Immediate Moral Advice Required

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My name is Longinus. I have tremendously enjoyed reading the personal and intelligent conversations of absolutely everyone here at the SDMB, and I apologize for having lurked for so long. The reason for this post is that I am intensely confused about something to the point that I can no longer sleep. I need help. I will attempt to give the full story, but I am deeply afraid that I am betraying the trust of the person also involved. Hopefully, anonymity and a bit of name omission will allow me to ask advice without hurting him.

I have a friend who seems to attract trouble. Not just the standard drama kind, the truly unlucky universal kind that makes you think something in the cosmos is playing a malevolent game. Plenty of once-in-a-lifetime freak events have impacted him negatively, yet he still manages to survive scar-free. I am told that he did, in fact, hit the bottom of the barrel at one time but managed to crawl out of it by establishing a healthy relationship. To this day I have no clue what drives him.

Recently things have been getting heavier. Random acts of maliciousness directed by complete strangers have been piling up on him and I can tell he hasn’t slept well in months. His girlfriend is facing bankruptcy with absolutely no respite in sight and he has been under increased pressure from outside forces to give up on her, despite the fact that they are both good people. Her problems go deeper, and seem to be pulling my friend down even more. I do believe their relationship is healthy, though.

He recently returned to a place from his past: a building that had long ago been boarded up. I assume he wanted to sort something out, and I can make a pretty good guess as to what. Long ago this friend faced emotional and verbal abuse at the hands of a teacher that was so harrowing I don’t believe he ever recovered from it. This very same male teacher had been suspected of PHYSICALLY abusing at least a few other male students at the same school.

He told me how he felt going in the building for the first time in years. How it was a mess, desecrated and a shambles. The first floor hadn’t seen care or the light of day in a long time. He went upstairs and immediately realized he wasn’t the first to break into the schoolhouse. Bookcases were overturned, desks broken down the middle, and wallpaper torn from its studs. And there, in the first room, was an empty blackboard broken into two pieces.

I can’t imagine the emotions playing at him, now, with plagues of old memories reinforced by the darkness and broken glass littering the floor. But still he pressed on. What he saw in the second room brought him to his knees. He told me how he saw, spraypainted on the wall in an angry script, an absolutely disgusting sentence about what the teacher did to the less fortunate students. Blasphemous, sexual, and disgusting messages written over the facade of a small schoolroom. In each class there was another, describing a different act or torture, in excruciatingly plain detail.

He told me he couldn’t bear it. That the pain welled up inside of him so much that he ran. I tried to console him, but I really don’t know if there’s anything I could possibly do. I told him this- “Do not be saddened by their pain, or disgusted by their vulgar actions. You witnessed something beautiful. Someone faced their demons in that room and won. Something dark and terrible was laid to rest, and what you saw was the last of its blood, scrawled on the walls in a victory boast. Take me there.”

I don’t know what I’ll do if I go. Part of me wants to go there, and to experience it. To feel the pain of these brave men and to sympathize with them that I might have their strength if I ever need it. I want to immortalize their writings, to take pictures and frame them somewhere only I will ever see them. I want to write on that chalk board “The things you did here will never die.” I want them to know that I love them if they ever return.

So here is the question- I have been living my life without anything like this. Everything was based in the “real world” where hard work and time both pay off in the end, but now I feel like there are places where the fabric of that world is ripped open. I need to know that it is real, and I need to know that I won’t forget it. Should I return? Should I immortalize their struggle? Can I save it so that I will always have a respect for my fellow man? Or should I respect the possibility that they might want their demons to stay dead? Keep in mind, I want to do what is right, but that this is so important to me that I’m asking people I don’t even know for help. Please let me resolve this. I never want to forget.

And, my friend, if you’re reading this, I want you to know I would never exploit your feelings or emotions on purpose. It’s just that I need a third party.

2

I’m not trying to avoid taking a stand, but I really think you’re the only one who can know what’s going to be right for you to do in this situation. All you have to do is follow your heart.

Best of luck. And sleep well.

3

Although the horror of what these young men went through has stirred your compassion very deeply, you are not in a position to actually know the pain that they went through. Given your ability to empathize, I’m afraid that actually going there and witnessing these rooms might overwhelm your emotions.

