witnessed raze "we all hold different pieces of a collective memory that only by comparison makes an accurate picture — but only if you ask just eye witnesses." — judy_nylon 220901 ... ovenbird The voices on the other end of the line always want to know the answers to the same questions: “Am I crazy?” “Will this get better?” “Will I ever feel joy again?” “Do other people feel this way?” I give the best answers I can, drawing on thousands of similar conversations I've had in the past. I say, “You're not crazy, you're overwhelmed. You're isolated and scared and carrying a huge mental load. You're feeling lost and you don't know who you are anymore. Joy feels like a thing that belongs to a past life and you don't know how to find it in this one. You feel alone in this grief. But it won't look this way forever. Right now bridges offer themselves up as a tempting exit, but one day they’ll just be inert spans of concrete again. One day you'll drive straight over without once thinking about what it would feel like to jump. So many others have been where you are now. They all believed themselves to be alone. What I know is that there's transformative power in laying your story down at the feet of someone equipped to hear it. So you can have all the time you want. You can show me every single thing that hurts. I won't try to fix anything, that's not my job. I'm only here to show you what you already know. Everything you need to survive is already in your possession. Witness is the key to unlocking it. Witness is what I can provide. The rest is up to you.” 250828 what's it to you? who go blather from