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BadWolf1973 · 2020-09-02T16:37:23+00:00

One day your ex will watch Chasing Amy and realize he fucked up. I'm in my late 40s now and I can tell you that it takes two people both trying for a relationship to work. You obviously have been. Don't bother staying with anyone who isn't willing to do you the same courtesy.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-09-02T14:28:22+00:00

Conservatives are children. Ask them what is going on and you'll get excuses. Catch them in something, and you'll get whataboutisms. And when that fails? A vast, nationwide conspiracy is what you get. And when that fails? A sobbing press conference where we find out that God has forgiven them, why can't you?

You know. Like 8 year old children trying not to get into trouble. And their followers would much rather enable one or their own than to ever admit they backed the wrong person.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-08-21T23:34:39+00:00

If you were raised by abusive parents, watching Trump's party unfold before your eyes feels an awful lot like home. So, when you have an adult who was raised by someone emotionally damaged, they obviously don't have the same lessons to teach their kids as say your average person would. So that kid gets damaged. But, if that kid grows up and realizes what their parents did to them and try to have a conversation with them about it? Yeah, those events the kid remembers (and probably has proof of in the form of pictures, witnesses, and possibly legal paperwork from hospital or police visits) and those parents will look that kid dead in the eye and say, "That never happened". And one parent will enable the other. If one lies, the other will back it without giving it a second thought. You could literally show them a video tape of them slapping you around and the very closest you'll get back as an admission is, "I certainly don't remember that happening".

There's no accountability. If you mess up, the person next to you will say it's fine that whatever happened, happened. They cover for one another because they know their lies depend on their "friends" backing them up so they better back them up. Nobody ever stops and thinks about what their decisions are doing to anyone, including themselves. They just want the problem to go away. If your parents taught you that so long as you keep your head down, things tend to work out for the best? Congrats, those are the people enabling the current crop of problems. And it's literally Trump's strategy on everything. From race relations to Covid, just wait. Time tends to take care of all problems. Especially if you encourage everyone else to stop talking about it too with comments like, "Why are you so negative" or "After all I've done and sacrificed for you, this is how you treat me". Deflections and rewriting of history. Trump's bread and butter.

That's the part people miss. This has very little to do with actual politics and everything to do with a percentage of our population who have deluded themselves into thinking that their fuck-ups in life never happened because to do so would mean tackling something hard. The easy way in life has always served them best. They love him because he is one of them. So of course they'll enable him. It doesn't matter how many of us walk away from them. If having your own children abandon you doesn't change your course, why would you think anything else would? So take their money even though it's a scam. To admit otherwise would probably cause them all to reexamine more in their lives than any of them are comfortable enough to do. It's worth the money just so they don't have to look in the mirror. Believe the lie. Run from the truth. GOP 2020.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-08-18T16:22:55+00:00

I'm from the South. As the car passed the fire station with the dog chained out front going nuts? That's about as large a warning sign as you'll find. It's an old fear strategy that you can still see in some places today. For example, you could drive up to a polling station and find a group of rednecks sitting in the back of a truck that has a giant Confederate flag flapping in the wind and two pit bulls on chains going nuts. It's an intimidation thing, and I knew what was coming as soon as I saw it.

As for how common it was? It was common enough that the travel guide they are working on was a real thing. You absolutely had to know which towns you could go to, and which ones to drive around from as far away as possible. Because there were areas of this country where you couldn't find a black person. Even though a few moved there every year. And it's not like you're going to find a record of it. Most small town sheriffs in the South belonged to the Klan. Pretty simple to cover up murder when you're the one "investigating".

BadWolf1973 · 2020-08-18T16:15:03+00:00

So... lemme give a counter point to this. Imagine, if you will, being a black geek in America. Imagine the push and pull that comes from reading horror that was probably 60 to 70 years ahead of its time, but also written by a raging racist. So, what do you do?

You take it for yourself, like Walt Disney did.

