Revisiting My Trauma Three Years Later

December 8th is coming up, and it’s been hard to think about much else. This year will mark three years since my life changed in ways I could have never imagined. Three years since I faced something so painful and traumatic that it still ripples through my days. As much as I’ve worked to heal, this time of year always pulls me back into that moment, that version of me, and all that came with it.

Writing this isn’t easy. Honestly, I’ve gone back and forth about whether to even share it. But there’s a part of me that feels like I need to say it out loud—or in this case, write it down. Maybe it’s for me, or maybe it’s for someone else who feels alone in their pain. Either way, it feels important.

Before you read on, I want to be clear: what I’m about to share is deeply personal and includes graphic details that might be upsetting. If you choose to continue, please take care of yourself. Pause if you need to. My goal isn’t to hurt anyone but to share my story in its fullness—the darkness, the rawness, and the glimmers of light I’ve worked so hard to find since then.

Names and locations have been changed.

I was tired from working that day. I had a private wine tasting at one of my restaurants. It was my first one at this restaurant group, so things were not perfect yet. It started later than anticipated, and ran later than I wanted. Emails were piling up, but I decided to answer them in the morning. I left work around 8pm, getting into my car and driving home. Traffic was uneventful. I got home in 8 minutes. I handed my key to the valet who said his usual “Welcome Home!” to me. I smiled and thanked him. The elevator arrived faster than usual, which was good. I had 6 different sample bottles of wine in my bag, and it was digging into my shoulder. 

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding. Twenty-three dings until the elevator stopped. I stepped out of the elevator and held my blue key fob to the door. Click. I opened it and shouted my usual greeting, “Hey Babies!”. My twelve pound yorkie poo came sprinting off the couch to me. She danced around near my feet, desperate for attention. I dropped my bag on the floor and went over to the couch, where Philip was sitting, smiling at me. Riesling jumped around in her excitement. He grimaced when she danced on his legs and stomach. 

“Does she have to go out?” I asked. This was my normal question. I liked to walk her before I took my shoes off, if possible. 

“I took her about twenty minutes ago, so she should be good.” He responded. 

“Oh good,” I sighed in relief and went to take my shoes off. I hung up my jacket and walked into the bedroom. “I brought home some wine for you. It’s from Jura, kinda funky, but it will blow off. I figured you’d like it.” I pulled two bottles of wine from my backpack and set them on the table.

“Thanks!” He said, cheerfully. I walked back into the bedroom.  

“Wow!” I said, loud enough for him to hear me. “You cleaned up in here!  It looks fantastic. Better than it has the entire time we lived here.” I grabbed the sweatshirt he had given me the day before that said “YorkiePoo” on it and pulled some yoga pants on. He walked into the room. 

“Yeah, I cleaned up a lot today. I did your laundry too and folded it for you.” Smug little smile peeking through his beard, he looked down at me. He was always looking down. Six feet, five inches of him peering down at my five feet two inches. “Are you hungry?  Did you eat yet?”

“I had a salad at work before I left work,” I walked back into the living room of our 600 square foot apartment, and he followed behind me.  

“A salad? How do you expect to get gains like me if all you eat are salads?” He flexed his heavily muscled arm, black and white tattoos stretching. 

“Baby, I ate already, but thank you,” I shook my head at him. 

“Okay, okay,” he sat on the couch in his usual spot. His feet propped up, the dog came over and curled up on his lap. He pulled out his iPad and started playing Clash of Clans. 

I was glad for his current mood. For weeks he had been so beyond angry at the world it scared me. I had even asked my parents to watch Riesling for a few days a week before. I told them it was because I was so busy at work, and kept the real reason to myself. One day when I came home from work I asked if she had eaten. He told me yes, but her new bag of food was never opened. His irrational anger at everyone around him had been building up, and I was scared he would hurt her. I had been afraid for myself a few times as well. I told my best friend that I thought he was going to hurt me more than once, and she assured me that it was all in my head.

I sat across the room from him, at my desk. I was opening emails and responding to them. My book was being edited, and I wanted to see what the Copyeditor had sent back. 

“You know, I think you should use the money you get for your raise and self publish when your bonus comes in,” he said, not looking up from his game. 

