I was the kid who got accused of plagiarism for writing Time Magazine quality assignments. I got in teouble for being able to write news magazine quality work. Obviously my teacher didn't expect us to amount to much. It was rural Midwest.

I chose a college that promised academic rigor and personal attention. It was a very good college.

I didn't have "ptsd" when I went away to college. I was a resilient adolescent. I had been neglected
educationally and emotionally. My parents kept me fed and watered and up to date on all my shots and monitored my spending on the platinum card but I raised myself. Id read indiscriminately. I'd rea Hunter Thompson. I was an intelligent young animal with a chance at becoming human. I'd read Dr. Spock and my mother's wedding gift Amy Vanderbilt in an attempt to raise myself. I was a good babysitter for it. Mom was borderline but not the kind who got caught at it. I chose the right college for me. I sensed I didn't know anything but how to read and write. Id read To Kill a Mockingbird and Little Women and sensed there was something more to parenting than what I got.

I was a sensitive girl too. I was sensitive to non-verbal communication.

I didn't have ptsd from my childhood. I had stress from my childhood. Bessel van Der Kolk has
described the brain changes that happen to children. Who are stressed. These predispose to ptsd but do not cause ptsd.

I hadn't developed optimally but I think I might have done OK in the Navy.

Instead...

First college class. I'd gotten over freshman jitters. I liked my roommate. I met people. I started to feel I belonged. Now classes were beginning. I was really in college. I met a girl like myself. She was shy and reserved with a quirky sense of humor like me. I really liked her. I thought, wow, life is really beginning. This is really college. This is a real friend. Maybe we will meet up throughout life from wherever this special education takes us and remember this day.

I don't want to tell the story. She decompensated beside me in the classroom. She died two days later.

I had acute trauma symptoms within forty minutes of the thought that we might be lifelong friends meeting up as old ladies...

No one knew me. I was just another freshman, a quiet shy girl in the crowd. No one knew I had changed. I changed dramatically. I was hostile and irritable and dissociated and frightened. I was working in a shop building a set for a play when the knife I worked with ripped through foam board and a boy flinched as my hand and knife ripped by his face. I was shaken. I couldn't stop appologising and saying it was dangerous. He said he had served two years somewhere, overseas, and had good reflexes.. I kept seeing the knife and his flinch. I recall now he was strong and handsome and found me attractive, aroused and flustered and blushing and carrying on. I was just horrified. I put down the knife and went off to paint. I taught the painters to mark a grid to enlarge the image but without joy. People praised me and tried to engage me but I was flat and traumatised, I was a goner. I couldn't feel. I couldnt get enthused. I couldn't forget the knife. I couldn't remember that this girl had died. If someone asked what was wrong with me I didn't know. But no o.e asked.

I felt normal riding. Not quite normal but more normal. I could socialise normally and oncentrate a little better after riding. Or sex. I started having sex with a boy in the riding class. Anything that rocked the psoas, lol. He was a narcissist. It wasn't a human relationship. I wanted to drop him and he got manipulative. I had screaming rages I didn't remember at all for years.

It was a nightmare. I can still remember bits and pieces of college that were fine. I wasn't always in a fog or a screaming rage or suicidal depression, and I didn't emerge completely destroyed or uneducated but it was horrible.

I settled into ptsd. Classic symptoms. I witnessed decompensation leading to death and on some level knew my new friend was dying, but as a doc later said, its he spattered blood and brain on me. In fairness to doc, he did see why I thought of ptsd, and its not like there was effective ptsd treatment for me to access with a good dx.

I was right there in a good college for me, my tuition paid, my notebooks and pen in hand , with this exhilarating sense that at eighteen I was finally having a great life where I fit in. And then I was changed in an hour. I no longer fit in. Everything was dull and hazy unless it was alarming and emergent or sex and riding. I was irritable and hostile or shy and withdrawn. I couldn't concentrate. Bi could write well sometimes. I
id better with numbers and graphs but had no math background. I tried to study economics anyway. I taught myself calculus not knowing thats what I was doing. I was working hard and I was still intelligent but I was breaking down.

The only friend I had was the narcissist boyfriend. I had another friend who couldnt be saved from borderline and alcoholism.

I got out of there and attracted trauma like a rolling snowball attracts snow. More traumatic events. The best thing was that I met an asylee who modeled how to live well and carry on with symptoms.
Most people dont know what I lost. My friend who lost a country and society understood a little. I lost a world.