If it is not broken

[Spideysenses]

All my jobs were a means to an end. If I had not decided to pursue writing at all costs, I would never have been in the jobs, I had to claw for and I definitely wouldn't have stayed. I appeared to chop and change. I had to. Everyone found out about the meltdown. Meltdown didn't bring me overwhelming shame because I never hurt anyone or anything but my own pride. I wished that it had been nipped in the bud sooner. Then again I think it was about the right time for rehab. I was young and of the mindset that rebelling was better than being a passive victim of fate

[Spideysenses]

Status update:
Has ordered How to relax by Thich Nhat Hanh.

[Spideysenses]

One of the doctors said: it must be harder for someone who is clever. That summed up my feelings. I had tried to do what was right in my youth and went from rebelling to a hospital stay. I did have more to lose than some people who were in "thone place." My sports career is up in smoke. A brain that needed nourishment. I had to take time out to rest so getting work was not going to be a walk in the park. I was aware of how hard life was going to be with this hanging over my head. I was aware of the societal stigma. I could put words to the feelings and see the elephant in high-definition crystal clarity. I was going to have to work through the regrets and admit I'd had a tough upbringing. I was aware of the hurdles.

[Spideysenses]

I was asking what did they hope to achieve by treating me like dirt and chipping away at me relentlessly. Remorselessly. With their threats and temper, I knew only to ask confrontational questions once. I did press them to join the football team more than a handful of times and to try harder to do things without me and I was cut down to pieces for trying. When they asked: "Whit do you wint?" The attitude was: what do you expect? I can do and say what I want and no one will believe you over me. Whit outburst? Whit did I say? You deserve it. So whit!

[Spideysenses]

I didn't think I had to explain why my life had gone to hell when parts of it had felt like hell already. I was an intelligent student and some said talented but I grew up with parents who spent more time in the pub than at home at one point. If I had been a coward and played it safe and got lucky and got a decent job or moved up and became a manager, I still would have been called a snobby so-and-so who had nothing to be high and mighty about and needed to remember where they came from and one day I'd hit the earth with an almighty thump. My friends and family would not have been happy for me. I couldn't win. I knew from a very young age that I would never be able to please everyone, I was going to let people down no matter what I chose to do and some people did not want me to do well anyway. A person learns to accept this.

[Spideysenses]

The damaging effects of 'boreout' at work - BBC Worklife
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article...oreout-at-work

[Spideysenses]

What he was trying to say was that women who are bright and intelligent (from working-class backgrounds in particular) often work in nursing and healthcare, social care or teaching because they are in high demand and needed. That no one would give me a worthwhile job once they found out about the rehab stay in the hospital. That a girl would not be chosen over a boy for an apprenticeship. He was wrong straight off the bat.
Through work placements, I could have landed a career in my local area by doing a vocational course at the college. I could have gone to art school. Without the breakdown, I then could have completed a degree in psychology, nursing etc. and became an Art Psychotherapist. If I had had a stable home when it boils down to potential that is. Without the injuries and politics, I may have taken my sport further and had my own gym.
If I moved I would have had a better job at the drop of a hat and then eventually a career. I could have learnt a skilled trade. I am a practical person with common sense. I had taken the artistic route sooner than I was conscious of it. I just knew. I wasn't going to tolerate the abuse any longer than I did. I left just in time, or I could have been in a more difficult place than I was. I had to do it right this time.

[Spideysenses]

What man of high principles shouts at you in front of a party of hundreds of people and does not apologise for it? Think of the two most horrendous slurs someone can call a woman, that most would never dream of saying to anyone, to one person, never mind in full view of a packed event? I said the next day: We are finished. Over.
He said: if you leave you may as well put a noose around my neck and I will tell your family that you need to go back to thone place and they will never listen to you over me. So effin whit. Well en.

