We’re not long back from a weekend in Yorkshire with some of the finest people on the planet. Given the mental mess I have been since – oh God, here he goes again – since my painful separation from the bullies and abusers of the British Red Cross, this took some doing. The effects of my breakdown last year following the bullying and abuse that the BRC said never happened are still very much alive in my thoughts, still fracture my sleep and cause me anxiety dreams. I’d like to think a joy-filled weekend was a big step forward in my recovery.
My loyal reader will know I cut myself off from much of the world when I lost it last year. I still went to the football with friends, even though I n0 longer wanted to be there, at least for the football. I all but stopped playing golf – I used to play several times a week and have played twice in the last year – and I have stopped being involved in every aspect of village life, including going to the pub and all its social life. I have retreated from so much of former life. Some of it I am never going back to (football), some I am (golf). But I fear that the events of last year will resonate for the rest of my life.
There are times when I feel ‘normal;’, whatever that is. If the road ahead is clear, I can rid myself of the baggage of the last year or so. It still comes back when it’s dark and I am the only one still awake, or when I am under pressure. It has taken every bit of my mental strength to start another job and do it to the best of my ability, resuming a ‘normal’ – that word normal, again – social life still feels a million years away.
I am grateful to my family and friends for sticking with me. I don’t think I would have come this far without you. This has been a most unwanted journey so late in life and in thanking those who helped see me through, it is crystal clear that I shall never, ever forgive those who made me so ill and their senior bosses who said I made it all up. Imagine being driven to a mental breakdown and then being told it was a fiction of your imagination? That’s what happened to me.
I discussed all this with my therapist and we both knew the BRC would never offer the apology I wanted and needed, probably because of legal concerns on their part. Any admission of bullying and abuse would hardly reflect well on their brand. We came up with ideas as to how to slay the ghost and one by one I have concluded it won’t work. My therapist even suggested writing another letter to the CEO of the BRC and then ripping it up and use that as closure. But it won’t.
So, despite a modest level of recovery, the pain remains. The pain of bullying, abuse and the loss of a job I absolutely loved and did very well. My father always argued that you should never concern yourself about things you cannot change, but I am not my father. My clinical depression will not, in all likelihood, ever leave me and I find it very hard, as I approach the final quarter of my life (if I am lucky: it could be much less than that if the rest of my family were anything to go by), to believe the anger and bitterness will go away.
The BRC is not wholly responsible for my illness; they just made it worse. A worldwide humanitarian charity making me very ill. Just think about that one for a minute. Sorry is the hardest word for the BRC – impossible, it now transpires – and I was never going to win a fight with a huge international behemoth, with the money and power of a large multinational corporation. Not little old me.
So, I am going to carry on trying to rebuild my life and with no apology likely to come from the BRC, I am going to come back to them from time to time and remind my loyal reader that I am not a liar, that I didn’t make up the bullying and abuse and I will never, under any circumstances, give them a single penny. The CEO, who ‘earns’ circa £180k per annum, can make up for my shortfall.
The BRC made me ill, my family and friends are trying to bring me back. The BRC does not give a shit what they did to me. “Refusing to ignore people in crisis” is true in most instances, but they forgot all about it with me.
