Upsetting Text From Work. What Would They Say?

[ThetaPirate10]

Holiday break is coming to an end. I struggle with wanting to take care of everyone and blaming myself when things go wrong....even when there is no direct connection between me and the event. Christmas is always a bumpy ride but I finally made it back to my own home. Today I got a text from work. A sixteen year old student I have never met was killed two days ago in a shooting.

I should not have looked up what happened, but guns and kids are two triggers, I needed to know this kid didn't meet the fate I was thinking of. Work left out the details of this kid attempting to rob a store at gun point.

All I can think about are the adults in this kids life. I hold a lot of messy feelings towards to parents of the person who took away so many lives in a few seconds. I always wonder what the parents of people who make extreme decisions would say to the victims. In my experience there was no closure, only avoidance.

I am sorry to all involved and hope they find strength and find peace. I hope the people in their families and friends group find the courage to look each other in the eye.

 

[Autumn Breeze]

This may be somewhat off-topic, but here was my response to reading your post.

First, feeling responsible for other people’s actions is something I also struggle with.

Second, I was reading that people with CPTSD are often addicted to watching the news, using it as a sort of emotional surrogate. It causes highs and lows And gives us something to blame for feeling that way. I have really gotten addicted to news shows.

I have become isolated, and I often feel that all I have invested in past relationships, friendships, etc., has come to naught. I think that because I’m alone. But I‘m really alone by choice. I’m depressed. All of the losses, all of the bad times are the memories that are most readily available for recall. It feels like I’ve lost everything, like I failed. Like I’m toxic and broken. I know that my perspective is skewed. And I know I have been in a much better place mentally in the past than I am in today.

Something that I wrote to someone else was re-posted to me this week, and I was shocked that my own words had been so appreciated by someone else that they are still resonating today. The good things we have done continue to touch those around us, not just the painful outbursts. So often, we only remember the bad things, and we forget or discount all the good things we have said and done. I was in a better place when I wrote this:

“A deep and selfless love is always worth the pain of separation, even separation by death, because it can never be lost. It’s always there when we need it, reminding us that we truly have value, because that person gave us something precious. They gave us something of themselves to call our own.“

While some people have betrayed me, I have known a lot of love in my lifetime. It has to be true, or I would not be the person I am today. I wouldn’t care. But I do care, very much. But I often don’t count the love given to me in the past by those who are no longer present. That’s a mistake.

As to the parents of those who take the lives of others, I can only assume they too have painful childhoods and lacked the love we all need to live. Or else there are mental health issues involved that must exhaust and emotionally drain a parent who can’t control the situation.

As you wish peace for the families grieving the loss of loved ones, I join you in that prayer, and I hope that all of us in this group struggling through the holiday season can remember with clarity and certainty that we each have value, and that we have been given something precious many times over, because there have been so many people who have touched our lives who gave us something of themselves to call her own. Even if those people are no longer present in our lives, those moments we spent together in honest and intimate sharing cannot be negated or erased. Even if circumstances have changed, and we no longer agree with or like each other, there was a time and place where we participated in life with other people. Part of healing is remembering those times and seeing the possibility of sharing ourselves with someone again. I know I wish I could go back to those times. I believe the pain is worth it. But sometimes a little healing is needed before we can go on.

Best wishes for a happy new year!

 

[Friday]

All I can think about are the adults in this kids life. I hold a lot of messy feelings towards to parents of the person who took away so many lives in a few seconds. I always wonder what the parents of people who make extreme decisions would say to the victims. In my experience there was no closure, only avoidance.

I don’t know if it helps, at all, but there’s no common denominator with parents of criminals, addicts, nor parents of teenagers being stupid. (And the number of teenagers who commit felonies on dares, or to try and “white knight” for some idiot girl is astronomically high.) They’re just as likely to be terrible people who shouldn’t be responsible for raising a goldfish, as amazing people who fought to give their kid the best life possible, and everything in between.

Since the terrible people don’t even care about their own kid (abuse, sexual abuse, & neglect), you can hardly expect them to care about anyone else’s kid.... so you want the grieving parents, who cared about their kid and everyone else’s kid, to say what to the other victims families? Because, in this scenario, they’re victims, too. They’ve just lost their child. Possibly for a second time. The first time to drugs, or bad friends, or the girlfriend/boyfriend. And no matter what steps they took trying to get them off drugs or away from their so called friends, or bad news girlfriend/boyfriend... they’re going to blame themselves for the rest of their lives that they couldn’t save their baby. That they didn’t do enough, that they should have _______________________ Fill in the blank that never ends.

It’s one of those no-win situations. The parents who caused the miserable life of their kid aren’t going to give a damn being paraded to the whipping post of public shame & humiliation, and the parents who didn’t are already shredded far worse than anything anyone else could do to them.