Wednesday

24th September 2014

People have often asked me how did you get your PTSD? Were you in the military? No, I wasn't never in the military, or any of the armed forces. People always associate PTSD with the armed forces, but it's not always the way. 
PTSD can come from any bad experience someone has in there life. Apparently, or so I have been told by the doctors that I have had my PTSD for most of my life. I did learn how to control it, don't ask me how because I don't know, until I got attacked at work by a drunk. Why did mine suddenly appear then? Well, I was told that the human mind is like a bottle and it stores everything up until, something happens to make that bottle overflow and it's like a bottle of pop that has been shaken up before opening. When you open that bottle it explodes everywhere.
That is part of what has happened to me. Also that is where the saying comes from, when someone says to you, "you shouldn't bottle things up" there is not a truer saying, talk, talk to someone, but it has to be someone that you trust.
Trust, now there's a word. Trust, something I really do have a problem with. How are you supposed to trust someone you know that is a complete stranger to you? I am on about care workers. How are you supposed to be able to sit there and open that massive can of worms that is your past and tell them everything about yourself? It's impossible, to be totally honest. I have wanted so many times to tell my care worker everything but it's like there is a massive wall that stops me. 
I can say little snippets, like I was abused as a kid, physically, mentally and sexually by the man that was supposed to be the man that I trusted,(there's that word again,) he was supposed to love me, protect me, but done nothing he was supposed to do, he was my father, I hate him with a passion, even now when he's been dead for over ten years.
I had a chance to get my revenge for what he did to me, I was young, I think about 18, maybe 19, and I saw him one day, I carried a knife back then, a flick knife, I could feel the hatred in myself, I could feel my temper rising, I wanted to finish him so much, but I had made a promise to my mother that I would never harm him.
My mother was a fantastic woman, after all he had put her through, yet she made me promise that. She always said that, "God pays debts without money" I wasn't religious even then, but saying that, my father did die a very slow and painful death from Emphysema. 
I went to his funeral, yes I cried and I got called a hypocrite, but I wasn't crying because he was dead, I was crying because of relief, because of release, because that 'person' had finally gone.
From that day to this though, I have had nightmares, flashbacks, voices of him. But I controlled everything as best I could, I never told anyone anything, then I was attacked, attacked over a couple of bus fares, now I cannot control the things I see or hear, my life is now totally gone. I am useless, I cannot do anything, not a damn thing.
  



Monday

8th September 2014

In my time on the internet I have had 'met' a lot of different people from different cultures and from all over the world. I have witnessed some really unbelievable things on the internet and some real stupidity. I learnt from very early on, never get into arguments with people because you can't walk away because they are always there on the screen. I always block and ignore prats like that. 
Then there's the people that you show kindness to, listen to their problems, give them advice, sit there for hours watching those words waffle on and on in a never ending stream on your screen. 

I have had three online stalkers, two from abroad, one from the UK. I got into argument after argument with my wife because of this, we even nearly split up over one of them. Not good.

Why is it that some people do such a thing? I'm not a nasty person, I will help anyone, that's just how I am. Life is always a challenge in whatever one does. It's about different circumstances and ventures. 

I was a bus driver in London and a coach driver for National Express for a total of twenty five years. When I first started the job it was fun, you got to know your regulars and you had a laugh, I even got birthday and Christmas presents. But nowadays it is a very different story being a bus driver. Everyone is on your back, having a go at you for being late, you turn round and tell them something has happened further down the road, road works, accident or just a build up of traffic, but what happens? Oh you're lying. No matter what the driver says, he or she is lying, 

Bus driving is a very difficult job. people just think it's easy, but it isn't. What with all the idiots on the road that think it's funny to cut a bus up, or pull out in front of a bus, making it brake sharp making the passengers have a go at the driver or put in a complaint about the driver, the driver, no matter what he or she does, is in the wrong in the eyes of the public and, surprisingly enough, the company he works for as well. Even when he is in the right, he really is in the wrong, it's not a case of being innocent until proven guilty being a bus driver, it's a case of being guilty until proven innocent. I know how people felt facing the hangman in the old days.

