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I am desperately lonely...

Ryder and Kai hug me good morning and then swirl under my feet and around my legs as I make them caramel and toffee porridge in the kitchen. They eat it faster than it took me to make it.

Zee sits out on the porch with his tea trying to recover from another late night of teen texting. He has friends all around the world - a true 24/7 community that he's happy with and fits into well.

The house is clean - as always - and well stocked. We moved in a couple of days ago so there are a few boxes that could still do with unpacking. But, it's nothing urgent.

I smile and hold my children whenever I can. I tickle them until they're in hysterics. I make sure they get sunlight and plenty to eat. I settle them down at night, and lay with the little one until he is asleep.

We have everything we need. Except I don't!

We're not running from anything anymore. We're safe. Except I'm not!

There is an unfathomable void inside me. Everything just disappears into it...

LTLTR

Good Day wonderful people.

I just spent 3 months in a place of safety: no phones; no emails; simple meals; green forests and the most amazing bird life I have ever seen.

Hypervigilance is 4/10. Social anxiety is 5/10. Etc. I can let my kids play in the garden without worrying obsessively about them. I am emotionally available to my new partner and my kids.

It was expensive and I couldn't have done it without the help of my family but I feel so much better. C-PTSD is an injury and like other injuries we can heal from it.

Take care...LTLTR

I'm running for my life. I've been on the road for days now, just a bag of clothes, a box of toys, two sleeping bags and my three sons.

We left early on a Friday morning. K is four years old, I couldn't see him lasting more than five hours strapped into his seat so I headed up the coast sure I'd find someplace to stopover for the night. Holiday season hadn't started so most places would have free rooms.

Two hours on the road and a thousand 'look sheep' and 'look cows' from K and R later we crashed off the highway. Everyone was OK but we were stranded. I Googled up a mechanic using Google Maps and My Location and he sent out a recovery vehicle for us. A Highway Patrol vehicle passed us by, turned around and then kept us company, hazards flashing, until the recovery vehicle arrived.

While I waited, I jacked up the front left side of the vehicle and crawled under to see what the damage was: the left steering arm had disconnected from the left wheel hub causing me to lose control of the steering. Fortunately, I'd managed to control the slide off the highway and not directly into an oncoming double- trailer freightliner.

The mechanic in the recovery vehicle managed to reattach the steering arm and we followed him back to his workshop to have it properly repaired. He took us into this beautiful village where he worked from. Deep, rich, green forests surrounded us and a long, large mountain range ran upwards from the edge of the village. Dams glistened through the trees.

After thoroughly repairing the vehicle, the mechanic informed me that the vehicle steering mechanism had been deliberately sabotaged. The steering arm joins the hub with a self-tightening but a cotter pin that runs through the bolt so that even if the but were to loosen it would never detach completely. For that to have happened, someone would have had to have removed the cotter pin and physically loosened the nut.

In his opinion someone had sabotaged the steering with the intention of causing an accident while the vehicle was being driven. They hadn't simply disabled the vehicle but had tried to ensure that I was injured or killed in a collision.

That made a great deal of sense. I'd been having problems with gangsters for a few months: breaking into my vehicle; stealing my headlamps, threatening me in the street and extorting money from my wife. Not one to shy from confrontation I'd stood them down on a number of occasions and filed a report with the police. In fact the night before we left, I'd challenged one of the gangsters to s ettle this, here and now, once and for all. He'd backed down but apparently had taken the dishonourable root of sabotaging my vehicle later that night.

But it wasn't gangsters or gang threats that I was running from. I was running from something far more evil, far more sinister, and more insidious than a knife fight.

I desperately just want to hike up into the mountains, just keep walking until I've passed on.

But who would cuddle my baby boy to sleep???

Hi

I replied to a thread over the weekend so I thought I'd better introduce myself.

I developed adult onset C-PTSD as a result of being exposed to my wife's developing psychiatric condition. It was an absolute nightmare living with her, but I thought I could help her. I thought that if I just tried harder, researched more, was more patient, got involved in her treatment, that I could help her.



8 years later I'm a wreck, literally. My psychologist told me that it was officially a rainy day and that I should get the * out of Dodge. I packed my sons, a bag of clothes, a box of toys and we hit the road. We were on the road for four days and now we've settled in a quiet, coastal village.

I have no idea what is going to happen to me...

LTLTR