[Spideysenses]

"Whit do you wint? From me? Whit do you expect tee get fae life efter...."
The first time I snapped and said something along the lines of: "everything revolves around you, not me. I can't even pick the pizza topping when we are shopping for crying out loud. I had to get a second job and study. I'm like a monkey with cymbals. My tooth fell out because I was dehydrated from working in a sweatshop that is like a sauna. One back tooth thank God. That describes my life. Sick to my back teeth of it. Of getting nothing back from anyone. What do I want? I want my life back. My career."
I manage to avoid saying that I gave up all my aspirations for a relationship and I just wanted one good thing in my life. That every part of my life was unbearable. That I don't know why I stayed in my hometown. I was running on adrenaline some days. I was so da##ed tired. I had to not get pregnant or I was going to be accused of trapping him. He was controlling and possessive and because of one month in the hospital I would be accused of trapping him if I fell pregnant. It was hell. It was soul crushing.

[Spideysenses]

Do you think I am doing this for the good of my health? A new career opportunity would be nice. Wait a minute. I am doing this to be doing something relaxing/therapeutic as well as to learn. I am most relaxed when I get to wrap my brain around something that is new and when I need to think. I am happy to have problems to solve. Any fool could have foreseen that if I was stuck where I was eventually I was going to leave as I was sick of getting nothing from anyone. My friends. My family. My work. My relationship. It would have been insane, NOT to act.

[Spideysenses]

Sayre defined the four roles traditionally assigned to artists. They were -
to produce a record of their surroundings; to express emotions in a tangible or visible manner; to reveal truths that were either universal or hidden; and to help people view the world from a different or novel perspective

[Spideysenses]

My decision is and always was to write. It was always about damage limitation after wildfire. Then? Then I did not know.

[Spideysenses]

Sauk let me ask you all this. Would you speak to a person who:
Told your partner to leave you when you were on suicide watch in the hospital. Asking them if they could handle what people would say about them for staying with a person who had been in "a place like that." I was in the mental health wing for a month.
He said to my parents post-meltdown, that I was a waste of... talent. What a shame. He called me "a waste." He only added the talent part to save his own skin. He automatically assumed I would turn to drugs for some reason. As that was some of the conspiracy theories around here. Conflating draconian conspiracy theories with his own ignorance and spreading malicious gossip to besmirch my name. The most notorious gossip I've ever encountered. And I have some toxic ones in my own family so it's saying something.
Would you talk to someone who told your manager in your first full-time job after school, that you really needed and needed to make a good first impression, that you were lazy because you decided to take a year out when you didn't know what to study at university and you wanted a job with training and had to support yourself?
Would you have space in your life to talk to a person who told someone you were in the early stages of a relationship with, that you were sexually immature? This was my coach by the way when I was teenager. Overstepping boundaries was water off a ducks back for him.
He humiliated me more times than I can count.
He waited until there were affluent parents of students I taught and said that I should go to a discount store if I couldn't afford shoes from his supplier because mine were nearing time to change.He would make jokes and harass me.
There is more. He is a piece of work and I don't want to be associated with him. And I don't know how to deal with him. It's twisted. They are beyond tenacious. They have sociopathic tricks of the trade written all over them. I don't know how to deal with a person like this. It was a dark part of my life that doesn't need to be brought to the surface. How can they act as if nothing happened? I can't be reminded of a part of my life when I was in rehab in the hospital. It hurts like hell. Makes my pain feel insignificant. He knew I was on suicide watch and told a person who stood by me to leave me and then told my parents the worst duplicitous lies. Who does that? Knowing that someone is in hospital after a suicide attempt. They told an old flame that they could do better than me (while I was in rehab in the hospital on suicide watch) And he asked my sibling if his children would like to go to his "Olympic club of excellence." After all he put me through. I know that ........ will cave in and let them go to his club.

[Seagull]

Top bombing, Spidey, you nailed that muther funker. More power to you.

