Fox, that's a very insightful post from somebody who has clearly been through it. I hadn't realised you'd been at home at the time of the fire and certainly hadn't realised that you'd suffered physically. It puts things into perspective, the main thing you can hope to come away with is your's and your familie's health, the rest isn't so important.
Hope you're physically well now.
No, the neurologist, endocrinologist, psychiatrist and psychologist all say its a long road ahead, people think of fire trauma as burns but trauma is trauma. PTSD is not what I thought it would be... more drugs, therapies, waiting rooms, Uncertainty and scans hoping for some good news and grasping to the possibility of a hint its perhaps something treatable -- then there is locating the reason for loss of my muscle mass revealing ongoing issues from damage from untreated CO poisoning. Its possible my lifespan has been shortened, it may be I develop something down the line. Hypervigilance. I am medically classified as disabled I get to use a blue badge and as of yesterday started life as "unfit to work" (except of course I intend bettering my life with the PhD I am restarting).
The stigma I impose on myself is self inflicted and unnecessary and I am working on it.
Some things I am not going to recover from or talk about, ever, not even to friends here or off PFM and that is that, some things I can patch up and play act as normal and no one outside know, other things.... yes I ought to recover fully from, so my answer is not a light-hearted one; it's advice from a veteran. In a minute you can lose everything. Thankfully I have little to show for burns, a few scars on my back and shoulder from dripping molten plastic, now just reddish blotches. No need for grafts.
It's only recently I started admitting to myself what happened and what it does to me. Its not always the fire, but some following event that triggers it. Jago dying last summer in my arms shattered me I will try to move on posting about "shit stuff, woes is me" and post more positive music posts, the problem there is my music writing gets so theoretical to the point it soon become specialised, terminologized gobbledygook and meaningless to the layman and then I get accused of elitism or snobbery. Music to me is a structured technical language and to speak only in terms of 'emotional engagement' is impossible for me (and often its inappropriate, what is the appropriate 'emotional engagement' with Autechre's "move of ten" EP?
People (more for their own sense of "augh, why did I ask?") will try and say, "well, it's only stuff" but my stuff represents pointers, markers in my life, inheritances, connection to a past and while you have to let go of it, letting go is easier said by other people than done. But done it must be. I see the previous posts and I just think, "you have no idea what it can do to you" and I am bloody glad. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.
I have kept just two records from my collection, most of the rest were a trashed anyway and that's all I need and by god they are great records. PiL metal box and DEVO "workforce to the world live on site" a (bootleg issued before they were signed and they were at that point a juggernaut).
The best thing (as advised by many people here) for me was to keep a totem and go digital. PFM were right Its frankly a huge weight off my life, managing and sitting on all that vinyl Smaug-like glowering over all the hardware and expensive infrastructure amassed to play it, the £80 streamer snapped together from a raspberry pi, £30 DAC and the Volumio Linux Distro sounds really decent to me!
And I have my lovely gift of Conrad Johnson valve amps from my American friend and the studio I am building and the speakers that held up the roof and my centre speaker ATC project etc.
Time moves on, don't look back, it'll kill you from inside. You will be changed. Get another hobby. See kindness in others, be kinder back. It will define you.
, so I think you'll reach your goals...