“I’m still not really sure how much more money I will be making though. Plus, I don’t think my bonus hits until after the New Year,” I glanced over my shoulder at him. 

“You haven’t worn your Yorkie socks yet,” he scolded at me, his bright blue eyes frowning. The day before he gave me my Christmas presents and said he couldn’t wait.  

“Baby, I’ve been working. I couldn’t very well wear those cute little socks to work!” I rolled my eyes at him. He pouted. 

“I think you need to put a work order in for the fridge,” he said seriously. 

“Philip!” I yelled at him. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with the refrigerator door! Other than the fact that you constantly forget to close it at night.”

“I disagree. In my 25 years of life, I have never once had an issue closing the fridge. I think it pops out. Let me show you.” He stood up, putting his iPad aside.  Riesling shot him a dirty look for disturbing her sleep. She huffed and laid down on the soft pillow referred to as the “Princess Pillow”. He walked over to the fridge and closed it hard. It stayed shut. He opened it again, slamming it shut. I laughed at him.

“I think you’ve proven your point there, Philip.”

“I am telling you, it must be the fridge!” He laughed and shrugged, good-natured that day, unlike the moodiness he sometimes projected. He walked back to the couch and turned on Letter Kenny. I continued answering emails and working on my homework. It was my last semester before I got my degree in Psychology. I had spent the time since COVID shut down the world to go back and take online classes.  

“I went to church today,” Philip blurted out.

“Oh?” I asked, confused. He had never been religious before.

“The priest I spoke to said he couldn’t forgive my sins because I was Protestant, but it made me feel better to go,” he didn’t look up from his iPad.

“Well, at least you went,” I said, “that’s got to count for something.”

“I need your help with something,” Philip said. I swiveled in my chair to face him. 

“What’s up baby?” I said, suddenly nervous. He never asked for my help with anything.

“How does one buy a house?” He asked. My heart sank a little. The week before he told me that I deserved better than him, and he didn’t think we should continue dating. The next day he seemed to have regretted that decision, and we had a serious conversation about how I was not in the business of forcing someone to be with me. He had even mentioned he had made a mistake, but his moodiness was giving me whiplash.

“Oh, sure,” I went into how to get prequalified. I explained the bidding process, the closing costs and time. He asked a few questions, but mostly listened. I had left my desk chair at this point and joined him on the couch. I had this urge to ask him to snuggle, but I did not want to upset him. I kept thinking “wow, he really is planning on leaving me.” I felt a huge sense of relief that he would be gone soon. While I did really enjoy his company, the past few months had been scary for me, and I wanted him to leave. When I was done explaining the process we sat in silence for a little while. He changed the subject and started telling Riesling that she was the cutest thing in the whole world.  

He got on the rug with her and the two of them wrestled around. I got very sad watching them play.

“You think you’ll really go then?” I asked. 

“Don’t see why not,” he said, looking up at me, still squeaking the little blue teddy bear at Riesling. “Why? Do you want to come with me to look at it?”

“I’d actually love to. When do you want to go see places?” I smiled, thinking we would have at least one last fun adventure together before he went. I could already picture myself texting him frequently and checking up on him. Maybe he would work on himself and grow into the man I had hoped he would be. He was young and had a lot of demons. He drank excessively and would often sob himself to sleep. He was prone to fits of extreme anger. Whenever I insisted he go to see someone about it he would tell me that no one would ever understand him and he didn’t want help.

“Does the second weekend in January work for you?” He asked. 

“Sure! I will put it down.” I created a google calendar invite and sent it to him. 

We sat in silence for a little while longer. I was stuck in my feelings, and while I was glad he would be leaving, I was also sad to be saying goodbye to a friend.  

“I love you, you know,” he was looking at me. “I am proud of you. I am so proud of you.” 

My eyes teared up. “I’m a little tired,” I said. 

“We can talk about it later if you’d like,” he said. “You can go to bed now if you want.”

I stood up and pulled my sweatshirt down, fidgeting nervously. I leaned down to kiss his forehead, out of the ordinary for me, as I had stopped kissing him weeks ago. “Goodnight babies,” I leaned further down and kissed Riesling’s forehead. “Sleep tight, you two.” 

