Update

[DrYouth]

Thanks y'all,

Feels good to be back.

Knowing the terrain... having been there and back... makes it worse in some ways.

Being hospitalized as a young man of 21... I was a young man.

I endured the hell and it made me stronger.

But dropping your daughter off in hell.... A hell you know all too well.

That's something I would have spared her... at any cost.

But I couldn't.

With all my training and personal knowledge, I was up against an adversary more powerful than I.

I was helpless... and I had to throw in the towel and let the white coats take over.

Then I had to watch how they sedate and isolate... break down and shut down the process...
Overmedicate, until the girl is a shell of her former self...
A process I always tried to mitigate... always worked to curb... to find the sanctity of the individual in the chaos...
My colleagues have no clue.... they never did.... and as her father... I was too close.

It was tempting to blame myself... for my genetics... or my audacity to cross over to the other side... somehow I had infected her....
Or blame my wife... or blame god or "the system"...
But none of that was going to help.
And there was no guarantee she was coming back...

She's still not entirely back... at first she was a broken doll...
now she is like a younger child... a bit simpler, more loving, more child like... but her humour is back...
She is shaken... but she is healing...
It has been an agony..... but also an ordeal of love.
What we will do for our kids... walk into fire... its awesome.
And my wife and I stand united... so that's the whole thing right there.
Trial by fire.

[TheReal_ND]

That's wild man. God bless

[C-Mag]

Glad you're not blaming yourself. I have a brother that has fucked up and sabotaged himself throughout his life. My Dad has always blamed himself for how he turned out.

My Dads 90 and still feels like he failed, and my brother will take advantage of that feeling of responsibility.

No one needs that.

[DrYouth]

Glad you're not blaming yourself. I have a brother that has fucked up and sabotaged himself throughout his life. My Dad has always blamed himself for how he turned out.

My Dads 90 and still feels like he failed, and my brother will take advantage of that feeling of responsibility.

No one needs that.

Your brother and my brother have a lot in common.
Except its my mother that gets played....
I like to stay right out of that.

[C-Mag]

I do too.

We have unspoken lines, he doesn't fuck with me and we can get along.

[Smitty-48]

Glad you're not blaming yourself. I have a brother that has fucked up and sabotaged himself throughout his life. My Dad has always blamed himself for how he turned out.

My Dads 90 and still feels like he failed, and my brother will take advantage of that feeling of responsibility.

No one needs that.

yeah

I wouldn't say my brothers have completely fucked up, they're doing alright in the grand scheme

but they are not like me at all, and I don't get along with them

yet the same man who raised those two Millennial fuckwits, also raised Smitty-48

my father lamented that they were not like me, but they had free will, they were not dolls

mostly they were screwed up by the public school system brainwashing, my father couldn't stop it

[Smitty-48]

in fairness, I'm a hard man to love

Dr. Youth knows me well, he knows what I'm like

if you cross me, you will feel my wrath, I don't suffer fools gladly

I don't get that from my father tho, that comes from my mother

my father was easy going, a peacemaker, he would give fools the time of day

but my brothers are step brothers, different mother

they never knew my mother, so they never tasted the wrath of a Nova Scotia country girl

[DrYouth]

I’m trying to stop giving fools the time of day.

Learned that from Smitty-48

[Smitty-48]

I’m trying to stop giving fools the time of day.

Learned that from Smitty-48

yeah, well, just remember, I'm Master Corporal (ret.) Smitty, for a reason

I gave up career advancement, in favour of speaking my mind