Responders Haunted By Pulse One Year Later

Basic Instinct to Save Lives Haunts Them After Pulse
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 11, 2017


Most humans are programmed to run from danger. The need to stay alive is a basic instinct. Some humans are programmed to run toward the danger. The need to help others stay alive is just as much an instinct within them.

A year ago it happened during a time when on man decided to kill as many others as possible at the Pulse Nightclub.

USA Today has a section devoted to the survivors and responders from DearWorld, like Eatonville Police Officer Omar Delgado.

Most of the people at that nightclub were running for their lives and trying to find their friends. All of the people rushing to the unknown horror awaiting them, were on a mission to save as many strangers as possible.

What makes people like Officer Delgado do such a thing? Not just during one horrifying event, but to choose to do it as a job?

We have far too many placing such a value on others lives, to the point where they were prepared to die for them, turning into someone who can no longer value their own lives.

“Each memory stings sharper than a slap, how can there be a healing of the heart?” Peter Meinke

As we approach one year since the Pulse nightclub shooting … 90.7 reached out to Florida’s Poet Laureate, Peter Meinke to see if he’d write a poem to mark the occasion. And he did.

Pulse six months It is an anniversary no one wanted to have.

Definition of anniversary
1: the annual recurrence of a date marking a notable event a wedding anniversary; broadly : a date that follows such an event by a specified period of time measured in units other than years the 6-month anniversary of the accident
2: the celebration of an anniversary

A remembrance is not always something someone wants to have either.

Definition of remembrance
1: the state of bearing in mind
2 a : the ability to remember : memory b : the period over which one's memory extends
3: an act of recalling to mind
4: a memory of a person, thing, or event
5a : something that serves to keep in or bring to mind : reminder b : commemoration, memorial c : a greeting or gift recalling or expressing friendship or affection

Let all that sink in for a moment. Ready to sacrifice their own lives for total strangers ending up not being able to find something worth living for? What happened?

That question is asked all the time when we have men and women coming home from combat doing a job that they knew could cost them their lives. It is asked of current military members when they continue to do it knowing the price they too many have to pay.

We hardly ever ask that when police officers, firefighters and other first responders suffer for doing those jobs.

Why? Aren't they just as human as the rest of the people the majority of the humans depend on for their own lives?

We were stunned when regular people put their lives on the line to save their friends. Even more so when they stopped to help strangers they could have simply ran by but did everything possible to help them get to safety. We were not so stunned by the police officers and firefighters doing their jobs.

Have we become so hardened that we think "Oh well. They get paid to do it" instead of being able to simply be in awe of what they decided to do with their own lives? After all, they could have chosen any other profession that would not be do dangerous.

The most difficult thing for me to understand, or accept, is the simple fact that they valued life so much, they were willing to die, but did not value their own enough to find what they needed to recover from those jobs.

How is this possible? This is PTSD Awareness Month which began seven years ago and the 27th is PTSD Awareness Day. Yet for the people who put their lives on the line, are still unaware of what PTSD is, why they have it, or what they can do to heal. Most do not even know they can heal!

How about tomorrow we send our responders that message? Let them know we will help them heal and how much they do mean to us! They do not have to suffer alone. 

This is a day that will haunt them for the rest of their lives and they need help to kick the crap out of the ghosts and stop the sound of the cell phones from ringing in their dreams!