Bravado can only take me so far. But when faced with a real-life situation, I fall into pieces. At least, inside I was. The official diagnosis was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Wikipedia defines PTSD as:
a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.[1][2][3] This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,[1] overwhelming the individual's ability to cope
(from http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/complex-ptsd/)
Symptoms include intense negative feelings of fear, helplessness or horror (check), re-experiencing the original trauma through flashbacks or nightmares (check on flashbacks), avoidance of stimuli associated with trauma (will never ride on a bus ever again) and increased hypervigilance (check. I'm always in a relaxed crash position everytime I ride a motor vehicle. Kung pwede lang magseatbelt pag nakasakay sa tricycle, gagawin ko).
It hurts me when people tell me to "get over it" or conclude that I'm milking my accident whenever I express my fears. It makes me feel maarte or that my feelings are trivial. I have tried to overcome it, I still do in a daily basis. I have stopped talking about my reservations to people and I put a brave front every single day. But it's hard. I feel that in any given second, I will die, and the worse thing is, I feel that everyone I love will die too everytime we're together in the same car. Maybe it's because I witnessed a whole family injured when I had my accident and how painful it is to see a loved one dying before your eyes. I'm not scared to die. I was surprised I didn't die. I don't want anybody else in my family or anybody I know experience what I did.
I guess time will run it's course, just like how my limbs adapted to my new normal. In the meantime, forgive me if I cringe everytime I'm on the road. I'm really trying to be better.