I had a very minor accident at Clapham one day. A white van man overtook the bus on a corner and caught the front of the bus with the back of his van. I caught up with him at a set of lights about a mile further on. I shouted across to the van driver that he had hit the bus and I wanted to have a word. I got out of the bus and walked across the two lanes, we were side by side, as I walked across in front of his van he put his foot down and threw me up in the air about ten foot and made land on a car which was about ten feet away. The police caught him and the excuse was 'he never saw me.' I could understand that if I was a small guy but I am 6'5" tall and not exactly small. What did the company say? No they didn't ask if I was okay, they were just worried about the damage to the bus, which was a small scrap on the front of the bus, the van came off worse.

There were three 'incidents' in a short space of time where I got attacked, the last one was a group of drunks and they were the final straw, they were the reason that my mind got f***ed up, and I got diagnosed with PTSD after taking a massive overdose and ended up dying in hospital, shame they brought me back, they really should have left me dead.
The day of my overdose, I wrote on Facebook what I intended to do, I got my medication and popped 347 tablets into a small sandwich box, went to the shop, brought a small bottle of vodka, I made my way to a park where my wife and I had some laughs when we first started going out together, which was beside the river Thames and watched the swans and a guy fishing.
As I did this I was taking handfuls of pills and drinking the vodka, I didn't want to live, I thought was about to lose my wife and children, I thought no-one cared, I was in a very bad place.
I don't remember what happened next, but apparently I called the ambulance, I do remember the hallucinations, jeez they were scary, and one of my Facebook friends saw what I had wrote and told her husband, God rest him, and he phoned Scotland yard all the way from America, who in turn phoned my local police station. I had the police looking for me, they even sent their helicopter up to look for me. Amazing.

So when you travel by bus don't have a go at the driver for anything, it's 99% of the time, not his fault, he is there to do his job, he is in charge of that vehicle and if he tells you something then do what he asks, even if you think he is wrong, as I said 9 times out of 10 he is right and think before you start writing those letters, don't you think his job isn't difficult enough? It is a fact that bus driving is the second most stressful job in the UK behind a doctor.     

        

Tuesday

2nd September 2014

I have received a letter about my complaint about my care worker, I feel really let down. In some ways I feel they're calling me a liar, in other ways I feel let down. They apologize to me for him, for the way he treated me, but then they turn round and say that they checked his voice mail on his phone and that is working properly, there is no sign of my messages, so what? Are they calling me a liar? Are they saying I didn't try to contact him? I did, twice. 
Then they say about his emails, 'oh I'm sorry,' he said 'he don't check emails,' what? He don't check his emails? What the hell has he got an email account for then? Jeez what the hell. Then there's the letter I sent in to him, the wife said she posted it for me, of course I do believe her, but he turns round and says he didn't receive no letter from me.
Then there's the message from my GP that he told me himself that he sent, I told them about it, but there is no mention of that in the letter of bullshit, so, today I contacted the lady that dealt with my complaint and asked about the message from my GP? She said she will find out about it as it was obviously missed out.
I will have to wait and see the outcome about that, I also asked if I still had a care worker? I don't really know if I do.  

September! This is a month of mixed emotions for me, a month I really wish did not exist, the good bits are it is one of my grand daughters' third birthday. It' is my youngest daughters' twenty ninth birthday.
Bad bits, it will be my sisters' forty seventh birthday, we haven't spoke for so many years I've forgotten when the last time was when we spoke, which really I don't give a shit about anyway. It would have been my mothers' birthday on the thirtieth. I always hate whenever there's something to do with my mother, those special days, it upsets me so much, but all I get is 'oh you should be over it by now.' 

They say time heals, that is such bullshit, time does not heal at all. I will never get over my mothers' death, to watch as the doctor turned off the life support, the fact that I talked her into having that heart bypass operation because she was suffering so much from angina, the fact that I got several texts from my mothers' mobile phone, some calling me a murderer, some warning me to stay away from my own mothers' funeral or I would be put six foot under as well.

T o be perfectly honest, I feel like I did murder my mother, though I didn't, but those words, 'you murderer' sticks, it goes around in my head whenever I look at my mother's pictures, whenever I think about her. I want to remember her so much, but I can't, not how I should anyway.

TTFN