LegaliseIt!
Elementalist
- Nov 29, 2019
- 808
This long post is my PTSD story and why I will CTB.
I am 56 years old. The events I describe started in 1972-ish. I was 8.
PTSD was not well understood, and I was not diagnosed until 2016.
Some quick facts:
-At 17, my dad was a combat medic in WW. He was a gentle and compassionate man who saw terrible things. He stayed in the military after the war, to get a university education, and he became a teacher.
-My mum was a teacher. Mum and Dad went to University in the 1960's, and were Civil rights activists. They could never settle down in Nixon's America.
-I had a typical American middle class childhood until 1972. My parents sold everything and moved to northern Thailand.
-At age 8, I was allowed to free range the streets of Chiangmai. I learned the language. It was an amazing time, and I developed "good" situational awareness.
-My parents were in their 40's, happy, but tired, and they more or less "abdicated" their responsibilities. It worked out. Both parents were a bit naive. My dad taught at a school for Air America children for one year. He thought Air America was an actual airline. It wasn't.
After two years there, there was a coup, and our visas were no longer good. We found ourselves back in the US, and there were few jobs for teachers.
My parents were recruited to teach in northern Canada, and they didn't hesitate.
A month later, we found ourselves on a bush plane, headed for a remote indigenous community.
I will call it "Colony Z".
No roads in. (An Unmarked ice road from January to March).
No LE, No Health care. A store, where a head of cabbage was $4.
96 percent of the adult population were alcoholics with 2nd generation FASD.
Bootleggers provided banking services, exchanging government checks for aircraft full of alcohol on a daily basis.
Our second day there, I watched an overloaded aircraft crash land.
Everyone knows this post 9-11, but then, it the horrible futility you feel watching an air crash set you apart. It was a critical incident.
My parents taught there for 5 years. I witnessed shootings, stabbings, beatings, and partner violence on a routine basis.
The people condemned to live in Colony Z bore grudges against their colonial oppressors. Seems legit. There was no way out. My parents, as teachers, were the focal point for anger.
Drunk armed mobs would surround our house at night, chanting death threats towards my parents.
I would practice slipping out of my bed, making it look unoccupied, and hiding, because I hoped that they would go for my parents first, and forget me.
My dad was such a humane man, that often the next day, a person with a first aid emergency would appear at our door, and, with no equipment more than fishing line and a bottle of booze, he would stitch a deep wound.
After my dad survived a stabbing, the school division transferred him to a less "complicated" school.
By then, I was 14. I have all the PTSD symptoms. The night terrors worried my parents, but no one ever spoke about Colony Z being an inappropriate environment for a child. We would actually joke about some of the stuff, and remember the good bits.
I can't function fully and my functioning has decreased due to physical problems, as you can all imagine.
What angers me:
The complete famidenial of the insanity of Colony Z.
The fact that I wasn't diagnosed from 1976-2016 (Because Thailand was a good adventure for my family?)
The fact that my PTSD destroyed my ability to parent my daughter.
She was very depressed as a teen, and had many CTB attempts. I was unable to support her appropriately, instantly freezing into crisis mode—cold and detached.
She rightfully hates me, and won't allow me to see my grandson.
She has no idea about Colony Z, because there is no safe way to share this stuff with a depressed teen that would not be making her pain about me. And that's just wrong.
She's 32 now. An amazing woman with a great partner and son.
Just another person that I helped as much as I could, but now I need to distance myself to protect them.
My husband (together 30 years) is a kind and loyal man, but he is exhausted.
He only found out about Colony Z in small bits after we had been married about 15 years.
I would prefer not to hear any pro life replies, because I am not going to be impulsive. I am going to quietly ctb when my time comes. I owe my tortured mind and body that much.
Thank you for reading this.
I am 56 years old. The events I describe started in 1972-ish. I was 8.
PTSD was not well understood, and I was not diagnosed until 2016.
Some quick facts:
-At 17, my dad was a combat medic in WW. He was a gentle and compassionate man who saw terrible things. He stayed in the military after the war, to get a university education, and he became a teacher.
-My mum was a teacher. Mum and Dad went to University in the 1960's, and were Civil rights activists. They could never settle down in Nixon's America.
-I had a typical American middle class childhood until 1972. My parents sold everything and moved to northern Thailand.
-At age 8, I was allowed to free range the streets of Chiangmai. I learned the language. It was an amazing time, and I developed "good" situational awareness.
-My parents were in their 40's, happy, but tired, and they more or less "abdicated" their responsibilities. It worked out. Both parents were a bit naive. My dad taught at a school for Air America children for one year. He thought Air America was an actual airline. It wasn't.
After two years there, there was a coup, and our visas were no longer good. We found ourselves back in the US, and there were few jobs for teachers.
My parents were recruited to teach in northern Canada, and they didn't hesitate.
A month later, we found ourselves on a bush plane, headed for a remote indigenous community.
I will call it "Colony Z".
No roads in. (An Unmarked ice road from January to March).
No LE, No Health care. A store, where a head of cabbage was $4.
96 percent of the adult population were alcoholics with 2nd generation FASD.
Bootleggers provided banking services, exchanging government checks for aircraft full of alcohol on a daily basis.
Our second day there, I watched an overloaded aircraft crash land.
Everyone knows this post 9-11, but then, it the horrible futility you feel watching an air crash set you apart. It was a critical incident.
My parents taught there for 5 years. I witnessed shootings, stabbings, beatings, and partner violence on a routine basis.
The people condemned to live in Colony Z bore grudges against their colonial oppressors. Seems legit. There was no way out. My parents, as teachers, were the focal point for anger.
Drunk armed mobs would surround our house at night, chanting death threats towards my parents.
I would practice slipping out of my bed, making it look unoccupied, and hiding, because I hoped that they would go for my parents first, and forget me.
My dad was such a humane man, that often the next day, a person with a first aid emergency would appear at our door, and, with no equipment more than fishing line and a bottle of booze, he would stitch a deep wound.
After my dad survived a stabbing, the school division transferred him to a less "complicated" school.
By then, I was 14. I have all the PTSD symptoms. The night terrors worried my parents, but no one ever spoke about Colony Z being an inappropriate environment for a child. We would actually joke about some of the stuff, and remember the good bits.
I can't function fully and my functioning has decreased due to physical problems, as you can all imagine.
What angers me:
The complete famidenial of the insanity of Colony Z.
The fact that I wasn't diagnosed from 1976-2016 (Because Thailand was a good adventure for my family?)
The fact that my PTSD destroyed my ability to parent my daughter.
She was very depressed as a teen, and had many CTB attempts. I was unable to support her appropriately, instantly freezing into crisis mode—cold and detached.
She rightfully hates me, and won't allow me to see my grandson.
She has no idea about Colony Z, because there is no safe way to share this stuff with a depressed teen that would not be making her pain about me. And that's just wrong.
She's 32 now. An amazing woman with a great partner and son.
Just another person that I helped as much as I could, but now I need to distance myself to protect them.
My husband (together 30 years) is a kind and loyal man, but he is exhausted.
He only found out about Colony Z in small bits after we had been married about 15 years.
I would prefer not to hear any pro life replies, because I am not going to be impulsive. I am going to quietly ctb when my time comes. I owe my tortured mind and body that much.
Thank you for reading this.
