened.
And that's the end of the worst trip I've ever taken.
I was counting the hours until we left every single day, I had an episode on the very first day that was extremely humiliating because by the end up of the night it seemed like all the chaperones and half the students knew about it and kept asking me about it, and since I've got home two days ago I've had three breakdowns. My first trip to Disney was ruined by PTSD- something I should've seen coming. I have problems with crowds all the time, I already knew sleep deprivation aggravated it, I've been waiting for the day now when SS would provoke a reaction... somehow I just didn't make the connection that Disney would yank all my triggers together, create a few more, and all in all create a vacation from hell. I lied to my friends about being claustrophobic when I thought I was DONE lying to them, I worried them, they went on a boring ride with me because they wanted me to ride some not-a-problem-for-claustrophobic-people rides when they could've been riding something they really wanted to. I... just... I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm sorry for typing out all of this when there was no point to it... it's just me venting. Like a diary entry, I guess.
I don't know what I'm doing. I just really hate that I missed out on a lot of fun because of something some bastard did over three years ago. My friend E has pictures of her on roller coasters next to SS grinning with her arms in the air- I now have a search history of "disney ptsd". And I feel now like I'm just complaining... but...
Like I said. Sorry.