To be feeling really really low and depressed after homework topic? (Possibly sensitive subject)

[glorifiedtramp]

My DS is finishing up a homework assignment this weekend. Personally, I found it to be quite a heavy subject matter for a 14 yo but it was about the popular press in the UK. My extended family are Liverpool supporters and my DBIL suggested DS use the example of the Hillsborough disaster and the way it was handled. This week it has consumed our lives and I found myself becoming (admittedly) morbidly fascinated with reading stories and testimonies. I do remember it happening (obviously) but I was 11 at the time and only really recall the news stories vaguely. This week I have cried and cried reading survivors and family members stories, real proper disbelief at what happened and how those families were treated. It's just unimaginable.
Last night we watched the Jimmy McGovern drama 'Hillsborough' and it just floored me. I went to bed thinking about these poor people and woke up feeling the same. I can't seem to get it out of my head and I know DS has been rocked by some of the things he's read this week. AIBU? Are any of you affected really badly by stuff like this? I honestly feel incredibly low and depressed, so much so that I cancelled plans to see people today because I just feel like crap. Sorry if this seems self indulgent, it's not intended to be

Tbh if you didn't find it upsetting and distressing, you wouldn't be human. I don't know if there are any charities or campaigns you could add your support to to translate these feelings into action.

Seeing people and doing other stuff tends to make it easier to put out of your mind if you want to stop thinking about it.

Hi glorified. I know exactly what you mean. Normally news stories don't get to me but for some reason Hillsborough has been in my head a lot. My DH is getting sick of me reading and talking about it. I think it's two things. One is the horrible event itself. The other is the callous way everyone covered themselves and painted the victims as scum.

I hope they get some peace now and JFT96.

It doesn't seem self-indulgent at all.

I feel the same, about 2 or 3 things that have happened over my 40 years. They never seem any less harrowing or horrific no matter how many times you see the pictures or hear people involved talking.

I watched something on NatGeographic last night about the survivors of 9/11. A fireman looking for his dead fireman brother. Watching those towers collapse will never be any less traumatic.

Hillsborough, Dunblane and 9/11. I know lots of awful things have happened, but for me, they have been etched on my heart and mind forever.

There was a guy on the news his brother died and the poor man had gone through more than his brother had first thought he was sobbing poor man TBH if you don't feel something about tragic things then i think people are pretty heartless , its ok to be sad and upset about things ,

Sometimes tragedies just resonate with us, even if you can't put your finger on why that one and not another. I suspect the reason Hillsborough has always bothered me more than, I dunno, the Herald of Free Enterprise, is the flagrant cruelty and injustice towards the victims and families. And partly because my school bus used to go past that ground everyday - a connection, even the slightest connection, makes it feel more real to you.

I think the reason it has got to me is that I can't understand why it didn't get to people then. You hear about the boy who asked for his mum at 4pm, just before he died in the arms of the WPC who stayed with him. Then you hear that the coroner, who knew that too, set the cut off at 3.15pm. How can people be so heartless?

"I think the reason it has got to me is that I can't understand why it didn't get to people then"

It was so well covered up and the press, backed by those in Government who had a hatred for Liverpool, leaped on the chance to discredit the whole city, not just the victims.

I am in Liverpool, i have worked for the club, had friends there, including one who died.

When i first joined MN, a few years ago and the subject came up, posters would still have the opinion that we should all just shut up about it now.

It is good that the truth has come out, but there is still a sadness across the city, that other parts of the country automatically rubbished the campaign for truth, because it came from Liverpool and its connection to football.

Try to do fun stuff this week.

I know, it beggars belief. Maybe the coroner was prejudiced against Liverpudlians or football fans. Maybe he didn't want the inquest to go on for too long. Maybe he was an arrogant bastard. Maybe he wanted to cover up the truth and avoid criticism of the police and emergency services. Maybe all of the above.

Favours were owed, it was a time that saw Liverpool ripped apart, industry went, the Unions put in their place and people plunged into poverty, Thatcher and many others in power seized the chance to paint it as a city that didn't deserve investment and was just full of whinging scousers.

The footage of 9/11 still stops me in my tracks.
I think it's one of the worst things I have ever seen, and I remember watching the whole thing unfold.

