Well… You Know 

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What it means to be labeled, to mock, and to finally understand. 

There’s something about that question — “Tell us about a time when you felt out of place” — that stirs up more than I want to admit. For someone like me, admitting fear or discomfort has always felt like breaking an unspoken code. Society still treats fear like a weakness, and men especially are taught to hide it behind our egos. I’d love to say I’ve outgrown that, that my ego doesn’t run the show anymore. Truth is, I’d be full of shit if I said that. Ego still tugs at my decisions, but I do my best to keep it in check. 

I remember when I was first diagnosed with PTSD. I wasn’t ashamed of it—I told friends and family outright, thinking honesty would bring support. I thought they’d rally, that they’d have my back in this new state of being. I was wrong. What I found instead was silence where I expected comfort, distance where I expected closeness. I heard whispers that weren’t really whispers, caught side-glances dressed up as concern, saw pity masquerading as care. The labels came quick: “Touched.” “Not right in the head.” And my personal favorite—“Well… you know.” 

Looking back, I can admit there were times I blew things out of proportion. PTSD has a way of magnifying shadows until they look like monsters. But there were other times when I was dead-on, seeing things that others couldn’t because they hadn’t lived through it. Learning techniques to live with PTSD—rather than just suffer under it—changed my perspective. 

I realized some of the fears I carried were invisible to others, because they’d never walked in that dark. And I also realized some of the fears they carried, the ones they thought were dire, looked small to me because I’d been through worse. That’s where the real challenge came in: not mocking them for what seemed trivial, not throwing back the same treatment they’d given me. That shit was hard. To pass up the chance to feed them the same poison they’d fed me? Damn near impossible. 

But I knew better. I knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of whispers, side-glances, and labels. Mocking them—even quietly, even under my breath—only made me worse. It made me just like them. And that realization? That was harder to swallow than the diagnosis itself. 

Before I retired, I spent the last few years working with people living with all kinds of mental conditions. What struck me wasn’t just the weight of their struggles, but how deeply they wanted to be “normal.” That desire ran so strong it could push them into choices that would shape, even haunt, the rest of their lives. 

I came to understand something: it’s one thing to know, intellectually, that it’s okay to be different. It’s another thing entirely to believe it in your bones. I saw people wrestle with that gap every day, and in their fight, I saw myself. Being out of place had taught me what it felt like to carry that longing, that shame, that desperate wish to blend in. And maybe that’s the only gift of being “othered” — the chance to understand someone else’s battle, even when they can’t put it into words. 

Perhaps, in some ways, this is what Memoirs of Madness is about. I didn’t start the blog with that purpose in mind, but maybe it has become a place to name the fears we all carry — the ones that make us feel out of place in our own lives. Or maybe it’s nothing of the kind. Maybe it’s just one man behind a keyboard, running his mouth. I’d like to believe it’s more than that. That in speaking my demons aloud, I give someone else permission to face theirs. That I remind them they’re not as alone as they think. 

Author’s Note: 
This piece grew from a prompt asking about a time I felt out of place. As always, I didn’t take the safe route. The question became an exploration of stigma, ego, and the long road toward compassion. If nothing else, I hope it reminds someone out there they aren’t as alone in their demons as they might believe. 

Daily writing prompt
Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
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14 thoughts on “Well… You Know ”

  2. PTSD is a bitch that keeps giving. Hubby coped for over 35 years, but it all came flooding back three years ago. Professional help has not been easily available, and the help from the NHS we got was a trainee (!!!!!) who worked to a tick list, setting him ‘homework’. Because her tick list didn’t help, she said he wasn’t trying. The nightmares come unbidden, he cannot control things when he’s asleep. No tick list for that.
    We kicked them into touch following the sensitive little darling putting in a complaint because he terminated a call before he lost his temper and we got a letter about respect. The F*** Y** letter followed shortly afterwards having ‘discussed it’ on a zoom call and her saying she felt he was sexist and taking his frustration out on her personally. IMO she’s in the wrong job as she has no idea, no compassion, no empathy or even trying to understand, at all.
    We are on our own now, talking, discussing, analysing, and he’s still writing things down as I suggested when it all blew up in his face and it helps. I’ve read his writings and some are heartbreaking. If he wants to talk, I listen. I see things in a different light and we talk over this perspective. I can’t change anything, but I can be supportive and ‘there’ so that he doesn’t have to face it all on his own.

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    2. There’s a kind of care you can’t teach — because it doesn’t come from training, or manuals, or tick-box therapy. It comes from proximity. From sitting with someone while the thing you cannot fix keeps breaking them open, and choosing to stay anyway.

      You’ve already learned what too many professionals forget: trauma isn’t a puzzle to be solved — it’s a landscape to walk through. It doesn’t respond to worksheets, and it certainly doesn’t obey schedules. Nightmares don’t care whether you’ve “completed your homework.”

      But here’s what does matter: someone beside you who doesn’t flinch. Someone who understands that writing isn’t an assignment — it’s survival. Someone who sees the difference between not trying and barely holding on.

      You’re not just supporting him. You’re witnessing him. And there’s a difference. Witnessing doesn’t fix. It doesn’t cure. It simply says: I see you, even when it’s dark. You don’t have to go into it alone.

      That’s not a lesser kind of help. In many cases, it’s the only kind that works.

      And about that trainee — maybe compassion can be taught, maybe it can’t. But it can definitely be absent. And when it’s absent, people like your husband fall through the cracks with an apology letter stapled to their pain.

      You’re doing what the system couldn’t: holding space without trying to own the outcome.

      That—though it never feels like enough—is enough.

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  5. First thanks for bearing your soul without the background details of how your PTSD came to fruition. It takes great courage in opening yourself to the world but as you know recognition is the first step in recovery.

    My thoughts go directly to your mastery of writing about everyday issues an outlet that allows you to focus on the here and now. My advice in the quiet recesses of your mind look for passages in scripture with its wealth of healing. The other a piece advice my father shared when you feel anxious stop briefly and look at the hands on a clock while slowly taking three deep breaths to bring into reality that time will move on with or without you. Make sure it is with you as God only makes perfect it is man who interferes with His plan and time waits for no one.

    I find hope in the Apostles Our Lord picked as not one of them was perfect and were sinners but look what he accomplished through them. Peace my friend. It’s a beautiful Fall Sunday Morning just enjoy the change in the season.

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