This is long. My apology as there is an unusual story behind it all. If you make it through, maybe you will understand WHY people are having a hard time believing.
Thank you all for the responses. The last couple of days i went through a ton of feelings. Sadly, i am less caring and feel less connected to others because of the terms of it. This hurts my life as i moved to where what happen did happen because for years i was wanting to get to a U.S state that actually believes in mental health care. I have a masters in psychology. My disconnecting from others or not caring has consequences to my career choices. Not only that, it feels better to help make someones day be a better day and do that not because of some hero complex or some covert narcissism motive of being seen as a 'good guy'. It just had felt better in the past to help a frown become a smile. It just felt better inside regardless of if the other person thought better of me or not. Even doing something anonymously had the same result . . .and i am losing that step by step. I am fighting hard against it, but i am losing because of the terms. I have been alone in a truth of one, left stranded. I am detaching from care of others too much.
Sadly, the circumstance itself is so surreal that people don't believe it. Okay, this is where i may lose some of you and that will hurt. This is what i go through. I am left alone in a truth. Saw something one expert put about 'healing from ptsd requires others believing us'. For those of you who have gone through disbelief, i am sorry as i now know too well how much that hurts.
The circumstance?
Years ago someone pulled out a Playboy magazine that had some picture of some amazing looking woman. Okay, i am a guy so couldn't help but appreciate the pretty face and outrageous body. There was something else though. The facial expressions really got to me! They were extraordinary. Some years back i wrote the playmate and after writing her i got a couple of long distance phone calls when at work. I had no idea of who could have been calling from that city. There were years of synchronicity that happened that had me wonder if something more was supposed to happen. Some was outrageous. I mean like being in her home country and and being in a town nearly 500,000 and talking to one person there while there. The person said her sister was in the states now, on the other side of the camera flying coast to coast, but said something about her age that struck me as odd. I had this image of the playmate come to mind for some reason. Years later i found she was from this town and has four brothers. There is more below i will say on that, something important.
I moved to a place where for years there was no way to contact me, but moved to a different state and was finally more in the open. Finally after all the outrageous synchronicity was less than my level of fatigue, i posted on my facebook about the playmate. A few days later i joined a dating site and there was someone on the site who i thought looked like her. Looked up the screen name and she had also joined an adult based dating site. I started dissociating. A wrote something about that on my facebook and after a few weeks something unusual happened.
I was at a store and went back in to look at something. On my way out i saw a woman who was coming in. She had a coat on with a hood and the hood was covering her face. For some reason, she was looking at me with one eye peering out of the hood. The store was warm inside. I wondered if maybe someone a bit Schizoid personality who was afraid of people, but why then wasn't she walking away? Why was she walking right toward me instead? She got close and slowed down, then stopped before me. I began to look under the hood and she looked up and the hood fell. GUESS WHAT? It was not the woman from the dating site. It didn't just look like the playmate. IT WAS HER! Her face went from expressionless and a bit stunned at the hood falling into a mixture of pained relief and appreciation that was like no other expression i had ever seen. I stood looking aghast at her for a moment. In the same city? HOW??? There was something like a flash and i remember vaguely walking to my car and don't remember the next 6 or 7 hours. It was the only time loss i ever had in my life. I posted in a haze on my facebook about the woman with honest eyes and a sincere expression on her face. The next morning there was this phone call: "That was ME in the store". *click* The voice sound was angry, yet the type of anger that has a huge amount of hurt under it.
My mind struggled with it and i put 'oh was that her in the store?' on my facebook. I was still in shock though. Part of me was hurting beyond belief that the woman i had been concerned about for years i walked away from. I tried to talk to others. Responses? Oh you saw someone else that looked like her but so much wanted it to be her that you saw her in your mind. Oh, you were stressed and it was an hallucination. Yeah folks, a hallucination that makes phone calls! I was being ripped away from what i knew and fell into psychosis.
During this there were those who simply did not want her around and they said some pretty vulgar things about her. Do you know what happens to someone who is in psychosis when you provoke them? Yeah, i went on a rant on Facebook. Okay, so how would you feel if people only liked you for your body and one lone voice actually writes asking about your heart and when he finally talks about you, you go to meet him and he walks away? Then he says vulgar stuff about you on Facebook? That itself is a trauma. I remember things i said. OUCHHHHH. I have had flashbacks about things i said to her.