[Spideysenses]

It is hard enough to get one cruel comment from one person. One comment is enough to make someone doubt themselves and wound their self-esteem. Sometimes it can cause a complex that can last from years to a lifetime. My life gave me a "thick skin" so I alway's fought back. Sometimes harboured. I dealt with the knocks.
I had limited support before the meltdown so I did not look for outer reassurance. It was what I was used to. I was expected to do everything alone. A lot of my families attention came with conditions attached. Be like them or you are not them and against them and they will try and cut you down.
My family only contributed to the house deposit and renovation because they knew people would talk otherwise. It was all for show. To save face. Keeping up appearances.The elephant would have crushed me otherwise.Taking a breather, and having a day to relax is normal. I had to slay the elephant. My parents tried to save face but old flame did not. That speaks volumes about my ex.

[Spideysenses]

He uses the one person he knows I hate. Pillar of the community. He wants a rise from me and I do not capitulate. He is stressed from work. He is taking his grief from "the boys" at work out on me. He says it as he knows it will cause maximum pain emotionally and he is more annoyed that I don't bite and do what he is trying to make me do. I know it's not true so why fight over it? It is easy to say: I will listen to you when you have calmed down. But he does not know when to stop. He would reduce his sister (who earned more than him) to tears when he lived with his parents. I put it down to him having a big family in a hectic household and sibling rivalry. I had my own issues as a youth as everyone does but barely a drop in the ocean compared to him. And I had channelled my excess energies into art and sport. I nipped my problems in the bud.

I know I should have tried harder to end it. I should have done art at college and met new people. Even if it didn't turn into a career.
I know we should have rented a place before taking the plunge. I chose to take the next step with them. I was pushed and coerced somewhat by other forces there's no denying that. I could have had a better job already by then. I missed out on some at interviews that I could have landed if I had went all in. If I didn't believe in my art, I would have set out to prove myself. I had been handed a fight I never went looking for and I came to terms with it. When you have an upbringing like mine, you learn early on that the grass is not always greener on the other side and with people, it is better the devil you know. It is not cynical. It is retrospective wisdom.

[Spideysenses]

I am at peace with the length of time this is taking to draw to a close. By reporting the details and timeline of the abuse to the authorities, I made the first

[Spideysenses]

I do not believe in reincarnation. I should not have been callously thrown on the scrap heap the way I was. I had to tear down the elephant, it was not a choice for me. I had no other way. I tried to end it. I tried to leave. I overdosed because I was stuck and miserable and had nothing to look forward to. All I wanted was to get back the old me. I couldn't take off for a year and find myself. I had spent all my earnings on surviving. Buying myself the things my parents never did. Clothes, paid rent, travel, accommodation and training for sport. No one helped me out. With Odd I was bled dry. Living pay check to pay check. The very life I had studied so hard as a youth to avoid.
I felt like everyone gained sick satisfaction in pushing me back to square one. To be fair I wasn't far wrong. The people closest to me didn't care what was best for me and wanted to protect their interests.
I was not given the opportunity to rest for a reason. Scapegoating is said to not be a conscious decision. That it is a collaborative unconscious ill, an unspoken, invisible pact. To use a member of your family as a scapegoat is inconceivable to parents who love their kids. So of course I felt like I was not loved. How else was I supposed to feel? I know my brother and his family love and care for me. We get along. There is too much water under the bridge.

[Spideysenses]

I have never talked to the doctor about my family in depth. Aside from making it clear, they were lying (I didn't need to) and me having no space to relax. Or talked about old flame who could have been in prison for a short spell in a fair world, for that matter. I think I told the police more about him than I've told anyone.

[Spideysenses]

I managed to get by. Spending all my time at the gym, away from drinking and smoking weed and boredom. I wasn't going to pretend to be something I wasn't. And if the type of people who thought that world was split into introverts and extroverts and nothing in-between and being loud indicated confidence, didn't listen to me, then it was their narrow-mindedness and not mine. Kids are resilient and can be strong if they have to be. They shouldn't need to be all the time though. My family were selfish and abusive. They would laugh at me for doing well. Dreeb. Drip. Pansy. Clipe. People with "brains" have no common sense. If you are so smart you can do it all alone. See how smart you really are.

