If I could switch places with the victim, I would.
Because, at the end of the day, I failed a person's life.
The event happened in September of 2016.
I was diagnosed with PTSD in May of 2017.
Being a registered first aider, one night I was on duty
and I was called outside because someone had been attacked.
All I knew was he was part of a rival gang at one point.
Three cars pulled up and a number of assailants got out of the car
and attacked him with anything and everything.
The scene I saw was quite horrific.
Being a first aider, you just expect to see cuts, bruises, bashed arms.
You don't expect to see someone stabbed multiple times.
I was trying to deal with that in such a way that
I could keep him alive until the paramedics arrived.
I had a phone call from my workplace the next day
and I asked how was the victim, was he OK,
was there anything that could have been done for him more,
where was he so I could go and visit him.
And they said, "I'm sorry to inform you of this but he died last night.
"He succumbed to his injuries."
I was absolutely shocked.
I didn't expect it,
to be told he didn't last that long after I left him.
At first, I just shrugged it off and said,
"This is just everyday life," but then, nearly a year later,
literally just started having nightmares from it all the time
and it just kept repeating in my brain
like a constant video that never stops.
It's still up here now so
I try and keep doing cosplay to take myself away from it.
I actually prefer to cosplay characters that allow me
to escape the normal world and become someone else.
I just thought, at first thought, it was just bog-standard depression,
it'll subside and I could deal with it like usual.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
It finished off my personality.
I didn't feel like Thomas any more. I felt like someone else,
like I was just a passenger.
It's a constant stress reaction.
Every time a trigger event occurs,
it will set off a flashback in the memory.
If I didn't have cosplay, I would probably feel very down, very low.
If I stay indoors, it's not going to help me.
It's a way for me to try and forget about my life
and concentrate on becoming another character.
Some people do think of you as weak, with any mental health,
regardless, because, at the end of the day,
they think it's some form of attention-seeking.
People in the cosplay community are more accepting to you and
your mental health.
At the end of the day, those people understand what's going
through your mind and they can help you.
Ghost is a character I cosplay from the popular game series
called Call of Duty.
It's a character that is mostly a bad ass, in my ways of putting it!
He has the same type of background story to myself.
He suffers from some form of PTSD as well.
He's a soldier that has gone through a traumatic event,
but he hasn't given up. He's still fighting a war,
he's still fighting for what he believes in.
It has opened up me more because a lot of people normally just hide
behind their characters but, for me, I come forward with my characters.
When I put on the mask,
I know full well that I'm not Thomas any more. I am actually Ghost.
If I actually did stop cosplaying,
it probably would impact my life quite heavily.
It would make me feel that I've lost something about me.
I'm constantly, every day, fighting a battle up here
and I believe that cosplay is my way of fighting back.
Cosplay has changed my life.
It has made me feel more confident in myself.
If I didn't do it, I wouldn't be here.