In concern when i fought to get to a better place, i went onto some people search site. Looked her up and found one listing i had never seen before in the city from which i had those phone calls after i first wrote her. There was something about the age that was the same as what the brother in that city of 500,000 said. When looking the name online i found one listing that i looked up and found my jaw dropping. The picture looked just like who? THE WOMAN FROM THE GROCERY STORE!
There were some indications she may have looked in on my facebook since, but not so many of late. I pleaded for corroboration of what happened at the store, but none has come. Many have disbelieved.
Part of me is still in that store, in a state of shock. Part of me is in a horror of pain talking saying things of a psychotic mind under the wrong influence seeing what i am saying while yet another part of me was saying "no you walked away don't say that about her you will hurt her!!!!!!!!!!". I ended up in the ER because of the guilt of things i said. I walked away from her leaving her hurt for having believed in the person who cared enough to write her in concern. Then i ranted against her. ouch
My psych nurse diagnosed psychosis SECONDARY to trauma, the trauma coming first. My therapist was never convinced fully it wasn't just some hallucination. I have lost many people. With some, maybe i was better off as some of those who were the ones provoking against her. At the end of the day, i have gone through too many feelings far too alone and the trauma of being disbelieved for this ever happening has been incredible.
She is not a better person for having believed and showing up to be left stranded then attacked in word. I am a worse person for having gone through tons of pain being disbelieved and am disconnecting. My faith in God is shot as so much of the synchronicity i thought a sign from God. There were other things as outrageous as that thing where the only person i talked to in a city of nearly 500k people was her brother, so my faith in God is beyond shaken. It is broken. My ability to care for others i fight desperately to keep, but i am losing the war. I have such a need to be held as a bawl my heart out for how this all went and be believed. To have cared about someone and it to have hurt both her and me has been terrible. So many pulling away and leaving me alone has hurt.
And i don't know how many here will simply think me crazy for what i say. I put this here as i am drowning and the last gasp of air is already gone. I am taking water in my lungs and desperately need someone to breath a bit of air in. I am losing faith in God for having believed. i am losing faith and care of people. I don't care much about afterlife or heaven or hell anymore. I just want to save any care i have of others without that care just being some act to impress others. I don't care to impress others that way. It being less sincere care, i simply don't care to give much at all now. I am losing the war. I am losing care for life. I am losing care for others.
I don't much believe in prayer anymore, but if anyone can pray i would appreciate it. The problem in so much of this is that two needed others to make the needed difference. Instead, others did not help or made things worse. I am not sure about her friends, but none of them had the ethics to say 'hey dude i'll confirm what happened just don't tell her i did so' if she was too much in shock herself to say a thing. Maybe she was too numbed to confirm things herself. All but two of my friends made things worse. Sometimes in life we need others to bridge the gap and be peacemakers and healers and this was sorely lacking.
Is there compassion out there? Is there room for belief in things which seem implausible, but actually happen? Is there reason to care? will care just lead to pain? If this sounds at all melodramatic for how i put things, i am sorry. Typing this is nearly like bleeding through my fingertips. I am hurting badly. I am fighting with my last to not give up on other people. I am hoping someone she knows will help her in ways she comes to be a more healed person, yet if she is not talking about what happened when i am trouble my hope of that seems vain. Why would she have flippin' showed up at all if she had the right people in her life? She wouldn't have remembered so well a couple of letters asking "how are you? I was concerned you were being hurt".
Thank you for all who replied. If you just think i am crazy, you can get on the band wagon with that. It is a crowded bandwagon full of people who were willing to disbelieve yet not try to help either of two who were hurting. For any who don't jump on that bandwagon, thank you. I am more broken than i can say. . . . all for having cared . . . . and not being able to stop when it really counted.
I feel stupid for even putting this here. It is like the last gasp of someone who is really desperate. Can you see how a few might disbelieve? Can you see where that has led to much pain? What do i do now? I have no good answers to that anymore.
Oh, it was on that people search engine where i also found that my current address and current phone number are clearly listed, thus me understanding how she could have followed me from where i live to the store. I wish anyone she had known had said 'please don't say such things about her' when i was so far gone, but they didn't. I don't understand much anything anymore except i hurt and certainly must have hurt her. Even a couple of things from the past that i had stumbled over ended up being directed at her and i am sick to my soul as i have never been before.