Welcome to Brown Cafe, Corvette.
You obviously did everything right to come out of that situation unharmed. The dirtbag's dead, time to move on. Take your driving job back unless you know where you can make better money.
Good luck, hope that didn't sound insensitive.
Straight forward, yes, insensitive, nah.
First of all, I am glad that you are physically OK. I cannot imagine the emotional toll this has taken on you.
Now, this may sound a bit cold (it is not meant to) but I agree that the best thing for you at this point is to get back behind the wheel. I will explain by relaying a real life situation. My son had a friend commit suicide during the prom. The details are not important but I tell you this because it really affected David. He didn't want to do anything, talk to anybody or go anywhere, much less work. His mother and I let him work this out on his own. A week or so went by and he wanted to call in sick to work again and I told him that he needed to go to work. In fact, I told him I would be there in 10 minutes to pick him and bring him to work. I was trying to get some normalcy back in to his life and I thought work (Mickey D's) would get his mind off of what had happened. He was pissed at me but later thanked me as it did get his mind off of it and helped him to move on. Notice I didn't say forget--you never forget, but you do have to move on.
The only one who can make this decision for you is you but my advice is to get back behind the wheel.
Just one question. You said during the prom. Did you mean at the prom or while the prom was going on?
I agree with getting back in the saddle, but sometimes, some people need more time than others, though it's hard to say when too much time has elapsed.
I have to agree with Upstate on this one. You went through a traumatic experience that was of no fault of your own. But you have to move on. We had a driver that was held up delivering to an apartment (criminals are so stupid), but he was back at work the next day. The same thing happened to another driver in a Mall parking lot in the middle of the day, but he was back to work the next day. You just happened to come across an extreme nutcase, that shouldn't ever happen again.
+1
Upstate im glad your son got back to his normal life and im sure that was hard to see, but in my case its totally different and happened in the UPS truck where i have to try to get back in..The guy didnt want to steal anything from me he was wanting to die and he had his gun pointed at me with his finger on the trigger for 8 miles around 20 minutes..i thought he was going to kill me sooner or later..The thing i dont understand is UPS is all about saftey and i havent slept good at all since this happened and i get flashbacks all throughout the day so why would i wanna jump back into the UPS truck and i see something that reminds me of the situation or just think of it for acouple seconds then all the sudden i hit a car or someone..Then i would get fired and its all my fault
It sounds like there's more to your story. I mean the story of after this all happened. Your reply to Upstate that it was a job, sounds like you're not happy as a driver, even if this never occurred. If you're not happy being a driver (service provider), then you should move on to something that brings you joy. If you're honestly traumatized, I think the best thing to do is to get back into that pkg car and overcome your fear. Don't worry about UPS pushing you. Do your job, and before you know it, this will be an historic part of your life and another chapter in your book.
I've been on the business end of a gun before, as well, only I got shot. After about 2 weeks off, I went right back to doing what I was doing, where I had been doing it. For quite some length of time afterwards I was afraid everytime I saw someone that looked similar to the gunman, who btw was never captured. I eventually got over it all and am able to look back unafraid. This happened almost 25 years ago, and though I remember it vividly, it doesn't mess up my life. Don't let this thing that happened, screw you up.