This is not your battle. You cannot fight it for them. If you write something such as “The things you did here will never die,” and one of the victims sees it, that might cause him more pain than is imaginable. Photographs might also cause unimaginable pain.

Your writing shows a tendency to romanticize. I am not criticizing you. My own writing style is often similar. This subject is not to be romanticized. It needs to be handled by professionals who know what they are getting into.

Since your friends has confided in you, it’s all right to talk with him, but don’t force it and don’t keep bringing it up.

You haven’t mentioned what age your friend is. If the perpetrator is still alive, it is possible that he is still victimizing others. How will your friend deal with that? Shouldn’t he go to the police to stop it?

If your friend is losing sleep over this, he may want to talk with a counselor. Things from the past that are not dealt with have a way of festering and making themselves known.

Your interest and your loss of sleep suggests that you might want to talk with a counselor too. You need to be able to separate yourself from the emotions of the victims, from the crime scene and from involving yourself any further. This did not happen to you.

4

I genuinely don’t understand why walking into an abandoned building is such an issue for you, who have no past connection to it. I also don’t understand why reading a bunch of graffiti will somehow stain your image of human nature – you already know bad things happen, surely you’ve at least read about things like the Holocaust and child abuse. You sound more emotionally vulnerable than your friend.

If your friend wants you to go – go. You owe your friend your support, if you’re not willing to walk into an old empty building to provide it, what kind of friend are you?

5

Do not under any circumstances do anything to immortalise or publicise this. Do not interpose yourself, your feelings, beliefs and suppositions into that place.

Your friend is able (to a certain extent) to cope with what happened and to come to terms with it, as was whoever spray-painted all of those things as an act of catharsis. There are very possibly other young men who were subject to this horrific experience who are not in such good shape. You don’t know how one of those more damaged people will view your message, and quite frankly you don’t really want to be responsible for the consequences if it doesn’t go well.

The last thing one of those guys needs is to be confronted with this stuff at an inopportune moment. The last thing they need to hear is you discussing his childhood trauma in a bar or with your friends over coffee, however sympathetic or well-meaning. They probably don’t want to run across it in an internet message board either.

This is not your fight, this is not your trauma and you could hurt a fragile person if you try to get involved in some concrete way.

I am serious. DO NOT MAKE THIS ABOUT YOU.
Go with your friend for support, do not go alone as some kind of vicarious act of suffering or out of prurient interest. Empathy is good- making it all about you and your idea of the world as an essentially good place being turned upside down- not helpful.

I’d suggest your friend gets professional help- he sounds depressed. I mean properly clinically depressed as a reaction to unresolved past trauma being dredged up by current stressors.

6

Sorry, I know that my post sounds harsh and preachy, and I’m really trying not to be snarky (although obviously I am Queen of Snark).

I think you do need to step back, take some deep breaths and try to distance yourself a bit, lest you really put your foot in it with someone who is a lot more invested in the situation.

Getting so involved in other people’s trauma isn’t going to be good for you either, and in order to help your friend you need to keep yourself healthy and well too.

So go to the building with your buddy (if he wants to take you) give him a hug and help him to move on, not by forgetting, but by realising that the bad things no longer define him.

7

I think very compassionate people really do feel a degree of other people’s pain, but as others have said, you need to keep it in perspective. You cannot really absorb any of it. Your friend needs your support, but cannot offload his pain to anyone else. Be a sounding board when he needs it. Offer advice if he asks for it. Let him know you care and that you’ll be there if he needs a friend. But let him work through his pain on his own. Only he can own it. If he is crumbling from this recent visit to the site, he may want to consider talking it out with a professional. I wish him and the other victims peace.

8

I think you and your friend need a heavy dose of reality. The amount of romanticization or fancifying the healing process described in the OP is just so over the top.

Going to a building and reading some graffiti may serve some kind of need for gratification, but turning some angry words into a tribute to brave heroes (or whatever) is indulging in a fiction about who those people are.

It’s like veterans who go back to Vietnam to face their demons, or whatever. Do you really think anyone got over PTSD by taking a trip? No, of course not. People have to go through serious therapy to deal with trauma, not revisit some important place.