When you hear individual victim's stories too, it makes me think " what if that had been ds/dd"

Op I think you having a normal reaction, and it is good for your ds to think about and debate these things too. Ds was appalled after reading Boy in the Stiped PJs at 11 , that anyone could do that to children.

Sorry about your friend birds. Whenever I hear someone say that the families should drop it, I wonder if they would drop it if their child died horribly and then was lied about. 23 years is nothing. You never forget that.

YADNBU, i am going through a pretty emotional time at the moment and the Hillsborough 'cover up' is depressing me too. As has been said upthread, if you didnt feel any sadness or gloom over the press this week then you wouldnt be a compassionate person

JFT96

I don't want to hijack the thread, but enough support was never given to the survivours, who carried the usual guilt over them living and children died.

My mum worked for John Moores (catologue) and they were brillant in giving one man his own desk ans allowing him to change his work hours, because he couldn't stand being in crowds.

When there are deaths, we often forget the effect on the survivours, many are still suffering today and have never moved on.

I couldn't even read the things in the papers this week. I was a kid when it happened, but I know it was on the Telly that weekend because I remember my Dad turned white and told my Mum to turn the TV off (obviously when you still had to get up and turn it off). I recall all the flowers and the news reports.

I think you'd be strange not to be effected by something that happened in our life time. I remember for GCSE History (so not much different in age to your DC) we studied Northern Ireland. Certainly opened my young eyes to things I never knew, being someone who grew up hearing about bombings etc as a kid and I recall changing my whole viewpoint of the troubles at that age.

I hope those who had to read the testimonies (and I think the one's finding out that actually their relative could have lived if it wasn't for the 3.15 cut off have it hardest of all) will be able to find some small sense of peace, and justice. But it doesn't help that a lot of those involved are retired, or dead now.

Survivor guilt is horrible. In this case made so much worse by the circumstances. People knew that people were dying crushed against them. Children and older people who couldn't do anything to save themselves. And, what if you had a pint before the game? To be told your drunken pushing killed people... we know it is lies now but people must have gone over it in their heads and felt awful.

Yanbu, I was thinking about it today when driving with my 2 ds's, when Trevor hicks came into my mind. Imagine how he must have felt all these years. Losing both his children, but also having to make the decision to get in an ambulance and leave one of his dd behind or stay and let one dd go to hospital on her own.

Such a brave man.

It is completely understandable. I felt the same about the boxing day tsunami in 2004. I read an account of a mother who was clinging to a tree holding her 2 children. She knew that if she kept hold of them both they would both die so made the decision to let the older one go as they had a better chance of surviving. I was so moved that I donated £50 that I couldn't really afford to the appeal.

I think there are some tragedies so profound, so large, so obviously avoidable if the world were a better place, that the sheer size of them pulls put an equally "big" response.

Black May '92 happened outside my house (in BKK), just down the road from The Democracy Monument.

At the time, while horrified and terrified, I was insulated by a real inability to believe it was real. In my world up until then atrocities only happened in celluloid, in print..but in person, relevant to me and my life and people I cared about...that was new and unswallowable. I took refuge in the distance created by sheer suspension of reality and viewing it like it was happening somewhere else and I was seeing it via a camera lens.

It took me ten years or so to let it be real, provoked by 9/11 which caused the opening of old and ignored feelings that prompted me to read and re read the stories of the survivors and bereaved from all those years ago. And it rocked me to the core.

Probably better to let yourself feel than squash it down, but in my case I had to keep an eye out on slipping in so deep that I felt like I was at the bottom of a dark and slimy walled well that I couldn't climb out of. So grieve yes, but pull back if you are going in so deep that you could get stuck.

I think it's dreadful the way that the media spin altered public perceptions for so long, and I cannot imagine how that has affected th grieving patterns of the bereaved. Especially when twats like Alan Davies were telling them earlier they should have just got over it by now and getting a surprising amount of support for such an insensitive view).

Oh thank you all, it's just so unbearable isn't it? So sorry to any of you who have suffered tragic loss. I am filled with such sympathy and yet such admiration for these poor families. I just can't begin to imagine their pain.