For those of you who still recall who I am, as I’ve not been around much this past year, I have been meaning to write this for while now but never quite getting around to it as these are never “fun” discussions to have. So I apologize for the considerable delay as I do consider many of you to be among my friends and I do feel you all deserve to know at least a portion of that puzzle and why you have not seen me around much in awhile for the last year. I also apologize for it having a rather dark angle rather than the more upbeat replies I usually try to author, but not every story can be a happy one! But before it goes unsaid, I really appreciate all the hard work our Webmaster, FlyingRon, and other admins have invested into this site in my absence as I was simply not in any condition stress-wise to handle the site migration this go round (though I helped our Founder with the last major migration, so I know just how much work goes into the process)!
While earlier this year I had to take leave as I was investing a good many months worth of my limited labor (for those who don’t know/remember me, I have considerable chronic health issues and physical disability...so, I’m a bit slow) upgrading and making repairs to our local amateur radio club’s Communications trailer, a club that I have also been the President of for the past several years here in Anderson, SC (though I’ll be stepping down for 2020 for reasons to follow). However, it was around late June (post Field Day) or early July this year that things really began unraveling for me in terms of my mental health. While I have always had to deal with episodes of depression that usually strike about every 4-5 years I had nonetheless gotten very good at pushing the depression back over the years and so that was manageable...I have always been very good at burying things deeper, at least until they could be buried no deeper.
However, the depression itself was really just a side effect to a far more sinister nemesis that has largely been running my life for the past 30+ years (literally my entire adult life and into my teens) and ever lurking just below the surface where it had been carefully buried for the past 36 years. That nemesis would be childhood Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD, also known as DTD or Developmental Trauma Disorder), and everything that comes with it in terms of emotional flashbacks, anxiety attacks, emotional dysregulation, and my tendency for dissociation when under severe stress. Starting in early September I began therapy for the C-PTSD though this is going to be a very long road as I’ll likely still be in therapy even a decade from now as you never truly recover due to the fact that my adolescent brain became wired for surviving an extraordinarily abusive environment and not exactly the world we actually live in and that severely distorts self-identity/ego, trust, romantic relationships, we tend to live fairly isolated lives due to social anxiety, as well as having severely impacting my physical health (nearly all of my ongoing chronic health issues were caused by the abuse in my teens and are exacerbated by the eternally elevated stress that accompanies such — my physical health literally collapsed at age 18 before I had even graduated high school).
In my case, the story began at age 13 after a rather traumatic move from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, leaving behind all my close friends, to a rural north Florida school where I was never accepted by fellow students nor many faculty. As such, I was quickly ostracized by my peers cutting me off from potential friends (save for the one other ostracized teen I befriended — and the thing about rural schools is that there are seldom opportunities for friendship outside of school) from grades 7-12 and soon thereafter the bullying, pranking, acts meant to humiliate, name calling, property theft and destruction, rumors, etc. began in earnest by a considerable number of my peers as well as a number of the faculty. Over those six years alone I would estimate between 3-4 incidents for each hour of school or around 25,000 incidents over those six years, most were, of course, minor incidents but even the minor incidents keep you forever on edge and forever on guard for the next threat. That faculty joined in only further encouraged the other students as the bullying could go on with impunity and with the knowledge of the school administration, but nobody ever considered bullying to be of any real consequence (in fact, the only punishment for bullying I can recall was an occasion where *I* was punished for my reaction to a group of bullies...severe bullying/mobbing was OK, just not trying to defend yourself). Like most teens, I compartmentalized the abuse well and never told my parents since there was nothing that could realistically be done (no other school to go to, practically speaking, nor can one reasonably get a no contact order that includes 50% of the school) and so I bore that burden alone for six years.
