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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Anyone there to help? I feel I'm drowning

241 replies

mosp · 17/03/2012 00:01

I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about this, but if I don't express my emotions I will explode.
I recently made a new friend. Long distance. He is doomed. The friendship is doomed. I can't cope. I didn't anticipate feeling so close. :(

OP posts:
UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 22:50

well I'm pretty much locked up too. I just had NHS direct on phone as DS has a temperature of 102 and they just say sponge him down. Well he wont have it - screams the place down, has cracked lips and we haven't been out of the house for two days. I have no help and no one bloody campaigning for justice for me or my son to get some support from my thieving whoring abandoning husband.

I could do with you writing to me actually.

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 22:52

I can ask him if he'd be bothered if I disappeared. It could just be that he's not so bad (not including his actions when he killed). That he is bothered genuinely. That he doesn't have a dodgy or manipulative agenda. It is possible.

OP posts:
HoudiniHissy · 17/03/2012 22:53

No, you TOLD yourself you were doing this for someone else, but what you did in doing this was to make sure that you neglect yourself, punish yourself for the devastating decisions you made.

For the love of god mosp, you have to forgive yourself! You made choices, others made choices. You got though, you survived and you are here, your children are here. You can't do this to yourself. This is harming you and will harm your little peas.

I hated myself for a while in having chosen an abusive man as a partner, as a father to my boy. He deserves better than that, I deserved better than than.. but it's taken IMMENSE effort for me to get to see that. It will take more to understand why I got here and who pushed me into this. There will be repercussions that will ripple for ages... But the people who caused my misery directly and indirectly made choices to do what they did. I didn't choose for them. I did what I did, when I could, based on what options I had.

I don't blame myself.

Neither should you.

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 22:53

I would write to you with pleasure UA

OP posts:
HoudiniHissy · 17/03/2012 22:56

You could tell him the truth. He'd more likely respect that. Just tell him that you are struggling with a few things in your personal life and that you will have to focus on them for the moment, but that you will write as soon as you can.

I promise you he'll be fine about it. he will understand.

UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 22:56

I have nice handwriting, can write pages, am a catholic and haven't murdered anyone even though they deserved it. I have been shot to pieces instead.

Please mosp, get some perspective on this. You can pay for private trauma therapy you know. And you should read this book: www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_5_6?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=trauma+gordon+turnbull&sprefix=trauma%2Cstripbooks%2C226

if you PM me your address I'll send you my copy. Its brilliant.

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 22:57

I don't know what forgiving myself constitutes. I just know that I want to show kindness to a person who has done wrong.

OP posts:
UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 22:57

Hissy you are a total star

AnyFucker · 17/03/2012 22:58

UA I always write to you

you are most deserving Smile

HoudiniHissy · 17/03/2012 23:01

Show yourself kindness first. Get the therapy and read the books and THEN look for some way of giving back.

Heck Post on MN! there are hundreds of people who need someone to talk to. It's very rewarding sometimes. It also means we talk about things we are not able to really vocalise in RL.

Sometimes it's our only outlet. it was for me for a very long time.

UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 23:05

its the gordon turnbull book btw. he works out of capio nightingale hospital. My friend has had trauma therapy with him.

You want to show kindness to someone who has done wrong? Well there are many other useful things to be doing with your mind.

And if you wrote to my exhusband in Chiang Mai and listened to him tell lies and spout on about his holiness and decency,(have seen him write asuch crap in all his emails to others trying to extract sympathy) I would come to your house and punch you. Because although he has an idea of decency in his own mind, as does your DR inmate, you can be damn sure that when he was killing someone - as when my exH was killing my future and his sons and two daughters' - he wasn't thinking of us in all his decent holiness, he was thinking entirely of himself and only felt sorry for himself diddums after the event.

You really need to knock it on the head with Terrywotsit.

UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 23:07

and the rescue chopper is circling the skies here as I write. That is very sad as it usually means someone is either trying, or already has, chucked themselves off the local massive bridge. Sad

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 23:13

You sound like you're assuming he's trying to get sympathy or trying to excuse what he did. Neither of those is the case.

OP posts:
HoudiniHissy · 17/03/2012 23:15

UA... you are still here aren't you?

Your Ex didn't kill anything. he merely put a massive speed bump in the path you were walking along.

We have to look hard, but there will be something that we gain from everything we experience. I won't bore everyone now with what I have gained from my experiences, but I'm glad i have these traits now, even though it hurt to earn them.

HoudiniHissy · 17/03/2012 23:17

mosp, what he gets out of this is immaterial here. He will write to you, or to others, he knows he can't have a special or real relationship with anyone.

