Closest I can come to re-introduction

I keep wanting to write some re-introduction post, but there’s not a lot of point. Hi, I’m the blog author, John Palmer. I’m a broken brained gimp who is a terrible friend, and I have depression and PTSD.

You’re going to hurt me. Seriously: you’re going to say things that hurt, sometimes just reading what you write hurts, sometimes, just existing hurts, and you’re on the periphery, and it still hurts that you’re there. You can’t avoid that, unless you don’t interact with me at all. And, I’m going to forgive it all, and try to ignore it, because it’s not your fault. You don’t know better, and I’m not willing to tell you enough so you *do* know better.

Why? Well… there’s something that’s entirely absent in our culture right now: compassion. It’s gone. No one wants to talk about it. Strength and forcefulness and “being a nasty (expletive deleted,)” that’s cool and neat and powerful – caring about others is for losers, right?

Anyway, if I need help, when dealing with people, because they hurt me, and I need to explain the pain they cause? Yeah, I’m not going to do that, not yet, you think I’m stupid enough to set myself up? again? Look: I was the butt of one of the biggest jokes I can imagine: this woman pretended to care about me, and understand that I had a lot of problems and was in constant pain and could just barely hold it together without dying, and, pretended to give a damn for, I dunno, a dozen years? And with that setup, managed to stab and crush and tear every single positive part of our relationship, until there was nothing but carbon and rust, being ground into me for the rest of eternity. PTSD, don’t you know. You can’t just hurt us for “just a moment,” whooo, no.

Friendship is bullshit. Because I came out of that relationship, and every friend I had told me how much they loved both of us, which is codeword for “John, don’t seek help from *me*”. Thankfully, two people talked to me, believed me, loved me, and caused me to continue to live. One of them died, and I can deny I’ve been tempted to follow.

Because I’ve learned there’s nothing I can say that will ever protect me from evil. Compassion is not for weirdos like me. I’m in too much pain, so, I can’t point out the *ONE THING* to do to stop the pain. Who wants to put up with that?

I can’t push back in a relationship, so I’ll always be pushed around. No one will ever have to say “no, John, I care about *your* problems right now, stop worrying about how *I* feel.” Well, a therapist might, but, a therapist is someone you pay a lot of money to, for an hour of listening to you, and if you can’t SPEAK, that’s a big waste of money.

That’s why I get pushed around. When my brain is broken, I can’t speak properly. I can’t put big ideas into words. I can’t have a discussion in which real problems are solved – I can only get yelled at, and told I’m wrong, and meh, it happens, people die.

Well… I’m sorry, but, people *do* die. Mortality is part of our fate. And, meh, it happens. I get yelled at, feel like crap, and decide I’m so desperately lonely I’ll just lick the crap off and go home and mope about it. And, again, I say, meh, it happens, people die. Lots of people die from loneliness each year.

You can argue with a lot of what I say, but, don’t argue with me over “Meh. It happens. People die.” People die from some of the most petty crud imaginable, when it lands on them on the wrong day. And people like me, we have to remember that if we let up our guard, we will be one of the people who die. So, as flippant as it sounds, “meh, it happens, people die.” Remember that if you dare – it’s not one of those “happy thoughts” you use to fly in Neverland.

I don’t dare trust friendship, and I don’t dare trust my broken brain. See, the pain I feel, it’s neurological. If it overloads my brain *slightly*, I’m forced to go through a lot of error-correction, and I find I’m a lot stupider than normal. If it overloads my brain completely, well, it’s like I took a sudden, minor, injury – I’m in real pain, both physical and mental/emotional. This is one of the things Pat took major offense to – me failing to hide my inescapable pain. That’s hilarious: any time you see me acting the least bit cheerful, I’m hiding my pain as best as I can, and it’s not for my sake that I’m hiding it. Still, that’s the problem, right? My broken brain makes me a target to other people. Even people who recognize that I’m having a terrible pain reaction – even when I’ve explained it’s me, only, and not a bit their fault.