By the time I graduated at 18 my physical health had already collapsed, hence most of the chronic illnesses I live with to this day, including severe chronic pain and Fibromyalgia. And one of the crueler realities of childhood abuse is that it leaves us highly vulnerable to future abuse in our adult relationships. We tend to be the rescuers or codependent in romantic relationships and for whatever reason abusive partners tend to be drawn to us, and us to them, much like moths to a flame and our highly empathic nature (a product of the abuse) tends to allow us to see the positives in others in full TechniColor but leaves us extraordinarily blind to the negatives until much too late. So we tend to pretty reliably end up in relationships with oftentimes very abusive, even violent, partners. Depending upon which we fear most, the loneliness or the abuse, we then either go from one abusive partner to the next or, after a particularly violent and/or abusive relationship, we wind up forever swearing off all future relationships entirely to protect ourselves from further abuse which makes for an exceedingly lonely life as an adult (which has been my path as it also tends to destroy what capacity for trust may have previously remained) as there is no opportunity for companionship nor children for many of us (at this point in my life, it’s much too late for me to have children, particularly given my health, though I had always most wanted to be a father in this life). As a result, I have avoided any possibility of romantic relationships for over 25 years after a particularly violent partner in my early 20s while in college (she likely had undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, also the product of severe childhood abuse), and with that relationship so went the last of my ability to truly trust others. You see so many dreams die along the way that others take for granted or even discard as though they mean nothing and, as one can imagine, that is very painful as such are things we can never have in this life.
If ever people wonder why we have school shootings, this is the number one reason why. One can not fathom just how much rage and anger a teen can bottle up after tens of thousands of instances of abuse over the course of years with no viable or acceptable outlet for that rage nor means of available justice against one’s abusers, so it builds and builds, and you pray that the student (or yourself) will move or graduate before they reach their personal breaking point. At least I had a stable home to retreat to for half of each day, but many return to abusive families or have the bullying follow them home via social media and cyberbullying these days and they are at exceptionally high risk. If there were real justice after school shootings, we would also round up, arrest, and prosecute all the students and faculty who engaged in the bullying and prosecute them for the same exact crime. But, alas, like so many things in life, we blame the student, a victim too, who was bullied into a psychotic and suicidal breakdown and then wash our hands of all those years of abuse and it’s final cataclysmic result while we collectively act perplexed and wonder aloud what happened all while offering our collective “thoughts and prayers”. It is not a mystery, we create this epidemic ourselves by tolerating even extraordinary levels of bullying in our schools, even encouraging such in some instances (as with my experience of faculty encouraging the abuse) — teens are not meant to exist as islands unto themselves devoid of friends with only hate reflected back at them by their peers (it is NOT antisocial to refuse to socialize with one’s abusers, but you here that explanation a lot), such hate and isolation poisons and destroys both the soul and mind through no fault of the abused child.
But anyhow, that is the Cliff Notes version of my story and why I have been absent for a good while and will likely continue to be absent for some time as I still have a very long journey ahead. But I do wish that at some point in our not too distant future our society will learn to simply love one another for we are each unique in all of creation rather than continue practicing hate and judgement upon one another as the hate has to stop, but especially this sport of hating others we view as somehow different as though it were a sport!
While earlier this year I had to take leave as I was investing a good many months worth of my limited labor (for those who don’t know/remember me, I have considerable chronic health issues and physical disability...so, I’m a bit slow) upgrading and making repairs to our local amateur radio club’s Communications trailer, a club that I have also been the President of for the past several years here in Anderson, SC (though I’ll be stepping down for 2020 for reasons to follow). However, it was around late June (post Field Day) or early July this year that things really began unraveling for me in terms of my mental health. While I have always had to deal with episodes of depression that usually strike about every 4-5 years I had nonetheless gotten very good at pushing the depression back over the years and so that was manageable...I have always been very good at burying things deeper, at least until they could be buried no deeper.
However, the depression itself was really just a side effect to a far more sinister nemesis that has largely been running my life for the past 30+ years (literally my entire adult life and into my teens) and ever lurking just below the surface where it had been carefully buried for the past 36 years. That nemesis would be childhood Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD, also known as DTD or Developmental Trauma Disorder), and everything that comes with it in terms of emotional flashbacks, anxiety attacks, emotional dysregulation, and my tendency for dissociation when under severe stress. Starting in early September I began therapy for the C-PTSD though this is going to be a very long road as I’ll likely still be in therapy even a decade from now as you never truly recover due to the fact that my adolescent brain became wired for surviving an extraordinarily abusive environment and not exactly the world we actually live in and that severely distorts self-identity/ego, trust, romantic relationships, we tend to live fairly isolated lives due to social anxiety, as well as having severely impacting my physical health (nearly all of my ongoing chronic health issues were caused by the abuse in my teens and are exacerbated by the eternally elevated stress that accompanies such — my physical health literally collapsed at age 18 before I had even graduated high school).