[Spideysenses]

Do you know what my family and school and a lot of the people I worked with at the gym and in my hometown taught me? That a person may not ever be appreciated for working to the bone. If you give some people an inch, they take a mile.

[Spideysenses]

I did not complain. Here, this will do. When I left I sold my engagement ring. I hope it doesn't bring bad luck to someone else's relationship I thought. Superstition.The buyer owned a pet shop. I picked up the watch I got on my twenty-first from my parents. There wasn't much else. I had slaved away for years. When I had my hours cut and had to take a second job, I was taxed to the hilt. It was pointless. But it was better than nothing. My feet hurt like hell if I was on a weekend and had to walk those thick concrete floors out back and forth. When I visited my grandparents I'd fall asleep. Yet no one seemed to care that I was deadbeat. That I was twenty-one and working flat out. Two jobs, studying, housework, cooking and getting nothing but grief. It was soul-destroying. Blood, sweat and lots of pain and tears. For what? After the breakdown, I had no idea where my life was heading. I knew I wanted to write. But I needed work. And it had to be sharp.

I spent the weekend at his parents sometimes. I'd been jogging around the golf course. He says I think I might have a job for you. Wait, nobody has ever offered me a job. This doesn't happen to me. I can't wait to hear this, I bet he is lying. My boss needs someone to clean the bogs a few times a week. We fall out. I knew you were lying! He doesn't apologise. Too good to be true. This is not what an eighteen-year-old needs after a nervous meltdown. As a kid, I prided myself on my brain. I thought my brain was almost all I had. I was forced to be more outgoing. I was working class from the side of the tracks where women were expected to cave in and not rock the boat. I only got to do martial arts because my sibling asked. All I got was: No, the answers no, boys get more, you are not getting, you think money grows on trees, ask your blood biological father.

Making decisions was hard for me growing up. I got what I was given. I didn't choose my trainers. I went to try them on. My ol'dear would push me off the pavement when people came in the other direction and say: do you think they will move for you? Looking down on us like we are at the bottom of their shoes. When I passed all my credit grades ( I could have attained all A's if I applied myself) and left the certificate on the table, she put her tea on top of it and ignored me. Blind ignored me. No one in my family asked me about my grades. Not one soul. My Grandparents expected me to follow a cousin so why did they not ask or congratulate or encourage me? It was because my old dear called me from heaven to hell to them. Lied. I helped out at home more than all my friends did.

Casting my mind back, I don't think my friends texted me. I had a couple of teachers try and give me a push to reapply myself but it was like putting a couple of grains of rice on one side of the scale and the negative side had thousands. I had all this weight pressing down and barely anyone to counteract and push me up. If I were to be a passing recipient of fate what would I have done? I chose not to be a passing recipient of fate.

[Spideysenses]

When I had to top up my existing hours with a second job while studying I was still treated abysmally. One of the women thought she was trying to help. Saying that she had a friend who thought that she had to have a good job as she was intelligent and took her own life from the stress. You don't need a good job. But it wasn't an altruistic comment full of sage advice. They said it because I had been in the rehab wing of the hospital. Some people seemed to believe that employers are less likely to take on ex-mental patients than they are criminals. Even though I was not an "ex-mental patient" because I was in the general hospital ward, not in a psychiatric hospital. I wasn't in a psychiatric hospital but I was treated as so. Twenty-eight days. They were really saying: I should save myself the heartache of still wishing for a career and a way out of the rut I was in. Be happy with my lot. Sound familiar? One month in rehab didn't make me a looney bin inmate for crying out loud. The dust would never settle and I couldn't carry on with this elephant following me everywhere. It was not shrinking as the years went by. Would some people have preferred I kicked the bucket instead of laying out the bones of the elephant for all to see? I know the answer. I needed the opposite of what everyone was saying. I needed more. I needed to be pushed out of the comfort zones and challenged.