I stood up, walked into the bathroom, and did my nightly routine. I took my makeup off. I washed my face. I brushed my teeth. I put on one of Philip’s army shirts. I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom and called out, “are you coming to bed soon?” 

“Soon enough,” Philip responded.  

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll see you in the morning on the couch then,” I huffed at him. In hindsight, I would have seen the signs. They were all there, mocking me. But, hindsight is always 20/20. Instead, I laid down in bed. I turned my brainwave binaural programs on and set to deep sleep. Within ten minutes the door opened, and Riesling was shooed in. I drifted off to sleep. 

Around 2 in the morning the door to the bedroom opened abruptly. The light was on in the hallway, and I squinted at his outline. Philip walked in, reached under the bed to grab where I knew the gun was. I remember thinking how long and lean his legs were. His general demeanor was angry. His body language screamed anger at my half asleep mind. I wondered briefly what I had done wrong to set him off. It seemed lately as if all I did was set him off.
The image of his dark outline, shotgun in hand, is seared into my memory. He walked back out and closed the door firmly behind him making no effort to be quiet, much louder than he normally did. The door didn’t close all the way and a light was creeping through.

I was blinking sleep from my eyes, Riesling started crying. Something felt off. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Suddenly there was a click-click of a gun being loaded. I had only ever heard that noise in movies. My heart froze. I pulled the covers back and started to swing my legs around.

Boom. 

I am not religious. I am not spiritual. I have no explanation for you, other than to say what happened next as best I could. There was a shockwave that passed through the walls. A wave of scattered feelings and emotions. It hit me in the chest, and my hair actually moved back. Sadness, deep overwhelming sadness. Pain. So much pain I cannot begin to explain. Regret. Relief. I knew in that instant that Philip was gone. I felt him around me, surrounding me with a short lifetime of emotion. In less than a second it was gone. 

“Philip?” I called. No answer. Maybe he was trying to clean his gun and it went off? I started shaking. How could I not go out there? Realistically, I needed to. What if he was hurt and I could do something to help him? I walked over to the door, shaking head to toe. I opened it. 

What I saw is beyond words. To imagine someone you had loved, broken, would be an understatement. I saw blood, brain, plasma, bone, white and red. Philip was splattered across the walls, the floor, the paintings on the wall, the couch, the kitchen table, the chairs. The fragile six pound muscle that makes us who we are was in pieces. His face was badly mangled, some of his cheek was blown off, his jaw was not attached completely anymore, held up in places by his beard, but the rest of his body was still there, just covered in unspeakable matter. While I stood there, a piece of him dripped off the wall, and what was left of his head moved, letting gravity carry it down to his chest in a way that was reminiscent of nodding out when you are falling asleep in a classroom. The entire back of his skull was missing. 

“No!” I screamed. My vision went blurry. I went back into the bedroom. “This is not happening. This is not happening.” I ran to my side table, where my phone was resting. My binaural beats app was humming in the background, set on “deep sleep”. I saw Philip texted me while I was asleep. I did not read those, but called 911. 

“911, what is your emergency?”

“Please. Please help us. My boyfriend, he shot himself in the head,” my voice was panicked, my body shaking so badly the phone would not stay next to my ear, and clattered against my earrings. 

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t think so. His brain is on the wall!” I was hysterical now.  

“Where are you located ma’am?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was the old embassy suite building!”

“Which floor are you on?”

“The embassy suite building!” I was screaming now. 

“Ma’am I need to know the floor you are on.”

“Oh, sorry, 23!”

“Calling dispatch now, please remain on the line,”

“Please, hurry.”

This part was a little bit of a blur. I recall begging them to stay on the phone with me.  At one point, I called Riesling over to me. 

“Ma’am are you alone? Who are you talking to?” the lady with 911 asked.

“I have my very small dog with me,” I said. 

“What is the breed?” she asked.

“Yorkie,” I was shaking so badly at this point the phone was hitting my face.  Riesling was sitting quietly, curled in a ball on my lap. 

“Hold onto your dog, ma’am.” Was her response.  To someone else she said, “she’s got a dog there with her.”  Returning to me she said, “dispatch should be there in a few minutes. They are entering the building now.” I heard sirens in the distance. 

