Open Journal #33

full collection links 1- 10 . 11-20 . 21-30

This is going to be a slight change of tone, mostly because i am writing this from a place of rage. 

A couple of weeks ago i posted a journal entry and talked about a terrible week of things happening one after the other. I  included this …

… The next day, my friend in the mental hospital (let’s call him Fred)(well it’s his name)(well it is highly unlikely you are ever going to meet me let alone him), suffered a series of seizures and had to be sedated for 24 hours to avoid them escalating and killing him …

Only i didn’t call him Fred i used his real christian name. I remember almost using a fake name but i felt it made him kind of unseen and i didn’t like that much, for whatever reason at the time, i used his real name. He doesn’t come here, it made no difference and it seemed unimportant and as i explained unlikely that anyone would meet me or him.

What in fact happened is that somebody here read it and emailed it to him. Someone knew him and sent it anonymously to him. Asking if it was him and did he know it was posted on a public site? No he didn’t but he does now.

i also, by way of contextualising a funny aside, explained the kind of things he deals with, in the context of this site very unremarkable but only as a way of explaining how a funny misunderstanding had occurred. 

I have apologised for my error and realise i should have been more careful. Hopefully our friendship will survive.

The person who did this i would like to destroy. 

If it was out of friendly concern, then why would you not consider what was mentioned in the post about his current medical condition and not stress him any further. If you are a member of this site why not message me privately and say that you think you can identify the person and ask me to reconsider using his name. I would have of course immediately complied and seen that it was an error. 

I am struggling not to think of it as a malicious act, any way that i view it.

It goes against what i imagined the tone and culture of this site to be, one of support and care. I was merely sharing the stress of dealing with one dreadful thing after another. Clearly i had no bad intent whatsoever, and i fail to see what it could achieve other than upset.

As a result i am struggling to restore a sense of trust between my friend and i, a hard earned, years long journey of friendship that helps both of us in our current situations, which you have now jeopardised. 

At the very least i am considering making this the last journal post i ever do on this site as clearly this is not a safe and trusted place. I don’t trust anybody who can’t even use their own name, any friend who did that out of concern would identify themselves.

At worst i am considering walking away and never coming back. I don’t like the idea of doing that but i am faced with the possibility of one of the people here that i talk to being the kind of person who would do something like this.

Even now i will not abandon the honest place i am trying to stand in, i have just had two very long days of intensive therapy and came face to face with a lot of my failings as a result of trauma. One of the most basic being my inability to trust people and the struggle i have ever doing that. Gotta tell ya this hasn’t helped.

I have every intention of showing my friend Fred this post so there is no need to send him a copy. I don’t appreciate what you have done to my friendship and i certainly think you are an idiot for not considering the impact of your decision. I don’t even care if you thought you were doing him a favour, i wrote it, talk to me first. Did it read as if i was being mean or in any way negative? 

Also consider this, my friend has two people who support him, that’s it, two people to help him and to listen to him. Nobody else. I am one of them.

I am also aware that i could post this journal in a private area of the site but i believed it was important to engage with a wider group of people and discuss and debate the subject of abuse. The more it is discussed the more understanding and growth can occur in wider society. We don’t help the situation if we hide away and discuss it in huddles in the corner. 

I can’t decide what to do, i know what i want to do, i am fairly sure that it is a response from the heart of my trauma and my therapist has taught me that there is a new way i can think and act. Just not sure i want to at the moment, not sure i have it in me, not sure this person warrants a new approach. 

Maybe i should sleep on it.

svf