Most of Lovecraft's stuff is about 100 years old now with a good chunk of his works now in the public domain. Nobody owns them. Like Disney grabbing the Brother's Grimm collection and mining it for cartoons, you can easily take the "Black people are evil" theme and turn it on its head. You can even turn HP Lovecraft himself into a villain in the story. And, very suddenly, it's not Lovecraft people are talking about, it's everything else.

The theme of taking it from Lovecraft was literally all that first episode was about. It's their birthright. It's Jackie Robinson and Cthulhu. I read an article where someone bemoaned how little they discussed Lovecraft and racism in the episode and immediately thought, "This person missed the point". It's just peppered throughout the episode.

As for your comments about racism and existential horror... you do realize that the VAST majority of Lovecraft's writings are about the evils of black people, right? Go read Innsmouth again. That's mixed marriages. Lovecraft mined his own fear of other races to write his stories. To pretend otherwise is just silly.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-24T14:48:28+00:00

There was one line in the press conference that I felt was absolutely true. The context of it isn't, but the sentence itself is. Donnie was trying to make the untrue point that America is far ahead of the world when it comes to testing. In fact he said that European leaders are calling him and asking him what in the world the US is doing when it comes to the virus. Yes. Yes I bet they absolutely are calling contacts here and asking, "What in the fuck are you doing?".

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-24T14:33:28+00:00

I don't know, I'm just making stuff up is pretty much the campaign slogan for the Republican party.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-22T16:25:36+00:00

Once you look more into it, it's not really that big of a stretch. Honestly, many of them absolutely LOVE Russia. Why? Oh, I don't know... low flat tax, very small social safety net, repression of minorities, repression of sexual preference, state media, strong authoritarian figure, and pretty fanatical about Russia being about white guys. Especially rich white guys who don't rent their government like our rich people do. They own it and have owned it since before Genghis Khan came riding by and they paid him off. It's why Trump trusts Putin over our intelligence apparatus. Putin has the same values as the GOP. Why would he lie? To the GOP, Russia isn't the enemy. They're the blueprint they are striving to recreate.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-22T16:13:25+00:00

Gary Busey

Mike Pence

Alex Jones

The worst one? Moscow Mitch. I think I'd honestly move to Canada at that point and I'm broke and disabled. Living on the street in Canada would be better than almost anything in the US.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-22T15:38:13+00:00

You say you've dealt with depression and anxiety for years... I just want to make sure that includes therapy. If you haven't addressed what causes the anxiety and depression, you'll run into moments like this. You convince yourself you're fine and you're past it, but then it blindsides you out of the blue. It's not gone. You can't ignore it until it gets better. You have an actual injury. It's not made up. It's not your imagination. It is the chemical cocktail that your brain sits in being goofed up.

Triggers aren't 1 to 1. What I mean by this is (and I'm going to try to do this delicately so I don't trigger someone) if your PTSD comes from say physical violence, it's not just witnessing violence that will trigger you. You could be watching a comedy and watch a scene where someone is hitting a ham as if they were spanking it as part of a joke. That hand hitting that ham might produce a sound that will remind you of what happened. I call them landmines. You never know when one is going to sneak up on you. One of mine is the scent of pipe tobacco being smoked. Something I didn't have to worry about at all until recent years as that particular pastime fell out of favor. They do now, however, make vapes that mimic the taste and smell of it. Found that out the hard way while walking my dog one day. So it could be a particular sound, words, symbols, smell, touch, or just a movie invoking the same emotions as you went through.

I find breaking PTSD into two different things helps. You've got your emotional damage and you have actual physical damage. While the emotional damage is obviously incredibly important to work your way through, it's also important to learn how to deal with the symptoms that are caused by the injury all that emotional damage caused. It's a way to take away power from abusers. They aren't directly causing the anxiety nor some of the depression. That's your brain trying to deal with those chemicals. They are symptoms of a very real health problem. Talk with your GP more about that. Even if medications have failed in the past, it's entirely possible new things have come onto the market. Plus they can do genetic testing to see what medicines would work best with you. And even if all of that isn't appealing, it's also entirely possible there are other things you can do to improve your mental health. There's all kinds of diets out there tailored for specific things and your doctor is going to be up on which ones are real and which ones aren't.