“Please, I do not know if he deadbolted the door. I can’t go back out there!” I was screaming now, there was no control left in my voice. 

“It’s okay, they will figure out how to get in,” she assured me. 

I waited for what seemed a small eternity, but in reality it was only seven minutes since I called 911 until the time they got there. I heard them enter the building. A police officer knocked on my door.  

“Hello, are you in there?”

“Yes!” I screamed, louder than I should have.

“Do you have your dog?”

“Yes, I have her here!” I was sitting, cross-legged on the corner of my bed, Riesling held close to my chest.

The door cracked open and a police officer poked his head through. Riesling growled, shocking me. She has never growled at a person before. 

“It’s okay buddy,” the officer entered the room and held out his hand. Her tail started wagging and she immediately went back to being her fun-loving self. 

“Are you alright ma’am?” another officer pushed his way into the room. I was sitting cross legged, on my side of the bed, hugging Riesling. 

“I’ve been better,” was the automatic response that came out. 

“What happened? Did you have an argument? Was he upset in any way tonight?”

“Time of death, 2:23am,” I heard being called in the other room. My mind was racing. Time of death? But he was just here. Minutes earlier, he walked into the room. Now he was gone?

The questions kept coming. I wrecked my brain. Was he upset? He was not upset when I went to sleep. I remembered that he texted me. I opened my phone, shaking. There were eight messages. Spanning from 12:37 to 1:41am. 

“I got preapproved!!!!!!!!!”

“If I go back to Pittsburgh I can enlist in the 303 psyop battalion”

“I can make this all right”

“I can redeem myself”

“They can write me a waiver”

“Meh I won’t need a waiver”

“I can go back and I can do this right, right?”

“It won’t have been a waste to hang on to all my uniforms”

I shakily told the officer Philip had texted me. He asked to see it. I held open my phone and he took a photo of it. 

“Was there a note?”  I asked. 

“No note.” Another officer said. 

“Why?” I asked. “Why did he do this?” Silence answered me. Suddenly there was the click click of the gun being unloaded. I screamed and dropped to the floor. Screaming until my throat was sore and I could not breathe. An officer came over to me with his hands out.

“We are just making sure the gun is empty now so it does not hurt anyone else, it’s okay.”

“I feel nauseous,” I gasped. The garbage can from the bathroom was produced by another uniformed man. 

“Was he having a bad night?” The officer asked me. 

“No,” I said. “We had a great night. We talked and laughed. He didn’t seem upset at all. He did my laundry. He cleaned the apartment. He never did that. I was so happy he did!”  My voice trailed off for a minute. They asked me another question, but I did not hear them. 

“What’s that smell?” I asked. It smelled like fire and iodine. 

“Gunpowder,” came a very calm voice from the other room. I whimpered. 

“Why?” I asked again, my voice too loud, tears streaming down my face. The officer named Joe answered me, coming around to give me a hug.

“I’m sorry. I know how he feels. That darkness, sometimes it is easier to give in than keep fighting.” 

“Did he do any drugs?” An officer asked. 

“No,” I was offended. “No, Philip didn’t do any drugs. He took a lot of Tylenol for his back, but he never touched anything other than alcohol.” I had forgotten to mention the occasional pot he would use to try to sleep. 

“Does he have any family we can notify?” An officer asked. 

“He doesn’t get along with his family,” I sobbed. “It is just us.”

More questions were asked to me. A detective entered. He introduced himself, but his name bounced right off of me. He asked even more questions. “How long have you been together?” “Why did he have a gun? Was he a hunter?” “Where is he from originally?” “What set him off?” I was shaking so uncontrollably at this point they brought in a paramedic to evaluate if I needed to be medicated. I declined. Philip had folded his uniforms up, neatly in the corner of the room. The line of questioning took a different turn now, as the detective looked around. 

“Was he a veteran?”

“Yes,” I cried. The tears were free flowing now.  

“Thank you for his service,” one female police officer said to me. I stared at her blinking, unable to say anything. Why? Why would she thank me? I did not do anything? It was all him. It was Philip.  

“Was he injured in the military?”