In my case, the story began at age 13 after a rather traumatic move from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, leaving behind all my close friends, to a rural north Florida school where I was never accepted by fellow students nor many faculty. As such, I was quickly ostracized by my peers cutting me off from potential friends (save for the one other ostracized teen I befriended — and the thing about rural schools is that there are seldom opportunities for friendship outside of school) from grades 7-12 and soon thereafter the bullying, pranking, acts meant to humiliate, name calling, property theft and destruction, rumors, etc. began in earnest by a considerable number of my peers as well as a number of the faculty. Over those six years alone I would estimate between 3-4 incidents for each hour of school or around 25,000 incidents over those six years, most were, of course, minor incidents but even the minor incidents keep you forever on edge and forever on guard for the next threat. That faculty joined in only further encouraged the other students as the bullying could go on with impunity and with the knowledge of the school administration, but nobody ever considered bullying to be of any real consequence (in fact, the only punishment for bullying I can recall was an occasion where *I* was punished for my reaction to a group of bullies...severe bullying/mobbing was OK, just not trying to defend yourself). Like most teens, I compartmentalized the abuse well and never told my parents since there was nothing that could realistically be done (no other school to go to, practically speaking, nor can one reasonably get a no contact order that includes 50% of the school) and so I bore that burden alone for six years.
By the time I graduated at 18 my physical health had already collapsed, hence most of the chronic illnesses I live with to this day, including severe chronic pain and Fibromyalgia. And one of the crueler realities of childhood abuse is that it leaves us highly vulnerable to future abuse in our adult relationships. We tend to be the rescuers or codependent in romantic relationships and for whatever reason abusive partners tend to be drawn to us, and us to them, much like moths to a flame and our highly empathic nature (a product of the abuse) tends to allow us to see the positives in others in full TechniColor but leaves us extraordinarily blind to the negatives until much too late. So we tend to pretty reliably end up in relationships with oftentimes very abusive, even violent, partners. Depending upon which we fear most, the loneliness or the abuse, we then either go from one abusive partner to the next or, after a particularly violent and/or abusive relationship, we wind up forever swearing off all future relationships entirely to protect ourselves from further abuse which makes for an exceedingly lonely life as an adult (which has been my path as it also tends to destroy what capacity for trust may have previously remained) as there is no opportunity for companionship nor children for many of us (at this point in my life, it’s much too late for me to have children, particularly given my health, though I had always most wanted to be a father in this life). As a result, I have avoided any possibility of romantic relationships for over 25 years after a particularly violent partner in my early 20s while in college (she likely had undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, also the product of severe childhood abuse), and with that relationship so went the last of my ability to truly trust others. You see so many dreams die along the way that others take for granted or even discard as though they mean nothing and, as one can imagine, that is very painful as such are things we can never have in this life.
If ever people wonder why we have school shootings, this is the number one reason why. One can not fathom just how much rage and anger a teen can bottle up after tens of thousands of instances of abuse over the course of years with no viable or acceptable outlet for that rage nor means of available justice against one’s abusers, so it builds and builds, and you pray that the student (or yourself) will move or graduate before they reach their personal breaking point. At least I had a stable home to retreat to for half of each day, but many return to abusive families or have the bullying follow them home via social media and cyberbullying these days and they are at exceptionally high risk. If there were real justice after school shootings, we would also round up, arrest, and prosecute all the students and faculty who engaged in the bullying and prosecute them for the same exact crime. But, alas, like so many things in life, we blame the student, a victim too, who was bullied into a psychotic and suicidal breakdown and then wash our hands of all those years of abuse and it’s final cataclysmic result while we collectively act perplexed and wonder aloud what happened all while offering our collective “thoughts and prayers”. It is not a mystery, we create this epidemic ourselves by tolerating even extraordinary levels of bullying in our schools, even encouraging such in some instances (as with my experience of faculty encouraging the abuse) — teens are not meant to exist as islands unto themselves devoid of friends with only hate reflected back at them by their peers (it is NOT antisocial to refuse to socialize with one’s abusers, but you here that explanation a lot), such hate and isolation poisons and destroys both the soul and mind through no fault of the abused child.
But anyhow, that is the Cliff Notes version of my story and why I have been absent for a good while and will likely continue to be absent for some time as I still have a very long journey ahead. But I do wish that at some point in our not too distant future our society will learn to simply love one another for we are each unique in all of creation rather than continue practicing hate and judgement upon one another as the hate has to stop, but especially this sport of hating others we view as somehow different as though it were a sport!