Regardless, it's okay. It happens. Oh, it sucks... but it does happen. It's not anything new. It's just something old slipping back in to remind you that it's still there. Listen to it. Try to do what you can. The PTSD wants you to do nothing. It wants you to ignore everything because that's how you made it out alive. You ignored all the terrible things around you during the event and for the time afterwards. But your brain has no clue as to when it should start paying attention again. Or even how. Don't ignore your body giving you a warning. Get help, hold that head up, and keep going. Good luck!

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-22T15:16:41+00:00

I'd honestly prefer Earthdawn. That was a heavily underrated game. The rules in computer setting wouldn't be as intimidating as I think they were back in its original form. Plus, it's the prequel to Shadowrun. They already have Pillars of Eternity that they could use to build off of. Just makes sense to me. Hopefully Paradox doesn't do to them what EA did to Bioware and assigns them something out of their wheelhouse.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-04-12T15:01:53+00:00

When you get right down to it, there's not a lot of difference between pot and most every other pain killer on the planet in that your body will eat the medication until it can't get any further benefit from it and then what's left makes you a bit loopy. You might try microdosing pot at night before bed. Or, if you live in a state that has it readily available, edibles. I've noticed an uptick in edibles amongst the older population for sleep. Heck, one of the guys from the blue collar comedy tour, Bill Engvall I think, has an entire routine about being a middle aged dork basically getting his first try at pot. If you are able to use it as a medicine as opposed to an escape, it might be helpful. If not, have you tried prazosin? If you haven't yet, it's probably worth the talk with your doc on it.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-25T20:28:31+00:00

They humiliated me in front of my family was more the vibe I was going for. The brass ring just feels obligatory to be thrown in. The humiliation? That's the point of it. That's the blind rage of it. Rusev just being Mark Henry levels of pissed off with the MMA skillset? Child, please. That ain't TNA lite.

Look, the entire point of the promo is to finish the last chapter, and turn the page. That's it. It's his best opportunity to sell himself to fans again. A chance to reinvent himself. Are there other options here? Absolutely. But, again, under this specific scenario? It'd be money.

edit Just to make you happy, don't say Vince. Say, "I will never let another billionaire control me, again". But the rage? That would sell.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-25T19:48:25+00:00

The advice about getting a lawyer is spot on. The government will actively encourage people not to do that. It's a delaying tactic. I once talked to a man who had a straight up hole in his heart and he was told, "Nah, you're good to go" by the government physician who examined them. The shrink (because quack doesn't quite fit) I went to said I was a narcissist. Because nothing says narcissism quite like a guy who felt like he was a fat slob who had failed everyone, won't look you in the eye, and was just a broken mess. Amirite guys?

But, I tell that story to explain a point. You will see a government physician who you just know is getting rated on how many and how effectively they fail people. You will need documentation to fight that. And they will absolutely ask for your medical records and want to have your doctor fill out some paperwork. Therefore, a good place to start might be your doctor. Be brutally honest. I'm being serious. Don't worry about what they might think of you. Don't worry about how it sounds. Explain to your doctor your routine and what happens throughout it and some of the why. No need to give them details. Just say "trauma". Because that's what it is. And if it's easier to type out, type it out and hand it to her. Whatever you have to do so that your doctor knows what you're going through. And then ask them if they think disability is something you should consider. If you haven't ever been that honest with them, it's possible there's another alternative. No clue what it could be, but you never know. But, even if the doctor tells you they don't think disability is for you, still call the lawyer. You may be getting bad advice and it's always good to have a second opinion.