“He was hurt while working for the military, yes. His ribs were shattered, his back was broken, he had traumatic brain injury,” I sobbed. The officer asked another question about his injuries and I shrugged. “He didn’t like talking about his accident.”

What I didn’t have time to explain was the confusion surrounding his injuries. Philip had told me this brave story about how he was deployed in the middle east and was in a tank that hit an IED. How he barely survived and had all his scars and injuries from that time and place. What I had found out a few weeks before he died was that he was drunk driving on his motorcycle. He had never been deployed. In fact, he had been discharged from the military for mental illness.

“Ah,” the questions seemed to stop here. I felt almost insulted. Could they really just sum up this unforgivable, tragically permanent act in just these few questions? “Is there another gun here?”

“I honestly do not know. He had a pistol at one point. You are welcome to look for it, but I do not know. They aren’t mine, I don’t know the first thing about guns.”

“Sign here,” the detective shoved a piece of paper in my face. 

“What is this?” I asked, signing anyway. 

“It is your statement,” he said. 

I sat there for what seemed like minutes, but was probably seconds. Was I in trouble?

“Do you have somewhere to go? Someone you can call to come and get you?”

“What?” I asked, looking up at him. 

“You can’t stay here.”

“I can’t walk past him out here!” My voice was as loud as it could be, as loud as it got. 

“We can close your eyes. You need to pack a bag. Do you need help? Call someone to come and get you,” Joe said.

Who do you call at 3:00 in the morning with news like this? My mind jumped to my sister. She lived about twenty minutes away, she was a lawyer and slept with her phone on loud. I was shaking so badly I had to try to call her twice. She answered on the second ring.

“Shelly?”

“Christina. Please, come help me.” I was screaming and crying at the same time.

“Calm down, Shelly. Where are you? What happened?” I heard my brother in law in the background asking what was going on.

“Philip. He’s dead. He shot himself in the head. Please. The police said I need to leave. Come and get me.” My voice hit notes of hysteria.  

“Shelly, we will leave now. Can you share your location with me?” To her credit, she asked no questions. I heard her husband, David in the background saying things quickly to her. 

“Please,” I begged.  “Please hurry.” I hung up the phone. 

The next thought in my head was to tell my boss I was in the middle of my worst nightmare, so I tried calling her. It rang four times, then went to voicemail. I hung up. 

“Is she coming to get you?” Another officer asked. How many of them were here? I lost count of how many came and went.  

“Yes, she is on the way,” I said. 

“Do you need help packing?” Officer Joe asked. 

“Yes, I feel a little dizzy,” I said. 

“That’s normal,” he assured me. I wondered at that word. Oh was it? Was it normal to feel dizzy after seeing someone’s brain splattered all over the wall? He asked if I had a bag to pack. I told him there was one in the closet. He pulled it out for me. I sat there, breathing heavily for a few moments before I moved. What do I pack? I went over to Philip’s dresser and grabbed a handful of shirts, sweatpants, and socks. Everything was neatly folded, washed that day. 

“This isn’t happening,” I said out loud, more to the universe than anyone else. “This is not real.”

My phone rang. It was my dad. I answered, “Daddy?” I had not called my father that in many years. Normally I called him “sir”.  

“Yes buddy, we are coming,” was the answer on the other line. 

“Daddy,” I repeated.  

“Yes?” He said. 

“Daddy, Philip is dead,” the words felt strange coming out of my mouth. They tasted bitter, wrong, alien.

“I know buddy.  We will see you at Chrissy’s house,” he hung up the phone. I sat there in silence for a moment. 

Joe asked if I needed anything from the other room. 

“My work bag please. It is gray and should have a laptop and papers in it,” grabbing work stuff seemed automatic to me, as if I would be working from home the next morning. “I need my keys too. They are on the hook out there.”

“What about shoes?” Officer Joe asked.  

“I have slippers here,” I said, pointing a shaking finger behind the door. 

Officer Joe went into the unspeakable room and came back moments later holding my work bag and keys.

“Those are his,” I said, pointing at his keys.  “Mine should be out there too.”

He disappeared again, this time coming back with my keys. At some point my sister texted me that she was here. Time was moving in a strange way, it felt excruciatingly long, yet fast as could be. 