He has the rest of his life to fill.

YOU however have the rest of your life to LIVE, to thrive and to raise your beautiful children.

What you are doing right now with this guy is not helping you thrive. In the future it may, but at this moment in time it is not.

blowcushion · 17/03/2012 23:18

OP have just seen your thread; sorry, no time to read it all! Had noted earlier on today when looking at Radio 4 programmes that there will be a play on Thursday, 2.15 pm entitled "Jailbird Lover." May not be your cup of tea as it is listed as a dark comedy about a socially awkward bachelor who fulfils his relationship needs by writing to long-term women prisoners he knows he'll never have to meet. Sorry if this sounds frivolous or if other people have mentioned this play - just short of time! Best wishes

threeleftfeet · 17/03/2012 23:18

"I don't see any one human as 'worse' than another."

This is a problem. A very dangerous one in fact.

That combined with your wonderful capacity to love.

I'm too tired and had one too many glasses of wine to be particularly coherent atm! I'll come back over the weekend and try to be a little more eloquent.

However ... there are some very bad people in the world. This man might be one of the, even if he's nice to you.

I used to be like you. I thought being a good person was giving everyone a chance, In retrospect that was because I'd never spent time with anyone really fucked up. Until I did eventually meet someone very fucked up who I thought I could help with love.

Then, what I learnt was that - as other people are trying to help you understand, that actually, no I couldn't always help with love. People like that are dangerous to people like you who - innocent as you are - don't understand that yes, actually some humans are actually "worse" than others. And you are at risk of getting very hurt here. Not in a noble-sacrifice way, but in a tragic what-a-shame way.

Of course everyone was innocent as a baby at birth, but many years have passed since then, and this man is not an innocent child. I know nothing about his crime. But why did he kill someone, why really?

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 23:18

I am so crap! I just accepted UA's assertion that her ex killed their future. I agreed in my mind. I am no comfort or use to anyone.

OP posts:
AnyFucker · 17/03/2012 23:28

mosp, take that as confirmation that you are suggestible

nothing wrong with that

unless you are not suggestible to yourself first and foremost

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 23:29

Threeleftfeet, if he turns out to be a sociopath type, I will run a mile. But so far I can't see the harm in just taking him at face value. I have my own unfortunate experience with a narcissist (my ex), and I have no difficulty in believing that he'll never change and I need to avoid all contact.

But in the case of this inmate, he is not necessarily that type. He committed a one-off violent crime.

No, he's not a worse person than anyone else.

OP posts:
WakeUpRosemary · 17/03/2012 23:29

Mosp, I don't know your story at all but I wrote to a DR inmate for two years up until his execution. So I understand the impulse to do it and I think it is a kind thing to do. But you need to maintain your boundaries and you seem now overly-invested in this person.

When I got my friends last letter, I was devastated. It's very hard to cope with. If you're hurting in your own life, please don't add further pain. This man will likely be on DR for years and you can pick up with him again when you're more resilient.

Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 23:30

Can you elaborate, AF? I didn't understand you.

OP posts:
Original poster
mosp · 17/03/2012 23:32

I DON'T WANT THEM TO KILL HIM :(

Rosemary, you must have been devastated :(

OP posts:
AnyFucker · 17/03/2012 23:33

mosp, you are berating yourself for stuff you have no control over

you never did

what happened to UA was not under your control

what this man did is not your business, you seem to want to make it your business

you are suggestible and your bounadaries are very vulnerable

drowning over a man you have never met ?

it isn't healthy, love

UnlikelyAmazonian · 17/03/2012 23:35

Mmm well, as Hissy says, he killed our futures at that moment and I was bolloxed for two years afterwards.

But I am not in that place anymore. I now have self-worth, a lovely life, an adorable polite and joyous ds, I know that I never need a man again, I have great friends and now am trying to buy a shop to start my new life.

I am skint yes. Aren't we all. I get lonely. I am an old lady Grin

But I am not bashing myself round the head anymore trying to find good in a total loser or trying to fathom what it was in me that made him leave.

I have a healthy dose of self-love these days and a healthy disregard for anyone who upsets me.

Mosp, you are an adult. I know that when we have been abused we end up feeling like the child because we didn't get the love we sorely needed, but you have to big up here, climb out of that pit. You have to start giving yourself a stern talking to. You are the adult person in your peas' lives. get out and start showing them what being alive is like. It's nice. It's fun.

It's not writing to people on death row or feeling suicidal/pathetic/worthless. FGS get some trauma counselling. Or perhaps you could ask SS to take peas into foster care until you are ready and able to look after them properly.