Thank you. I have a PTSD diagnosis and have gone through years of specialized therapy and meticulous medication management to keep me functional. My “trauma” isn’t something I brag about, and I often feel apologetic about how confusing or worrisome my flashbacks appear to others. Many terrible, horrible parts of life aren’t trauma, and that is okay. Grief is a horrific beast to navigate, for instance, even if it doesn’t always equate to trauma.
I get frustrated with the idea that anyone whose pet cat ran away or whose mom was reluctant to use their neopronouns also “has trauma” in the same way someone living with PTSD does.
I remember a lot of whining from the Christian fundamentalists back in the day about how hard they had it with kids who couldn't pray in school or who were leaning about demon evolution. Who pissed and moaned about having to put up with living with liberal laws that don't anywhere approximate the craziness we have today with the woke Democrats. Wussyism is universal, they were wussier back then, now the progressives take the biscuit.
I really think that most people's lives are so easy these days that it is making everyone go collectively insane.
I think about my grandparents, who were impoverished Transylvanian peasants in the early 20th century. They went through a lot to immigrate to America in 1912, and their lives were very hard - my grandpa worked as a coal miner and later in a steel mill; my grandma had nine children, of which three died in infancy, and raised them all in an 1100 SF house, while growing all their vegetables and raising chickens on a 1/4 acre city lot. Yet I do not think the word "trauma" was even in their vocabulary. That was just...life, in those days. You sucked it up, and you got on with it, because you had to.
I used to read the "Little House" books to my kids every night. In "Little Town on the Prairie," things are finally looking up for the Ingalls family; after nearly starving to death the winter before, the weather has been favorable and they are anticipating a great harvest, when an enormous flock of migrating blackbirds comes through and devours all the corn and oats. Laura complains about how they always have to fight something - there's always some sort of disaster ruining things. Ma shrugs and tells her "This earthly life is a battle. If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures." Then Pa shoots a bunch of the blackbirds and Ma fries them up for dinner, and bakes some of them into a pie.
I think people in past times were better at just sucking it up and getting on with it, because they had no other option. Today, our lives are easier and more luxurious than literally any time in human history - and yet people claim to be "traumatized" because they had to be polite to the Trump-voting uncle at Thanksgiving or because they had to get a pap smear and it reminded them that we can't actually change our reproductive organs into something else by using weird made-up pronouns.
I remember those stories and I'd forgotten about the knife story. People who understand what real trauma is haven't the foggiest fucking clue what it feels like. The thing that I didnt understand about Alice Ripley's experience was that ar the time we were in class together the media was rife with stories about the dangers of crazy fans. John Lennon had been assassinated by one; Hinckley had shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster; and some no-name TV actress had been killed by a fan. As someone planning a career in the performing arts, didn't she pay attention? Maybe she thought teenage girls were safer. Well, they engage in character assassination. All because they're little feewings were hurt.
You are one of the most amazingly resilient people I know. Someone who never lost her love for humanity no matter what happened. When MeToo became a thing I suspected many women and girls were making up tales of rape and sexual abuse to be part of the 'sisterhood' and for the attention. One young woman recited her alleged rape 'resume' *proudly* as though she was boasting of accomplishments. And I thiught, I'll bet you've never been raped and wouldn't be so proud if you had been. I began really doubting MeToo, especially when all the real stories had been told and the rest were just whiny-ass crap about a guy asking them out or getting a little handsy or whatever.
It doesn't surprise me you joke about Tom's death. My family laughed a lot when my dad died--a week before Christmas--but only out of love, sharing funny stories about him with others, joking while picking out his coffin that he was hanging over our shoulders screaming, "$10,000 for a COFFIN? Don't you dare! Whaddaya think, money grows on trees? Just stick me in an old packing crate!" Humour is just one of the many ways we deal with grief and my father would have been laughing along with us if Mom died first. That's how we roll. 😉
Okay there you go again. How am I supposed to get out of the bedroom and get my day going when my head is so swollen now from your kind words I can’t get out the door?
Sadly, yes there are woman out there that have made up stories about rape or sexual harassment. It makes it harder on those who actually have been a victim of such crime.
However, not everyone reacts the same way. There have been some events in my life that I would attempt to use humor to deal with it.
For instance, Do you remember how devastated I was when my husband died in 2013?
Where even now I still cry from time to time, often when I tell the story I end it with a bit of humor because all the trauma drama of it starts getting to me.
If you remember our anniversary was the following Friday after the Wednesday he passed.
I often tell people, this is true, the Monday before he passed I reminded him that our anniversary was on Friday. I asked him if he knew what I wanted. He of course asked me what it was. I replied YOU. Then he died the following Wednesday . The humor comes in when I point out how far a man will go NOT to give you an anniversary present.