“Her leash,” I said. “It should be next to where my keys were.”  I apologized for not telling him earlier. He told me it was completely fine, and was gone and back in seconds, leash in hand. 

“Are you ready?” Officer Joe asked, shouldering both my work bag and my clothes bag.  I looked back and grabbed Philip’s watch off the nightstand table. 

“I don’t need those bottles of wine,” I said, noticing there were still four bottles of Port wine in my bag. I had sampled them just hours earlier at work, there were a few ounces missing from each bottle. I brought them home because Philip loved dessert wines. Suddenly, life seemed far away. I had done a wine tasting that night, right? Joe removed the bottles of wine and set them on the floor. He resettled the bags on his back and told me to hold Riesling. 

“Look at me, Michele,” Joe said. I held eye contact with him, as desperate as if he was a life raft in the middle of the ocean. “Hold your dog, close your eyes. I will hold your hand. Do not open them. I will tell you when it is safe, okay?”

“Okay,” I sobbed out. I held Riesling in my left arm, and took his hand with my right.  I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut as tight as I could.  We walked past the remains of the man I had lived alongside for a year. The man who, an hour ago, was still breathing. The apartment was less than 700 square feet. I walked past him quickly. I had no desire to peek. No urge for one last look. 

When we got to the hall Joe told me it was okay to open my eyes again. I was startled to see more than a dozen people standing there. Someone hit the elevator button and it was there in seconds. As soon as it opened I walked to the back and slid to the ground, crying and making noises that only a broken mind can make. 

Christina was waiting for me in the lobby, she came running over to me, but I clung to the officer.  

“Joe,” I sobbed into his shoulder. I had never met this man before, and I have never seen him since, but I felt connected to him. He saw the horror that I had seen. He did not feel the weight of it, as he did not spend countless hours, multiple days, weeks on end knowing that person, but he did see the last scene I would ever see of Philip. Joe held me while I cried, my sister waiting patiently next to us. At some point Christina took me, and I heaved and gasped for air against her shoulder. 

The car ride was a blur.  I was quietly crying, shaking from horror, and maybe from the cold. I had not grabbed a jacket, and it was December. My body seemed completely disconnected from my brain at this point, and it took weeks for certain sensations to come back. I can not tell you how long that ride was.  I think we took a wrong turn at one point, Christina and David trying to find their way home in the dark. We arrived and they helped walk me inside.  We walked past the couch where Philip and I took my favorite photo together.  They sat me down on the couch. I started screaming.  The wordless, endless scream only stopped when I drew breath, otherwise it continued on, for minutes.

At some point my parents walked in. My mom was crying and tried to hold me. My dad told me to take a deep breath and stop screaming. I didn’t listen and my dad yelled to be heard. The scream turned into a blank stare, my mouth hung open, soundlessly screaming at the wall. Words of comfort bounced off me. Sleep was never going to be an option, and at one point my dad took his turn holding me. 

“Maybe he was cleaning his gun, buddy,” he suggested. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“An accident?” I repeated. My mind, running a million miles a minute.  Was it possible?  The click-click, boom happened so fast.  Maybe he was cleaning it? This made it better somehow, but also worse. “Poor Philip,” I groaned, my stomach flipping over dangerously. 

“Could’ve been,” he said.

My mind was racing. Running faster than it had in my entire life. It seemed unlikely that he could accidentally shoot himself in the head. Maybe the hand, the leg, the foot. I thought of all possibilities. He didn’t seem upset, so maybe that checked out. Maybe it somehow went off in a wrong way he didn’t expect? At some point I texted my boss. I told her my boyfriend shot himself in the head while I was asleep in the other room. I put my phone down for a minute. His best friend, Kayla, lived in Mississippi. I had to tell her. I tried calling her 14 times. She was asleep. It could wait. 

At some point I moved from the couch to a bed. I laid there, sobbing, shaking, miserable for what was left of the night. My body seemed out of my control. I was massively thirsty, but hunger was nowhere to be found. Sleep would elude me for days. When I did drift, my body would jerk, and I found myself screaming until I was awake. Every small sound I jumped at, and every loud sound I screamed at.

It took over a week for my stomach to return to somewhat normal.

I lost 11 pounds in 6 days.