[Spideysenses]

Aside from the violence not abating, I left for the same reason I overdosed. I felt like I had nothing to look forward to. Do you honestly hink I am haudin you back? I'll tell you what's haudin you back - ward number fouw-werr! He did set out to break me down. His need for power and control usurped everything else and because I had been in rehab he thought that granted him a get-out-of-jail-free card. If the scammers on the dark web were real and really were hitmen, he would would have hired one, over doing what was right, if he had the means because he was so unwilling to face himself.
He must have known that when I got back on my feet that I would need to talk about what I'd been through. Or can some fool themselves and lock it away and feel no remorse? Take it from someone who knows. Abusive people never apologise.

[Spideysenses]

I was beoming an anxious, nervous wreck with Odd. People noticed. I was a shadow of my former self. I'd been in hospital rehab for mental health reasons but that was years ago and it was a short swift stay. I know that many realise that it is what happens in a person's life that leads to the hospital.

And my old flame would say if I left that I may as well put a noose around his neck? I saw a girl trying to kill herself using curtains and bed sheets and the nurses take her down. I saw another, smash the restroom mirror and use the shards. I won't write the details.The blood. The stitches she needed.
Nobody had any respect for my emotions. Most people are scared to death of triggering a person as they know how traumatic it can be to bring up things a person battles to not think about. Not him. I ended up back in rehab after the years of emotional and psychological torture I had been through at his hands. I needed to be there after my life.
It wasn't just him. I'd never had the chance to rest and recuperate from the first time around. Education was once seen as the way out of the vicious cycle. I'm afraid it is not enough. It is not about basket weaving. Walks. Relaxation. Swimming. Planting flowers. Going to mindfulness sessions. Routine. No. You might get one of those things while you are resting up away from prying eyes. My head was a ball of knots. I was burnt out. Worn thin. I played pool. Played computer games. Above all I had to avoid the vultures.

[Spideysenses]

The life oh a dog. He didn't want to do anything but go out to eat, drink alcohol, make money (but still do the bare minimum or less), drive his car and buy useless tatt he never needed or used. Oh and fight. He did not support a football team. He wouldn't admit that he was stressed and tired from work. There was no day off for me. Working. I did the house. Cooked as well as eating out. He didn't want to play football on his nights. He only wanted to go to the pub. Watch football. He may have gone to the gym if he wasn't tired from work but without his troupe, he was lost. So he didn't give me a chance to get back out there. We both needed to meet new people. I'd have liked a dog over a fish tank.
We didn't need an ST car with all the mod cons. I'd have hiked mountains on a weekend. But with him, there was no pause button. Chill one weekend and make the most of the next one? No. It was we are doing something right now. " I'm not saying I did jack all at the weekend." If they relaxed they might have had more energy to go hiking. We did go on cycle runs on country roads. I tried to get us to do something together. It did not stick. Nothing worked. So I jogged alone. Read and wrote after work.

[Spideysenses]

See the toothpaste tube? Get closer so you can see glake.
I do the wave of a hand to say I won't listen to you in this mood and go downstairs and he shouts:
You squeeze it fae the bottom nae the middle gleeb. By f### if you had a brain you'd be dangerous, glakid.....
(thinks: if he shouts louder the whole street will hear what a petty d###head he is)

Don't crush the cans. There is plenty oh room in the bin. You need me to show you. Common savvy.
Where did you learn how to talk to women?
Whit you insinuating?
You used a sentence without swearing. What's happened to the... I know.
Forgot sl##ts would kane mare
Why on earth would you say that? Two seconds ago you were being a dictator on putting tins in the bin. The talking to women? You don't know how to respect women.
Respect? So yur a jungle bunny now?
Good god, act your age and not your shoe size.