However,on June 19th when everyone is celebrating Juneteenth, I’m remembering Tom’s passing.
Anyway: Like you I also wondered about the “Me Too” moment.
I have met many people male and female that have some tragic stories of a lifetime full of sexual abuse. Sadly it seems once someone has damaged a child in that way it leaves a mark for other predators to sniff out.
I’m just fortunate that I have figured out a way to overcome it. Although going through all the different types of abuse I went through I believe did leave a mark that triggers me to unconsciously or consciously sabotage myself when it comes to my own success.
I did however learn to love myself, I have experienced true joy, I consider myself fortunate there.
Also: I may have had only a few friends in school, they are the greatest friends a person can be fortunate enough to have. My daughter is named after one of them. NICOLE.
You already know about a lot of my life. You and I were high school friends and you witnessed some of it. I didn’t know when I told you about my home life how it deeply affected you until we hooked up again as adults on social media.
I remember telling a friend of mine a couple years back who actually fought in one of the more recent wars not sure which one. He also had a job when he got home from the war where he had witnessed A lot of trauma. When he heard about a lot of the stuff I’ve been through dealing with abuse he responded how do you survive all that?
Point is, when going through it you basically deal with it one day at a time, often one moment at a time. You don’t notice that you start shaking the moment you walk through the school doors because you don’t know what’s coming next. Until someone who walks in the doors with you notices and points it out.
You don’t notice how horrific you’re being treated at home until someone who has a so called “normal “ home life points it out.
You also don’t understand when you’re telling your work peer during a nice lunch you spend together about how your father admitted he plotted to kill you .Confirming to you a bad experience you had had as a child. I felt that he was trying to get me to make a move towards a knife he just slammed into the dining room table. He dared me to grab it. I knew that if I even look that way he would kill me and call it self defense. I seen the look of horror on my friend’s face as I told her that story. I realize, oh that’s not normal.
How one responds to these events is up to the individual. You can’t always choose what life throws at you. You can choose how you respond to them, you can choose how it affects you. I remind myself of that when life starts to get me down.
I’m disabled now, many things I can no longer do. I’m focusing on what I can do instead.
I remind my adult children when they’re upset and start talking violence to think about the aftermath of it. Ask did it get me anywhere? They begin to realize that there is better healthier ways to deal with anger. I believe the problem is we fail to teach our children a better way.
Thank you. I have a PTSD diagnosis and have gone through years of specialized therapy and meticulous medication management to keep me functional. My “trauma” isn’t something I brag about, and I often feel apologetic about how confusing or worrisome my flashbacks appear to others. Many terrible, horrible parts of life aren’t trauma, and that is okay. Grief is a horrific beast to navigate, for instance, even if it doesn’t always equate to trauma.
I get frustrated with the idea that anyone whose pet cat ran away or whose mom was reluctant to use their neopronouns also “has trauma” in the same way someone living with PTSD does.
Victimhood is the currency of socialism, and it is easily counterfeited.
I remember a lot of whining from the Christian fundamentalists back in the day about how hard they had it with kids who couldn't pray in school or who were leaning about demon evolution. Who pissed and moaned about having to put up with living with liberal laws that don't anywhere approximate the craziness we have today with the woke Democrats. Wussyism is universal, they were wussier back then, now the progressives take the biscuit.
I really think that most people's lives are so easy these days that it is making everyone go collectively insane.
I think about my grandparents, who were impoverished Transylvanian peasants in the early 20th century. They went through a lot to immigrate to America in 1912, and their lives were very hard - my grandpa worked as a coal miner and later in a steel mill; my grandma had nine children, of which three died in infancy, and raised them all in an 1100 SF house, while growing all their vegetables and raising chickens on a 1/4 acre city lot. Yet I do not think the word "trauma" was even in their vocabulary. That was just...life, in those days. You sucked it up, and you got on with it, because you had to.
I used to read the "Little House" books to my kids every night. In "Little Town on the Prairie," things are finally looking up for the Ingalls family; after nearly starving to death the winter before, the weather has been favorable and they are anticipating a great harvest, when an enormous flock of migrating blackbirds comes through and devours all the corn and oats. Laura complains about how they always have to fight something - there's always some sort of disaster ruining things. Ma shrugs and tells her "This earthly life is a battle. If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures." Then Pa shoots a bunch of the blackbirds and Ma fries them up for dinner, and bakes some of them into a pie.
I think people in past times were better at just sucking it up and getting on with it, because they had no other option. Today, our lives are easier and more luxurious than literally any time in human history - and yet people claim to be "traumatized" because they had to be polite to the Trump-voting uncle at Thanksgiving or because they had to get a pap smear and it reminded them that we can't actually change our reproductive organs into something else by using weird made-up pronouns.
Wish I could like this about 100 times. Extremely well put!
