the memorial in Hiroshima Japan. And equivocally pearl harbour. Pearl harbour was a must after Hiroshima as you can see how a side can really darken and twist a lot of it with a heavy layer of undying racism. Kids in Japan still send paper cranes.
Trusting the wrong person over myself, and letting what had been a decent working friendship turn into an abusive long-term relationship in which I was exploited for work and money, berated for and demanded to change fundamental things about myself, alienated from friends and family my partner didn’t like, had every past trauma, mental-health struggle, and vulnerability I’d trustingly shared with this person weaponized against me, and was routinely gaslit to such a degree that I had to start secretly recording our conversations on my phone just to make sure I wasn’t actually misremembering everything later when this person inevitably insisted the talk had gone completely differently.
Even knowing I was being so abused, I had let so much of my life get wrapped up with this person and was so downtrodden in heart and soul that I found myself remaining dependent on the situation and unable to even think about getting out of it. I felt trapped, but unable to do anything except continue to go with it and pretend everything was just fine. This strategy was, of course, unsustainable; it all eventually blew up to the point where my abuser finally got sick of me, whereupon I was dumped, kicked out, and left unhoused and couch-surfing.
It took me a great deal of time to pick up the scraps and rebuild my life, thankfully with the help of some amazing friends and family who were happy to have me back and helped pull me up onto my feet again. After rebuilding my own independence from scratch and taking a long while to work on myself and my own mental and physical health, I eventually began dating again. I met the most wonderful person, and we’ve now been happily and healthy married for years. My shitty ex is long in the past, and I’m content to leave things that way.
Ugh i have been there. You know it’s a red flag now when someone goes ‘tell me one time when that happened’ and you have to start recording conversations as a part of relationship homework.
I’m sure it’s not much compared to what many here experienced, but it took me a long time to properly recover from this.
A couple years back on Christmas Eve, a few of my then friends, or at least acquaintances ripped apart my friend group. Doxxed me (I’m told) and slandered me for days. Basically out of nowhere from my perspective. No fights that I can recall were had shortly before and I was still having friendly conversations with the perpetrators that same day. I tried asking the “leaders” what I might’ve been accused of and I never got a single answer. Not even a “you should know”. Just a message from my girlfriend telling me I should go offline for a while and beyond that, radio silence for a solid day.
Some time later my girlfriend told me one of them had been trying for weeks to convince her I was toxic. Manipulative. Untrustworthy. We’re engaged now, somehow. She brings way more to the table than I do, but I do my best to make her days more interesting and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I hope I bring her a similar comfort. I also got back in contact with a few of those old friends a year later.
But for a whole year and out of nowhere, I had to cut contact with essentially everyone I talked to online. And let’s not kid ourselves, I’m an introverted nerd somewhere on the spectrum, that was basically my whole social circle. I’m told their… whatever this all was for ended up imploding, but I learned that day how easy it is to get exploited and mislead by those we trust.
Working IT helpdesk for a shady VSP. I mean it was fun, but i’ve seen many fucked up websites, child porn, revenge rape, etc. and received calls from DHS, FBI, state police, Suicide Prevention Services, etc. over all of that shit…
I lost a couple of people in my life and handled both in ways I still regret. I also have my sense of enjoyment challenged in absurd manners, and perhaps it’s these two things that have made me self-numb.
Realizing that all of the patriotic stuff I was fed as a child was bullshit, and realizing what I had actually become a part of by joining the US Army.
Me and my brother both joined the army at slightly different times. We both did a tour in Afghanistan that overlapped and were just one province away from each other. I did a second tour over there and he got out.
We both came from a VERY conservative family. It was after serving that we both became suuuuper liberal. It was like the wool being pulled out from out eyes when we joined the army and saw how much of a lie it all was. Oddly enough, this is a semi common story for conservative people joining the military.
We grew up with our dad working in the military-industrial-complex and he would make fun of the liberals who called out the military for serving the MIC companies, and how it Iraq was a war for profit. Then we serve and see it first had with all the contractors, the needless equipment, the contracts for new tech that wasn’t needed, and all the other money sinks going into it. It was all a lie.
We grew up being told how bad universal healthcare would be, but then had it in the military and saw how amazing it was.
We were told that if people didn’t have a personal motivation through debt and loans to make them work harder, then people going through college would have no motivation to improve their lives. And yet here I am with the GI bill. (Granted, I still have 70k in student loans. The GI bill is kind of a lie in its self).
Everything that was a conservative talking point was exposed as a lie after joining army.
Very similar background for myself minus a family working for the MIC. Did two tours in Iraq. Went in a Christian conservative and came out the complete opposite. Wish I had the wits about me to figure it out a better way.
I have been to Mauthausen concentration camp.
Harrowing expereince, especially when you are walking through one of the buildings with lots of artifacts in glass cases and information on plaques and go through a doorway and suddenly your in a room with floor to ceiling tiles and shower heads…
Can imagine. Visited the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem and the holocaust museum in Berlin. Both were awesome and brutal experiences. Well worth a visit.
I worked as a transplant coordinator, and that job was soul crushing every day.
One of the worst moments was being on the intake phones. It a phone number every hospital in the area calls whenever anyone dies. They report the details of the death, and we determine if there’s any possibility for donation.
I knew my uncle had been sick, but nobody told me they put him in hospice care and had withdrawn treatment. I took hundreds of calls, maybe thousands, but I still remember the feel of the receiver in my hand when the voice on the line said his name.
There were many sad stories, many sad days, so much that you become numb to it. It was horrible, but it made my job easier because when the numbness sets in, you can think of the trauma and empathize.
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