The PTSD, well, that just means I can’t talk my problems out. See, I say “I felt like I was being bullied,” gets turned into “HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME?” no matter how carefully you try to explain “I need to say how it felt, so we can try to avoid the same thing happening.” So, I end up just ignoring how it felt. It doesn’t matter, because it only matters to me. It’s invisible, just like my pain.

I have a new pain doc. He doesn’t care that I have a speech impediment, nor that my brain sometimes misfires, nor that I’m in such enormous pain I don’t know how I can survive much longer with it. He does care about me answering questions correctly (even when the questions are not *presented* correctly), in getting me to “stop fighting him” (by trying to answer his questions, note), to telling me he’s plenty empathic and compassionate, so shut up and let him shock me and stick me with needles.

My wife wants him to shiv me in the spine and stuff steroids inside me to kill my blood sugars so I die slowly and painfully, but, only because it would be really inconvenient to wait for a doctor who hasn’t re-traumatized me already. It’s ugly, when you freeze, and immediately go into a toxic form of subspace, where you’re terrified to ask questions, or do anything that might make the bad man hurt you more. But she wasn’t there, so, my pain doesn’t exist. Meh, it happens, more often than I care to count. And if I ream this doctor out properly, maybe I’ll keep him from killing other pain patients. But, hey, PTSD, broken brain, wife doesn’t care (so she doesn’t want me making a fuss).

I really don’t know how to live any more. I’m going to, and going to keep trying to figure it out, but the answer used to be “love” and “compassion” and bullcrap like that. I need a better answer. I wish like heck I had one.

Forgiveness Problem

(This is the first of a series of essays - they aren't posts like a normal "hi, here's how I'm doing, how are y'all doing?" I'm not ready to read, and respond, though I'll try. These are "how do you live when you are (or, how do you live with) a person who's too damaged for ordinary descriptions?)

I have a problem with forgiveness. I do it too easily. The reason for that is simple: people hurt me all the effing time, and I don’t know when I’m entitled to respond.

All my life (I believe) I’ve had me/CFS. Early in life, I was taught not to complain, and to ignore many things that bothered me. That’s part of the “people hurt me all the time” – things that shouldn’t hurt, can hurt me. I have to forgive those minor, unintentional, hurts constantly. I also I learned that no one really cared when I was hurt, and, when they hurt me, if I complained, it was always *my* fault.

I don’t mean, if I complained about getting swatted to a parent, I got another swat. I mean, if someone hurts me in a social situation, and I try to express that I’m hurt, it’s somehow my fault, the whole situation, and not even a bit of fault for the other person. My pain doesn’t matter. My feelings don’t matter. I have to accept any hurt thrown at me, and avoid hurting anyone, in any way, because I’m the ugly weirdo (brutal truth, not self deprecation). That has to change if I’m going to survive. It might not change. Meh, it happens; people die.

What are the limits? I’ve been thinking about that, and “stuff that shouldn’t hurt me, does,” and “basic human behavior”. Well… one day, in a store, near Christmas, I realized the checkout clerk noticed me wincing at the music and so, pretending she was just being jolly, started singing it, loudly, at me. How do I know she was doing this? Folks – especially we neurodivergent people, but all bullying victims – learn when people are doing that. And wow, do folks hate it when we’re right and call it out!

I want to make one thing clear: I don’t mean she was being a horrible person. She was the equivalent of a big sister tweaking her kid brother; this is a perfect example of a “microagression”. She realized she could hurt some poor slob who just wanted to get home and collapse, so she did. Somewhere, I need to learn the courage and anger to look such a person in the eye, and say “you’re doing that to hurt me. Stop it… no, I don’t want to hear it, just stop singing.” No complaining to managers – it was a (relatively) harmless mistake, and it shouldn’t have hurt me as badly as it did.