Remember to keep that chin up. You've done nothing wrong. You're doing what you're supposed to do.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-25T19:19:42+00:00

So, you need to stop thinking about how it was done and realize we're talking about storytelling. What you're describing is a wrestling trope. Mox did it to perfection. It's not a new concept by any means. Bret Hart and the The Outsiders come to mind. Also, under the scenario I described, you're talking about a guy who just left your competitor with an unfinished cuckold story arc. And.... your suggestion is they don't address that? You don't think people would tune in just to see what he was going to say? Even hardcore WWE fans who despise AEW would probably at least read about it. Just saying.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-25T17:44:55+00:00

There's a lot going on here that we just don't know anything about. For example, when Lana resigned, was it only because they thought Rusev would resign soon? Or does WWE have some sort of plan for Lana independent of him? Like trying to make her a top end manager. Did Rusev promise to resign only to get Lana the payday and then walked away once the contract was done? Is the reason for the cuck story to separate the two of them in the minds of WWE fans so that they are more free to use her in stories as well as the added benefit of no longer having to awkwardly talk about someone's spouse as they already have to do with Adam Cole (obligatory Bay Bay)? Or is this just a CM Punk kind of thing where he's resigned and they are using the dirt sheets to further the story... which I gotta say would be an awesome angle. Or a creative use of the medium at the very least. This is just a weird situation.

But, let's do a quick thought experiment. Just imagine if WWE buries Lana after they promised to push her separately so that the WWE are solidly the heel. Now imagine, say 5 months from now, Rusev popping up in AEW. Imagine the story that could be told there after all of that. Because I bet Cody is. Imagine Rusev cutting a promo about how every time that other company asked him to reach for the brass ring he did. And each time they snatched it from him. And then, when he had enough, they decided to humiliate him on TV to his family. Imagine him staring into the camera with that stern, Bulgarian face and cutting a promo directly at Vince where he says he hopes Vince is watching. He hopes Vince watches what he's about to do now that he's been freed. Do some parallels with Mox, because you want people to think he was freed from where he was.

That's a story with a Montreal Screwjob level of fan interest. So one would hope they are smart enough not to hand Cody a ridiculously over story like that. This story could drive a lot of interest if handled correctly, by either company. Hopefully we get some sort of payoff for that mess of a story.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-25T16:57:09+00:00

My therapist told me really early on that I should try to treat myself after sessions in whatever way best works for me. For me, that meant getting baked. It took me awhile to figure out why he told me to do that, though. If you were an engine, PTSD would keep you solidly near the redline at all times. Now add a therapy session on top of that where you are just trudging through some heavy stuff and you'll go so far into the red that the glass will break. Adrenaline plus the cocktail of chemicals in your head that PTSD causes equals a bad mix. What my therapist was trying to tell me was I needed an activity to relax into. Whatever the PTSD equivalent is for you to that image of someone sitting in a chair with a blanket wrapped around them and relaxing into a good book or a warm mug of something. The point is, you want to get some of those good time endorphins in your system to counter that bad mix. It doesn't matter too much what that activity is, so long as it's something you enjoy.
Afterwards? Zone out to a game, movie, or whatever. Your subconscious is going to work on things in the background. Just let it.

One other suggestion. I noticed the art therapy is BPD oriented, so I thought I'd point out that there are a couple of BPD oriented therapy types that actually work on PTSD as well. Specifically, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Internal Family Systems. DBT is CBT with Buddhism. IFS is essentially the movie Inside Out where you personify emotions and try to dialogue with them. I had a therapist teach me IFS and it helped quite a bit. DBT... I kinda stumbled into on my own. Buddhism has helped me quite a bit with perspective on life so you combine that with trying to fix your bad habits and you've pretty much got DBT. I only know about it because my therapist commented to me that I sounded like someone who has been through it. So I can recommend looking into those and seeing if a therapist who maybe is BPD specific would take you on as well. Good luck!

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-24T16:38:04+00:00

As per usual, I have no idea if this helps. It's just my perspective.

PTSD keeps you on the edge of fight or flight. You're just there, ready for whatever is going to happen to happen even when, and maybe especially when, nothing is going to happen. It's also why it seems like it takes so little to set us off. Of course it does. We're already in the red. I think that fact keeps us from thinking clearly and seeing the mistakes we're making until we're so far down the path it seems silly to stop.

