So last month, I went on a backpacking trip across Europe with my friends and family~ We went to nine countries over a one month period with only 3 t-shirts and 2 pairs of shorts! The first half of the trip was super fun and I played so hard that I fractured my ankle in France (which was not cool). I still remember the day I fractured it. It was bastille day, the day the truck ran over at least 84 people in Nice. It scared me tbh, to be so close to a terrorist attack. To say that it put me on edge would be a definite understatement. I remember thinking to myself that I couldn't imagine being there or living close to it.

Just a week later, I was in Munich, Germany. If that rings any bells, you've guessed it. I was there, at the shooting, on the day of the mass shooting at the mall and mcdonalds. It was chaos. It happened while my friends and I had just finished shopping and were about to head back. Everything is a blur now but what I will never forget is the sudden fear in everyone's eyes and the running. Oh god the running.

I can still hear and feel it fresh in my mind everytime I close my eyes. We had just heard that there was a shooter and were trying to regroup to walk back to the train station as fast as we could. And then I heard a woman's voice say "Oh my god everyone's running," and then another person: "Run," he said, and I could still remember clearly the tremble and panic in his voice, "RUN!" Everything after that was a blur. I can't remember hearing any gunshots but my friends said they did. It was like all the screaming voices were a vortex in my brain. My vision became a tunnel and I lost all peripheral vision. I remember seeing people fall left and right and getting trampled while they screamed for help. I remember the seering pain in my fractured ankle and how much I wanted to just stop but I knew that I couldn't because this wasn't a ing joke.

I had never run so fast or felt so much fear in my entire life. I can still see the image of people getting out of their cars stuck in traffic and booking it. I can't remember how long we ran for but eventually we saw a large parking garage and ran in. The security guards were really taken aback by us but seeing the panic in our eyes, they opened the door to the emergency hallway and led us up the stairs without question.

They first led us into a very small, narrow hallway. The entire thing was white and my group alone filled up half of it. My friend, who is only 15, and had a knee pain syndrome was having a panic attack and she couldn't breathe. She was one of the people who fell and got trampled a bit before we pulled her up and made her keep running. I held her hand the entire time to calm her down. In that hallway, that would have cornered us if the shooter came, we were trapped. Everyone sat down and prayed that we would survive. I remember being unable to stop the tears from falling. Never before had I cried from sheer terror. Even the thought of it still makes my chest clench.

I still remember that liberating freedom when the door at the other end opened and a woman's voice said to come into the store, that it was very safe inside. At that moment, I thought it was the voice of an angel that god had sent to save us. And trust me, I am not a very religious person. We were led up the stairs but a few of us, including myself, got separated because we were too slow (ankles still fractured you see). I couldn't see other people in my group until the store security told everyone to gather together on the fifth floor about an hour later. The store was put under lockdown, no one it or out. I was officially separated from my family, who were waiting at the train station (where there was also panic), with no way of finding out if they were okay because their phones don't work out of the US.

That night, around midnight they released the lock but gave us the option to stay for a bit, which we did. Around 2am, they told us that we had to leave, even though there were possibly 2 shooters still on the loose (we found out later that there was only one shooter and that he had already killed himself). There were no taxis because the rest of the city was as frantic as we were. That walk back to regroup was hands down the scariest walk of my life. Every sound, every light, every movement made me flich in fear. The 6 minute walk felt like hours and I remember crying in relief when I finally saw the name of the hotel our group decided to regroup at. "Hotel Luitpold."

The hotel manager was kind enough to let us, a group of over 120, sleep in the lobby even though the hotel was booked full.

I still feel the PTSD. I freeze whenever I hear the sound of a siren and I panic when I hear loud, sudden noises. It scares me to know that this will last, that there is no cure for ptsd. I know that it will get better over time but even now that I'm home, everything still puts me on edge.

Honestly I thought about leaving AFF (amongst a lot of other things) because of it. It seems really unrelated, but because of the effect the trauma had on me, i felt like i was unable to do anything. To stay in to make a poster when the sound of even a simple room fan scared me made no sense to me. I couldn't find inspiration to do anything. I ended up staying because of my obligation to a shop that I've been working at for the past 8 months. I didn't want to go on a whole monthlong hiatus just to let them down and tell them that i was leaving. just this morning, however, a person from my past on aff, who misunderstood me and ended up harassing me without even realizing what she was doing, came back into my life, in a way that i can't even avoid her. I know she's a nice person and won't try to affect me in any way, but the fact that she's right there in a place I will have to continue associating with, makes me feel trapped. It's like everything is going on at once. I don't even know what to do anymore.