Then… I have to do something braver. She might feel stabbed in the gut, like, if her kid brother screamed for mom, she’d say “come on, I was just playing! A little!” if mom was angry. I have to ignore that, stay angry, and walk away. My attitude must be: “You hurt my inner child – I’m angry, until my child is safe and comforted, and *you* don’t get comfort – even if you weren’t a terrible ogre, even if you were ‘just playing, a little.’”

I know how it hurts, to be told I was hurtful, especially when I caused pain without realizing it. I want to help her process, and assure her she’s *fine*, now that she stopped, just, some customers *are* very sound-sensitive, etc., etc.. But it’s not my job, and even if I wanted to take it on, *that* is where things go wrong. Friends will have time to talk it out later; those who don’t talk it out are risky people to hang with. Those who aren’t friends have to learn to deal with their own emotions, so long as I try to be gentle.

It’s crazy to say it, but friends shouldn’t need good reasons to care about another friend’s pain. They should just care about avoiding it! But not all of my pains are visible, and some visible pains… shouldn’t be. What I’m doing isn’t working, so I recognize I have to do better. I have to make the right pains visible, and remember that a friend who doesn’t care about your pain (even if your pain is “weird” or your reaction to it is “ugly”), is not your friend at all.

What are *your* obligations, as my friend? Well, some pains need to be ignored, not stared at, and, as best as is possible, forgotten, even though you are shocked that I suddenly looked so hurt. I could almost have this printed on a card:

“Even if it looks like you hurt me, or upset me. I might be having a flashback to an old trauma, of a similar situation – you didn’t hurt me, PTSD did. If you keep hitting a trigger, I’ll let you know what it is, as quickly as I can identify it. I’m sorry my PTSD makes it look like you hurt me, but, gimme time to get to that, while I deal with the PTSD, okay? First, my trauma, then your comfort.”

Um. Did you see how complicated that got? And how accusatory the ending sounds? You say, or do something, and I have a flashback, and you feel hurt – not unreasonably. I want to comfort you. But I have frickin’ PTSD, so I can’t stop to explain that when I’m having a flashback. Later, I’ll tell you it wasn’t your fault, and you better effing trust me, because it’s dirty pool to blame me for your hurt, when I’ve done my due diligence in reassuring you, right? That’s true for any friendship – if you need more reassurance, ask for it, but don’t decide my reassurance wasn’t enough, not ask for more, and blame me!

And don’t tell me it’s hard. I get that it’s hard. But I’m the one with the broken brain, major depression, constant pain, and constant fatigue, and probably more I’m forgetting to mention, and I can’t do it alone. Do you need some hugs, some cuddles, more verbal reassurance, an explanation? I’ll try to do any of those things (cuddles excepted for most guys), but you need to play fair with me and let me report my experiences, my fears, and my traumas.

Okay, and then, if I say something like “when you argued with me, I felt bullied,” you are allowed to *ask*, “did you think I was bullying you?” and if the answer is “no,” you take it as golden. (It might be *wrong*, but it’s my mistake to make – not yours to correct.) If the answer is “maybe” or “yes”, you have a problem. I don’t think you’re a perpetual bully, but I might fear you were in that situation

The problem is, maybe you sang along to a jolly Christmas song, and it hurt, and I felt you were microbullying – I felt bullied, even though it was just the ordinary sorts of – I think in the UK they call it “piss-taking” – friends do. You rib your friends about embarrassing moments, they laugh, and poke at yours. So: maybe you’ll say “if I ever do that again – whack on you for being oversensitive to loud music – you can call me out. I’ll try not to, but, come on, man, I might make a mistake.”

Right there – that’s friendship. We have an issue, we try to avoid it, if we mess up, we try to make right.

But if you say “oh, come on man, you can’t feel bullied every time someone teases you about being sensitive,” I’m gonesville. I have to be. It’s not that I should feel bullied when someone teases me in that way; and I’d rather not be. But I can’t help it – that’s why I asked some hypothetical person to stop, as a friend would, if they cared. I can’t risk friends who don’t care, not any longer.