Tag: suicide

Journal – Post nine

It’s been 5 days since my last post in the journal. It continues to be a lonely old week as the wife is still away at our friend’s house. Health wise she is now getting the attention that she needed, a care plan is in place and her support network is now better than it ever was. Fingers crossed it’s all looking positive with the occasional wobble.

Living apart for a short while really makes you appreciate what you have, it also brings a dose of reality as you experience what some people have no control over, makes you think.

Just one more shift at work and I can drive down to see them both on Friday morning, I’m really excited about that.

Been a strange week at work, a lady threw herself under a train as a train was passing through at 90mph, the call went up for our response and the controller informed us we had one under a train. However that train passed over her, and she got up after it had passed and climbed back on the platform. I have never seen anything like it, the amount of equipment that hangs under these trains would normally rip you to pieces. How the heck she survived this and lived to tell the tale is a mystery to me. Needless to say we breathed a sigh of relief as we were not going to be needed to collect what was left of her. I believe she is resident at a local mental health unit, we have far too many of these issues on our route with those that are seriously unwell. It’s getting worse.

(Amended 31/10 unfortunately the same lady was successful in her attempt to end her life today. I feel sorry for my colleagues and I who were heavily involved, we didn’t need to be brought into this issue but we unfortunately were. She got what she wished for. I hope she has found peace)

I’ve purchased a few items to repair this week, all items that will be going on the site in the coming weeks. I have about a dozen draft posts awaiting completion, most of them are still awaiting parts before I can finish them off. I’ve also brought myself a new Multimeter, the previous one (good though it was) has been giving some spurious readings of late, so I thought it was time for an upgrade. Should be a game changer for me as there’s a multitude of other tests this one is capable of that the older one wasn’t.

Enjoy Halloween if that’s your thing, Here in the East Midlands it’s Diwali being celebrated this week so if that’s your thing – Happy Diwali – Stay safe. Be happy.

It’s my journal

Why do you blog?

During my working life I have so far experienced, 17 traumatic suicides on the railway. I am more often than not the first person on site and have to make access to the site, safe for all the emergency personnel about to arrive en masse. I have seen things no one should ever expect to witness. And I sincerely hope you never do.

For this reason, I have had health issues mainly around PTSD that I was diagnosed as having just two years ago, after a young lad ended his life on my shift. That one affected me, though i often go into self denial that this was the cause. Though in all seriousness it was probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

I used to journal as a result. It wasn’t a private journal, I used to have it beside the bed and actively encourage my wife to read it. At the time I was hiding a lot of my feelings from my wife, I was the typical bloke that wouldn’t talk, however I was storing this all inside and even I could see this was heading straight towards becoming the perfect storm. I’m glad I did that as it helped her and it also helped me to prompt conversation and off load some of that weight from my shoulders.

Blogging became the natural progression from the journal. The family now have links to this blog and they all check in on a regular basis to see what I am doing. I include all the hobby stuff and it is now more of a website than a blog site.

I sit here typing as I am now at 4 in the morning and the wife will turn to me and say, “Are you doing your blog?” And I will say yes. She knows that this is my way of healing some scars by just offloading the excess baggage that life supplies sometimes. And do you know what? It works for me. I don’t do it for followers as that’s not what I’m about. To be honest it wouldn’t bother me if not a single person read my site, for me I have a history at my fingertips where I can check my progress. I have bad days, I have days where I do nothing but whinge, but I can now see why these things happen and that’s all down to this blog.

That’s why I blog, this last month has been awful as my constant companion, Alf, our dog, another who would just sit and listen to me wagging his little tail passed away and it has just ripped the hearts out of my wife and I. See his pictures here: Alfie. All hobbies and interests have disappeared as we have just entered that, “Can’t be arsed” stage of grief. We will come to terms with it in time, and again this is where the blog helps.

Hopefully people will understand this. I’m just a guy who is suffering but I have found a way to let off that steam, accumulated as a result of other peoples desperate actions.

It’s tough, but I won’t let the demons win. It is a daily battle that I doubt I will win in the long run but hopefully I can put it aside for a good while longer.

I really wish for peace for you all.

Talk,

Blog,

It really helps.