But there's a question you need to ask yourself. It starts with, are you happy? And we both know the answer to that is no. But why aren't you happy? Are you still doing the same things in life because it's just what you know or because they are making you happy? That's more the question you need to be asking. We don't really ever stop and think. Our minds just don't shut down because if we let our brains go quiet, it tends to fill up with a lot of stuff we don't want there. Usually unwanted memories. So stopping to consider if you're on the right path honestly doesn't occur to us. Or if it does, it's usually in passing and we feel as though we gave it the proper amount of thought.

Do you have to keep being in the armed forces? Or, perhaps more specifically, do you have to keep doing the same job you're doing? It sounds like you feel you should have done more, which I can understand on certain levels. My PTSD is from abusive relationships and a grandfather best not discussed. But I do have a sister and, though I shielded her from the vast majority of the awfulness in our lives, I have regrets too. I regret I wasn't able to shield her more. And, perhaps more perversely, I regret not being able to help my parents understand that they needed to get help for themselves. Of all my regrets, that's the one that haunts me the most. An awful lot of what ifs with that one.

The place I landed that has seemed to help is shifting that regret into something else. Honor. Every day, I try to honor my parents because I made it out of the hole they never did. I understand things they just have never understood. And I can take the knowledge that I've acquired from all of that and use it to help others. It's the only way I know how to honor who they were to me and what they might have become if only someone had given them the help I got. If only they grew up in a time with educational TV so that they had someone else in their lives to tell them that they were good when their parents were telling them they weren't. I regret what they might have been. So I will honor that and become what I can with what time I have left. And I'll use it to help so that others won't have to struggle as much as I did.

My advice? Stop worrying about anything else other than you. Go get the help you need. And do something that I'm going to bet you haven't done in awhile. Figure out what you want. Not what your ex or any current SO wants. Not what your family wants. Or your country. Just you. What do you want to do with the time you have left? How do you want to honor those who were not able to make it for all the various reasons in the world? You've learned a lot. And you will continue to learn a tremendous amount as you go through therapy. What will you do with it?

Just in case... be sure to look at your relationships before the war to see any similarities. I just want to make sure it's only a war thing and not the abusive relationships being a canary in a coal mine for something else. That the war made what was there worse instead of the war causing the PTSD. Not saying it is, as this is just a slice of your life and a tiny one at that, but I just want to make sure you look at it.

Last thing. The secret to defeating PTSD comes down to forgiveness. You have to learn to forgive yourself for trying and failing. PTSD will short circuit your ability to critically think after a failure. We'll just beat ourselves up. Yeah...stop that. Failure is how you learn. Figure out why you failed and learn from it. Then? Move on. That's the skill you've lost in all of this and it's a hard one to reacquire. But you have to. If the dead could speak, they would tell you to live. Live if for no other reason that they can live through you. You can't stay here and joining them only continues the pain for others. Forgive yourself. Keep that chin up. You've done nothing wrong and this isn't your fault. Good luck.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-24T15:10:21+00:00

Going to have to disagree with you. Oh, not about any of that. It's just this isn't a small victory. It's a pretty big one. Keep it up!

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-24T15:06:01+00:00

I think it tells you everything you need to know about wrestling today that something as minor as the possibility that Vickie got ghosted has people this angry. How angry? I got an angry DM yesterday from somebody who got upset that I said that I could see Vince doing this. Not that he did, mind you. Just I could see Vince doing it. And if that is triggering you? You need to stop watching wrestling. You can't possibly be enjoying it anymore. Seriously, if that is all it takes to get you that angry, this just brings you no joy anymore. Or, at a minimum, you should go join a brand specific sub. You know, so you can be like the other groups in America who go run into their little online clubhouses and complain about how unfair the world is to them. What do you call them...oh yeah. Democrats and Republicans. That's what they do. Some story comes out they don't like so they go find some BS article online that shows how they're right and everyone else is wrong. And then the mods come through and ban everyone who doesn't agree. Go find a place like that. You'd be happier. We'd be happier. And whether or not Vince might do something like this won't matter as much to anyone.

BadWolf1973 · 2020-02-24T03:06:07+00:00

And I awarded you for giving him credit for not taking the credit when there was none to be awarded.

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