I need to get a few things off my chest, and I don't know where else I can go to do so. So please, bear with me as I vent some serious emotional trauma. I have long felt at home here at the Inn, and I feel safe enough here to open up. I am not looking for pity, just need to vent, and I know there are people here I can count on to listen (or read).

October has long been a hard month for me, and for a long time I have had a hard time feeling anything but an empty, hollow feeling during this month when so many others are excited and hyped for the fun this month brings with Fall Festivals, Holloween, and other fun celebrations. Not so for me though. Seven years ago today I lost my little brother in a house fire, not even 2 full weeks after his 21st birthday. The local news posted the story online, complete with an insensitive photo of my childhood home completely ingulfed in flames, knowing that someone's son and brother had lost his life in the fire. It was deemed an accident by the Fire Marshall, an electrical fire that had gotten out of control.

Ever since then it has been hard on my family, his birthday October 15th is a painful reminder, and then the 28th rears it's head and dredges up even more painful memories, leaving me reeling in a pit of emotional agony that I struggle to pull myself out of. For years I would simply just refuse to work on either day, the emotional drain of dealing with other people and this tragedy was just too much to bear.

Then, a year or two ago (it's honestly all a blur), the wounds were all torn wide open again, just as I was getting to a point where I could at least drag myself to work and fake being a normal human during the work day. A woman I had gone to High School with (graduated the year before iirc) shows up at my parents' new home, saying she needs to get something off her conscience. According to her, her ex-husband; the man who had started the fire, confessed to her that he had started the fire intentionally. The catch here though is that since it was ruled an accident the only way he was ever going to be charged with anything is if he confessed himself to doing so, and that simply wasn't going to happen.

We had long had our suspicions that the fire was no accident, and now that we knew for a fact it wasn't there was literally nothing to be done about it. We were left with old wounds torn freshly asunder. Why though? Just so someone else could clear her own conscience on the matter, say what she knew all along and had not come forward with for years just to ease her own sense of guilt?! Had we not suffered enough already without her input?!

I cannot think of anything else now during the month of October, I cannot focus, I have a hard time sleeping, I am just barely dragging myself through the day to day activities that I as an adult must attend to, because I have bills to pay and needs to meet...

There is really nothing that I feel that I can add that helps in any way.  Do know that I am sorry that you are having to carry all of this.  The Inn is a community, and we hate to see one of our own hurting.

...I'm here for you, too, Wolfy!

Not much I can add outside of my sympathies and understanding, really... I mean, I have some ideas as to what I'd do with that information, were I in your shoes buuuuut *shrugs* ... Anyhoo... do know that all of us are here with and for you.