Happy New Year!

[svensson]

What a year it's been, huh?

It's easy to gripe and say that nothing but idiocy and cruelty reigned this year, but that's not entirely true. If people in the Ukraine and Syria can find something good about the year, then I certainly have nothing complain about. Like most years, this one has had good and bad in it. I hope the good outweighed the bad for you and yours.

Happy New Year and stay safe.

And for my PTSD brothers and sisters out there... well, I can't make it stop. I wish I could but that's not how it works, is it? When it gets bad, CALL SOMEBODY. Even a few minutes on a phone is better than bunkering up in your bedroom with the lights off. If you can spend the night with understanding friends, try and do that. You are NOT 'being a little bitch'. Asking for help on a tough night is part of recovery.

May we all have a happier, healthier, better year in 2023.

[svensson]

So, for those that don't know, fireworks are a thing during New Years. That's what my PTSD comment was aimed at. There's just nothing a person with violence-related PTSD loves more than random **BOOM** sounds all night. So as you might guess, there are some holidays that many of us just love. In the US, those are Independence Day and New Years, but my Canadian friends tell me they have similar problems around Canada Day so it's not too far fetched to think other countries have similar problems.

And what makes it even MORE fun is that if you're out West like I am, there's also a slew of Indian tribes that start selling fireworks two weeks before the Goddamn holiday, so you can spend half a month spazzed out either anticipating the next random explosion or coping with the last one. This not only makes life hard for you, the PTSD patient, but also for your family. And here's my own personal gripe about that: I'm lucky enough to have a family that still loves me. THEY didn't sign up for John Wayne School for Maladjusted Youth. I did. So my family shouldn't have to put with me tripping out for six weeks out of every year. I do my best with it [therapy, meds, etc.], and I've learned to accept some symptoms of the disorder, but the random explosion thing is something none of us 'get used to'. It sets our paranoia off and we become pretty difficult to live with. And we're not that easy to live with to begin with.

HOWEVER, COMMA, BUT I will happily give my neighbors a lot of credit where it's due. This particular NYE was pretty sedate when compared to others. Maybe the weather kept them inside. But they started their nonsense at 10pm and were done by 1am, and without ambulances being called this time. And nothing at all yesterday... there's usually a few left over for the day after the holiday. I'm starting to calm down a full  three days earlier than normal.

 

[g33k]

Living down here in fire-prone California, we have a lot of post-wildfire PTSD; the 4July fireworks-season really stresses those folks out !