I am in the kitchen waiting on toast. He rumbles downstairs like a bull possessed raging at a red rag.
Get back to bed.
What? You were sleeping when I came downstairs.
Eating at night isna good for you.
It helps me sleep. I don't do it often.
We have been so busy working as
Well as decorating this place.
You will get to bed now so you dinna wake me up when you come upstairs.
I'm not a bairn. I'm not running away don't worry.
He watches me eat my toast. I go to take a drink and he grabs my arm and drags and pushes me upstairs.
The warning signs were there. The possessiveness turns into control.

The first outburst when cohabiting was the first week we moved in together. He was ironing his work clothes. He starts saying: you should be doing this for me. You need to earn your keep wi your number oh a job that pays a pittance.
I am not your slave! You did your clothes at home with your parents!
He smashes up the board. He breaks a picture I got as a housewarming gift. He turns around with a hot iron in his hand and sort of drops it instead of throwing it coming for me. I kick his knees and he buckles as I panic not realising I had a fight-flight response. He recovers and squeezes my arm and I break free. He paces the room as I leave. He bangs on the locked bathroom door. There was no escaping it. Is it any wonder my nerves were frayed when I left? When I was in rehab the second time, I was as vigilant as a scared deer.
I would notice a flicker of the curtain. Hear the footsteps. I noticed everything. There was nothing in my notes about suspected symptoms of complex PTSD even though they knew I was jumpy and hyper-vigilant. It was nothing short of vague. Wrong assumptions.
And then there was wildfire. They preferred to note anecdotes of me limping a couple of steps from a blister with new trainers and say it was psychosomatic pain. No. How did they notice a fickle thing like that? Limping a couple of steps because I had a blister? But I know others who had the same issues with their stay when they requested their notes so I did not ask to add my input on the notes to refute them.
I could not stay with my stress heads of a family. Talking helped me figure out what I needed to work through but I didn't feel wholly listened to. Some were lovely. Said to look forward and that I needed a career and not a job.
The truth - I only had to confirm what they already knew. Wildfire.

[Spideysenses]

Did my body have signs of damage from alcohol? No. I drank on an evening to get to sleep because I was used to working flat out. I had to wind down. Become the writer I had chosen to be.

I wasn't addicted. To anything. But the diazepam they had me on, led to me needing to black out the bedroom for days and sweating constantly for a long long duration to come off it. So they had no right to make assumptions when I had no damage to any part of my body from alcohol. They should have asked if I was "self-medicating." Then they could record the conversation. Then they could have written client was questioned about the suspected... It is malpractice to document medical information without checks, based on assumption and word of mouth i. e. gossip. When my physical checks were all clear and I had every right to be depressed and need recovery time and space to face trauma from my past. I had every right to feel bereft of a life I should have had.
I wasn't ready to open up entirely about my life when I was in the middle of a crisis. But I answered all the questions required of me. I explained the present situation. When I got too emotional they shut me down and stopped me. Reliving the past when a person is depressed can be counterproductive and do more harm than good. Pills then talk. That is how it goes.

[Spideysenses]

But why can some people? Because my brain is not damaged. Bipolar is a chemical imbalance that can be treated. I knew how to ride the waves until I got back on an even keel. I don't get good and bad days. I only let the highs and lows wreak havoc between fifteen and eighteen. And my life may have been as much to blame, possibly more so. I found creative outlets and I know not everyone has that in them.
I have made good friends I have talked to and can talk to about all the rehab woes. Things are as good as they will ever be with family. More accurately I know that I cannot do anything about any of them. Some things won't change.
Neither my body nor my brain is ravaged by illicit street drugs. I only drank for spats. The second time in the hospital should never have happened. I chose to stay with the worst possible person for me and I've paid my dues. I am supposed to be one of the lucky ones I am constantly told.

[Spideysenses]

You can't fix what is not broken