Spin cycle

[jamesG.1]

ok, so a bunch of bad triggers and then feelings I'd thought I'd moved away from.

Decided that enough is enough re my normal (normal?) work and that taking on more was going to be really asking for trouble. So I went to the citizen's advice and then the jobcentre to organise benefits and away we go.

But what a wave of feelings!

I've spent too much of today in the past, agonizing over how I got here, looking at the neglect, abuse and sheer idiocy of those around me and getting a stunning panoramic view of what it has cost me.

I wonder if there is ever any regret, any guilt, shame or reflection? Almost certainly not. Is there ever? Very exhausted now, I felt it all again, intensly and I sobbed at the CAB, I guess I just wasn't expecting to be so supported and understood. I'm simply not used to anyone even trying to understand what I've experienced. It has changed of late. My  new connections with my old college pals here has been very different, totally unexpected and I have finally felt the love.

But looking back, as I'm sure so many of you have found, it's stunning how little help people offer. Overall I have found that my American friends have really shone over my British connections. They were always the first to offer support if I fired a distress flare online, while my british chums invariably just responded with something facile or dismissive.

PTSD, C_PTSD, make no mistake... it's serious stuff. But then you know that. But what never fails to astound me is how eager the uninformed are to wade in and damage you still further. It makes me astonishingly wary of people. If your friends can do that, what can strangers do?

It's very clear to me, reading the posts in here, that we are all of a kind. Kind for starters. We believed in norms of human kindness and were shocked into immobility by how different it could be. It can feel like you are the only ones on the road obeying the highway code. The only fool who catches people at a team "trust' workshop.

I left it way too late to look out for myself. Now I'm paying the price and it is finally going to be the state who looks out for me, hopefully. It's not ideal, but it's not full of the same tricks and traps that family used. I will sink or I will swim, mostly, on my own. If I am alone, I will be selfish, finally. I will care for those who understand, who have felt the same pain. They will be my people. You guys are my people. MY friend S, who has suffered so much herself and like me is hungry for a new life. P, who has escaped neglect and shame to shine like a lighthouse. And all the people who use their pain and hurt to make rocket fuel and blast their abusers and naysayers into a low orbit.

I'm proud of all of us in here. Everyday we weather feelings and pain that most can't see, or won't see and few would be able to bear. It brings a strange strength. We grow humanity like a blind person has enhanced hearing, we crave the real, the honest and the truly human. It can make the good people seem rarer, more unique than hen's teeth, but we do know, we really know what matters.

We will get better. There is no one on this forum that does not display what I am describing here. I see it all the time, even when the pain is so severe that the posts stream out fatser than a pressure hose. There is an emotional articulation that screams for a life yet to come.

It will come.

I promise you, it will come. The world does not belong to the cruel and the heartless, the cheap and the petty. It belongs to us. To beauty, a honesty and humanity.

We will have our bad days, but they will pass.

They will pass

[Rainagain]

I wish to associate myself with the words of the last speaker.

He said it all.

[thetruth]

I can identify with so much of this James. I really can.