I remember those stories and I'd forgotten about the knife story. People who understand what real trauma is haven't the foggiest fucking clue what it feels like. The thing that I didnt understand about Alice Ripley's experience was that ar the time we were in class together the media was rife with stories about the dangers of crazy fans. John Lennon had been assassinated by one; Hinckley had shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster; and some no-name TV actress had been killed by a fan. As someone planning a career in the performing arts, didn't she pay attention? Maybe she thought teenage girls were safer. Well, they engage in character assassination. All because they're little feewings were hurt.
You are one of the most amazingly resilient people I know. Someone who never lost her love for humanity no matter what happened. When MeToo became a thing I suspected many women and girls were making up tales of rape and sexual abuse to be part of the 'sisterhood' and for the attention. One young woman recited her alleged rape 'resume' *proudly* as though she was boasting of accomplishments. And I thiught, I'll bet you've never been raped and wouldn't be so proud if you had been. I began really doubting MeToo, especially when all the real stories had been told and the rest were just whiny-ass crap about a guy asking them out or getting a little handsy or whatever.
It doesn't surprise me you joke about Tom's death. My family laughed a lot when my dad died--a week before Christmas--but only out of love, sharing funny stories about him with others, joking while picking out his coffin that he was hanging over our shoulders screaming, "$10,000 for a COFFIN? Don't you dare! Whaddaya think, money grows on trees? Just stick me in an old packing crate!" Humour is just one of the many ways we deal with grief and my father would have been laughing along with us if Mom died first. That's how we roll. 😉
Okay there you go again. How am I supposed to get out of the bedroom and get my day going when my head is so swollen now from your kind words I can’t get out the door?
Sadly, yes there are woman out there that have made up stories about rape or sexual harassment. It makes it harder on those who actually have been a victim of such crime.
However, not everyone reacts the same way. There have been some events in my life that I would attempt to use humor to deal with it.
For instance, Do you remember how devastated I was when my husband died in 2013?
Where even now I still cry from time to time, often when I tell the story I end it with a bit of humor because all the trauma drama of it starts getting to me.
If you remember our anniversary was the following Friday after the Wednesday he passed.
I often tell people, this is true, the Monday before he passed I reminded him that our anniversary was on Friday. I asked him if he knew what I wanted. He of course asked me what it was. I replied YOU. Then he died the following Wednesday . The humor comes in when I point out how far a man will go NOT to give you an anniversary present.
However,on June 19th when everyone is celebrating Juneteenth, I’m remembering Tom’s passing.
Anyway: Like you I also wondered about the “Me Too” moment.
I have met many people male and female that have some tragic stories of a lifetime full of sexual abuse. Sadly it seems once someone has damaged a child in that way it leaves a mark for other predators to sniff out.
I’m just fortunate that I have figured out a way to overcome it. Although going through all the different types of abuse I went through I believe did leave a mark that triggers me to unconsciously or consciously sabotage myself when it comes to my own success.
I did however learn to love myself, I have experienced true joy, I consider myself fortunate there.
Also: I may have had only a few friends in school, they are the greatest friends a person can be fortunate enough to have. My daughter is named after one of them. NICOLE.
You already know about a lot of my life. You and I were high school friends and you witnessed some of it. I didn’t know when I told you about my home life how it deeply affected you until we hooked up again as adults on social media.
I remember telling a friend of mine a couple years back who actually fought in one of the more recent wars not sure which one. He also had a job when he got home from the war where he had witnessed A lot of trauma. When he heard about a lot of the stuff I’ve been through dealing with abuse he responded how do you survive all that?
Point is, when going through it you basically deal with it one day at a time, often one moment at a time. You don’t notice that you start shaking the moment you walk through the school doors because you don’t know what’s coming next. Until someone who walks in the doors with you notices and points it out.
You don’t notice how horrific you’re being treated at home until someone who has a so called “normal “ home life points it out.
You also don’t understand when you’re telling your work peer during a nice lunch you spend together about how your father admitted he plotted to kill you .Confirming to you a bad experience you had had as a child. I felt that he was trying to get me to make a move towards a knife he just slammed into the dining room table. He dared me to grab it. I knew that if I even look that way he would kill me and call it self defense. I seen the look of horror on my friend’s face as I told her that story. I realize, oh that’s not normal.
How one responds to these events is up to the individual. You can’t always choose what life throws at you. You can choose how you respond to them, you can choose how it affects you. I remind myself of that when life starts to get me down.
I’m disabled now, many things I can no longer do. I’m focusing on what I can do instead.
I remind my adult children when they’re upset and start talking violence to think about the aftermath of it. Ask did it get me anywhere? They begin to realize that there is better healthier ways to deal with anger. I believe the problem is we fail to teach our children a better way.