My advice would be to drop this romanticization of this building and what your friend (and the other students) went through to deal with the abuse, stay an arm’s length from his issues (as in, don’t get involved in an effort to fix him) and suggest he get therapy so he can actually get better under the supervision of an expert in this field.

9

I don’t have any particularly good advice, but it sounds to me like you’re allowing the intensity and urgency of the situation to drive you to make snap decisions. This could be dangerous - if I ever found myself in that kind of a predicament, my first steps would be to try to find some way to disperse a bit of that intensity and urgency - to permit a bit of breathing space for sane, rational, considered action, or at the very least, remind myself to maintain a position where the default action is to do nothing, rather than run, panicking, headlong into doing something that could be destructive or dangerous.

10

I’m not one to believe in karma or bad luck or that sort of thing, but I believe that a troubled subconcious can often put one in situations where trouble is more likely to arise, or where things can play out in undesirable ways. Or maybe he’s just experienced a string of unfortunate coincidences.

At any rate, the guy has some serious demons to battle. I think you’re a good friend to try to share his burden, but unless you’ve not told us something, you’re not really qualified to do so. You can be a shoulder for him to cry on, but little more.

His best bet, as others have said, is to seek out a qualified professional who can give him the tools to fight his own demons.

11

Thank you all so much. I couldn’t have asked for more understanding responses, and I know going anywhere else with this ran the chance of hurting a victim (the fiasco was mostly a local thing from 10+ years back).

Shayna Thank you. I needed that.

Zoe You’re absolutely right. From what I understand my friend is already seeing a counselor. My misplaced romanticism and unwarranted investment in this are both the products of a correlation between some things I went through at that age that I have long since dealt with. I know it is stupidly, childishly, naive of me to assume that everyone is able to purge themselves and move on with hope after these things and it’s foolish of me not to predict that their pain might run deeper than I can possibly imagine.

Boyo Jim I know. Bad things happen. Mass murders, and genocides, and starvation, and all sorts of other sins. It’s just that there’s no way you can compare seeing death on television with the real thing, if you follow me. I’ve never been to war, never walked in on a crime scene. And you’re right. This really comes down to me putting how I feel on the backburner. Thank you for reminding me.

irishgirl That is what I feared the most. It is ALSO why I would like to see the entire thread removed by a moderator ASAP. Making it about me is/was foolish, and you’re right. If I can’t rein in my empathy for something as small as this I’m hopelessly in trouble. This reality check helped, and as much as I know I should never have written this, I might have done something stupid if not for you responses.

Kalhoun “You cannot really absorb any of it.” If this is true, and I know now that it probably is, why am I capable of feeling like I can and should? Taking a passive role will be difficult, but I’m really indebted to you for this.

Ravenman I know, I know… But can you seriously tell me you can look at something like that and NOT be deeply empathetic due to the intensity and conviction of whoever must have written it? Granted, that’s not something I deserve to see due to the fact that whoever did it made sure it was out of public sight. And you bring up good points with the final paragraph. It’s just that I don’t think therapy’s turning out to be enough… but thank you. It may not seem like it but I will take your advice.

Mangetout Probably the most universal piece of advice on this thread. I will not forget that one.

tdn It’s hard to tell, really, and I appreciate your input on this. I’ll let him work these things out and try my best to show him that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Everyone, thank you so much. You all just saved me from one of the most ravenous urges I’ve ever experienced. You’ve also pointed out that I shouldn’t be so weak when I am clearly the one who should be giving help. In case I never post again, I want you all to know that you folks really are the salt of the earth. I’ve not seen a collection of good, honest, and worldly people in such a high volume anywhere else. All of you should know that what you have here is amazing. Thanks again.

Moderators, I would like to request that this thread is deleted. I don’t seem to have the ability to edit on my post, (whether that is due to my trial account I don’t know) so I would appreciate the effort. Thank you.

12

They generally don’t delete threads on this board, except in very unusual circumstances. They will generally close them on request tp prevent more replies.

13

Why would you do a silly thing like that? As I can’t add anything to the wonderful advice already given, I’ll just say stick around. We need people like you :slight_smile:

14

Yeah, don’t leave! Welcome. Stay and join us!

15

What he said.

I’ll go ahead and close this thread. It should sink out of sight pretty quickly.