Background: 23 y/o, hanging out with a girl for the last few months.

TLDR; met a cool girl, things were fun, was semi-honest, now she sees me differently.

————

Sup. Take from this what you will. I found it interesting and wanted to share.

———

A brief trip back in time for some background into my life:

I was a medic in the sandbox for a little bit before coming home and working for the local FD as a firefighter paramedic. The time that I spent in Afghanistan changed me.

Coming home and starting college I was in the best shape of my life from being overseas and having nothing to do but work out, watch movies, and put bandaids on my friends. Being a medic gave me self-assurance - and I’ve found my training automatically kicks in in my daily life. Command presence if any of you want to read about a useful practice. Even though I might be a jumpy wreck inside, on the outside people can’t tell.

These two things made it so easy to sleep with any girl I wanted to. I happily ignored my problems. Civilian EMS is different from medevac. Instead of going on my friends, I now was going on normal people. I had a lot of kids my first year. My first shift we got a kid whose face was ripped off when a car ran him over, and he asked me if he was going to die. He was alert and oriented when we got there, and died on scene. My past job and current one just compounded on each other. So, I started going to therapy a year after getting on with the fire department and was diagnosed with PTSD.

People have asked me if I have PTSD, and I always denied it.

————

I met Abbi at a local art show in my city about 4 months ago. I was out by myself cause my friends were either doing other things or not interested. So, I went alone and was excited to see some local art. I kept to myself most of the night. At the end, I saw this chick who I wanted to get to know. I started chatting with her, and we decided to hangout the following week as our schedules allowed.

I’m no Greek god. Nor am I a social diva. I just kinda do my thing and take care of myself. I’m basically done with my bachelors, no loans/debt free, have a career going, and some other stuff. In my free time I play a couple instruments, one I’ve played competitively for 19 years, the other I started learning about 6 months ago. Enough to keep me sorta interesting and relevant.

Things were going well with this particular lady. She’s hot (in my books), has a good job (ER nurse - I work for the local fire dept as a ff/paramedic, so we kinda clicked right away due to that), and was pretty into me. Always pushing for exclusivity, etc. Hanging out with her made the other girls I was seeing more invested it seemed also which was kinda nice. Things all around were great. We’d do fun things, skydiving, backpacking, and shooting to name a few. Plus her and these other girls were constantly feeding off each other, trying to one up one another. The other girls aren’t bad necessarily, but Abbi was my favorite - I really liked her. Unfortunately, I will likely be breaking things off with the little lady for reasons to follow.

———

Fast forward to present.

Abbi is sleeping over. I have this weird thing where for whatever reason some part of me tries to remember the faces of my friends I couldn’t help. Not their normal faces, but their dead faces. I think it was a form of coping that 19 year old me developed while he was out pretending to be a hero. From there it happened without trying for all of my patients.

Abbi had slept over maybe a dozen and a half times at this point. Most of those nights I’d wake up several times. When I have these dreams I get up and go for a quick walk outside before going back to bed. She’d notice this, of course, and asked me about it. I just blew it off when she’d ask.

Finally she called me out on it and wanted to know what the deal was. Incorrectly, I thought she’d understand a mild version of the truth and I told her that I was working through a slight case of PTSD from work.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew the “relationship” was over. I could actually see the shift in her expression. I went from being a stoic to some pussy. She didn’t say anything about it, but immediately started to treat me different.

Things are different. And they are going to end. They don’t understand that we have hard times as well. As soon as you let them see even a glimpse of reality, they will see you differently.

————

Lessons learned:

  1. Men are human. Humans are flawed. Don’t show your “human” self.

  2. Don’t show weakness. Even better, don’t show what could be perceived as weakness. PTSD isn’t a weakness. It’s an opportunity for growth - I’m a better person for what I experienced, I also learned a lot about myself from my ongoing rehab. This doesn’t matter to them. If they can see it as a weakness, don’t share it, because they will see it as one even if it isn’t.

Don’t make my mistake, gents. ","selftext_html":"

Background: 23 y/o, hanging out with a girl for the last few months.

TLDR; met a cool girl, things were fun, was semi-honest, now she sees me differently.

————

Sup. Take from this what you will. I found it interesting and wanted to share.

———

A brief trip back in time for some background into my life:

I was a medic in the sandbox for a little bit before coming home and working for the local FD as a firefighter paramedic. The time that I spent in Afghanistan changed me.

Coming home and starting college I was in the best shape of my life from being overseas and having nothing to do but work out, watch movies, and put bandaids on my friends. Being a medic gave me self-assurance - and I’ve found my training automatically kicks in in my daily life. Command presence if any of you want to read about a useful practice. Even though I might be a jumpy wreck inside, on the outside people can’t tell.

These two things made it so easy to sleep with any girl I wanted to. I happily ignored my problems. Civilian EMS is different from medevac. Instead of going on my friends, I now was going on normal people. I had a lot of kids my first year. My first shift we got a kid whose face was ripped off when a car ran him over, and he asked me if he was going to die. He was alert and oriented when we got there, and died on scene. My past job and current one just compounded on each other. So, I started going to therapy a year after getting on with the fire department and was diagnosed with PTSD.

People have asked me if I have PTSD, and I always denied it.

————

I met Abbi at a local art show in my city about 4 months ago. I was out by myself cause my friends were either doing other things or not interested. So, I went alone and was excited to see some local art. I kept to myself most of the night. At the end, I saw this chick who I wanted to get to know. I started chatting with her, and we decided to hangout the following week as our schedules allowed.

I’m no Greek god. Nor am I a social diva. I just kinda do my thing and take care of myself. I’m basically done with my bachelors, no loans/debt free, have a career going, and some other stuff. In my free time I play a couple instruments, one I’ve played competitively for 19 years, the other I started learning about 6 months ago. Enough to keep me sorta interesting and relevant.

Things were going well with this particular lady. She’s hot (in my books), has a good job (ER nurse - I work for the local fire dept as a ff/paramedic, so we kinda clicked right away due to that), and was pretty into me. Always pushing for exclusivity, etc. Hanging out with her made the other girls I was seeing more invested it seemed also which was kinda nice. Things all around were great. We’d do fun things, skydiving, backpacking, and shooting to name a few. Plus her and these other girls were constantly feeding off each other, trying to one up one another. The other girls aren’t bad necessarily, but Abbi was my favorite - I really liked her. Unfortunately, I will likely be breaking things off with the little lady for reasons to follow.

———

Fast forward to present.

Abbi is sleeping over. I have this weird thing where for whatever reason some part of me tries to remember the faces of my friends I couldn’t help. Not their normal faces, but their dead faces. I think it was a form of coping that 19 year old me developed while he was out pretending to be a hero. From there it happened without trying for all of my patients.

Abbi had slept over maybe a dozen and a half times at this point. Most of those nights I’d wake up several times. When I have these dreams I get up and go for a quick walk outside before going back to bed. She’d notice this, of course, and asked me about it. I just blew it off when she’d ask.

Finally she called me out on it and wanted to know what the deal was. Incorrectly, I thought she’d understand a mild version of the truth and I told her that I was working through a slight case of PTSD from work.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew the “relationship” was over. I could actually see the shift in her expression. I went from being a stoic to some pussy. She didn’t say anything about it, but immediately started to treat me d