Bobby was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during the summer of 2016. An incident had just occurred near the end of his freshman year of college. He was riding around with some friends and the driver stopped in a parking lot. Everyone had gotten out of the car for a few minutes and then had gotten back in. But someone closed the door and locked Bobby out of the car.
The next thing Bobby knows, the car is driving away. He watches the car drive around the parking lot with amusement, expecting the driver to let him back in the car. That doesn't happen. Instead, Bobby watches the car go out onto the road and drive off without him. Bobby processes what had just happened and immediately became anxious.
"It's happening again....," Bobby thought. "It's happening again. It's happening again. @$&%! IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!" Suddenly Bobby remembers everything that he had gone through. He remembers all the times he was excluded. All the times he was mistreated. All the times he was disrespected and did nothing. Bobby immediately calls Samantha, a close friend of the driver. "WHY THE @$&% DID Y'ALL LEAVE ME?!," he exclaimed.
Samantha immediately hangs up the phone. The parking lot was not far from his friends' apartment building. He charges into Samantha's room, where everyone in the car could be found. But he's only focused on one person: Pamela, the driver. "Why the fuck did you leave me?!" he yells at Pamela. "Don't curse at me," Pamela retorts. "WHY THE @$&% DID YOU LEAVE ME?!" Pamela looks at him, startled and confused. "It was just a joke! It's just four minutes down the road!" Bobby stares at Pamela, nothing but anger in his eyes.
"Don't yell at her," Samantha intervenes. "You stay out of this," Bobby snarls. "It was just a joke," Pamela repeated. "I don't give a @$&%! YOU DON'T LEAVE ME!" Bobby storms out of Samantha's apartment, feeling nothing but anger and anxiety.
"Who the @$&% does that," Bobby thought to himself. "Friends don't @$&%do that! Who the @$&% does she think she is?!" Bobby can only remember the feeling of shame, fear, and exclusion. He knows that he wasn't the kid he was when he was younger.
He knew he would rip someone's @$&%ing head off if they even thought about crossing him. He knows he's a force to be @$&%ing reckoned with. But at that moment, all of that didn't matter. At that moment, he was back in high school.
Bobby goes back to his dorm room and slams the door. "It's happening again! It's happening again," he kept thinking as he was pacing around the room. "It's happening again! It's happening again!" The fear of being in the same position he was in growing up floods through Bobby. The fear of being in a position where no one respected him, where no one took him seriously. "I'll be damned if I @$&%ing let that happen again," he thought to himself. "I'll be goddamned!"
Bobby walked furiously around campus, trying to walk it off. He knew what he was thinking was irrationally but it didn't feel like it. He felt like he was in danger. In danger of everything going back to the way that it had been. Irrational thinking, fueled in part by his struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Three hours later, Bobby finally calms down and is able to relax. He lays in his bed, thinking about what had happened. He replays the intense feeling of danger and regression in his head. Bobby hears his phone, notifying him he had just gotten a text message.
It was from Pamela. She apologized profusely to Bobby, telling him that she did not mean to hurt him. "It was only to be meant as a joke," the message read. "I'm sorry, too," wrote Bobby. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."
Bobby immediately felt guilty. "Why did I react the way that I did," he asked himself. This is a feeling that Bobby is all too familiar with. Bobby knew that he would always be familiar with two things: anger and grief.
