#biobook

What Really Matters: Poems About Love, Loss & Trauma - Chapter 13: Dreamlike Visions (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/983023006-what-really-matters-poems-about-love-loss-trauma

Here is an update to this chapter of my book of poems about love, loss, and trauma. The nature of the trauma is not discussed in this book. 

What really matters most to me are relationships and love. Second, only to my career as a clinical social worker helping others, is the joy and happiness I found in being loved and loving someone.

Joy has a definition that can include happiness and yet I find myself tempted to use both words to capture the sense that I am trying to convey. Elsewhere in my creative non-fiction books, I employ imagery in a different way to convey certain experiences.

Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton - Introduction: Starting At The End & Suicidal Ideations (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/838250453-memoirs-of-a-healer-clinical-social-worker

This is the autobiography of a shy person with social phobia overcoming enormous challenges and turning a weakness into a strength and a career, only to see that all collapse suddenly and unexpectedly in a two-month period beginning in July of 2000. At times my autobiography will read like a love story. At other times it will read like a tragedy. There are tales of poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and injustice as well. 

What Really Matters: Poems About Love by Bruce Whealton - Addendum To the Introduction (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1151810655-what-really-matters-poems-about-love-by-bruce

These are some reflections on what this book is about and why the cover image might not reflect the idea of love. The book also deals with the existential meaning of life and loss. The fragile nature of reality and how fleeting life can be. We take a chance to let ourselves love and become a part of another person. This makes us vulnerable... because we need that other person to be with us as long as we are... 

Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton - Chapter 4: Boy Meets Girl (A cliché) (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/844469023-memoirs-of-a-healer-clinical-social-worker

This is a chapter about the first date in my life. I found the courage to ask a girl out. I wish she had asked me out instead. I hate the entire notion that the guy should ask out a girl. It seems to disempower females. It is overwhelmingly unfair to shy people like me. It makes us think that we are not likable or loveable because no one is asking us out. I wonder if a feminist female likes this arrangement. In this "arrangement" where the guy has to ask you out, that means the guy might be deciding where to go on the various dates and what you will do.

It's no wonder you are disappointed with guys when you are so powerless in these arrangements! Anyway, maybe this doesn't apply. It can't work with two lesbians. The girl I asked out, didn't indicate that she was hoping I would ask her out. There is another event where I went out with a different girl around this same time period. I don't know which date came first. In that other scene, I don't know who asked whom out. The girl in that instance was more assertive in expressing her interest in me as opposed to waiting for me to ask her out. I honestly don't know who asked who out.

Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton - Memoirs of a Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Introduction (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/838250453-memoirs-of-a-healer-clinical-social-worker

I began my autobiography with a story about how I became suicidal for several reasons. I’ll describe just one now. The fact is that what happened in the past - the trauma and injustice I experienced - has had an impact on my life in the here and now. This book is about how sometimes very, very bad things can happen to very, very good people. It doesn’t matter how you live your life. How good a person you are has nothing to do with whether or not you will be unjustly forced to spend time in jail. 

In my story, not only did I live a life according the highest morals and ethics but I dedicated my life to helping others, including victims of violent crimes. What is all the more bizarre is that I was the victim of the crme that occurred in October of 2004 which would result in me spending 7 months in jail. The actual perpetrator was never charged with the brutal and violent crime she committed. It was surreal to be siting in front of police detectives soaked in blood while they insisted that I was the perpetrator and not the victim. 

Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton - Copyright And Dedication Page (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1079301844-memoirs-of-a-healer-clinical-social-worker

Never have the police gotten anything more wrong than when they convicted the victim of a violent crime as the perpetrator in that violent crime. Soaked in blood I sat in shock as they interrogated me. To say this was bizarre, surreal, and nightmarish is an understatement. In some cases of wrongful convictions, it’s about someone else committing the actual crime. I suppose this is somewhat similar but when have you heard of a violent perpetrator being represented by the police and the prosecutors? How does a person move on from this? 

I look for jobs in the mental health field, my field, and on applications, they indicate that the candidate has to pass a background check. How do I pass that background check? Officially, the courts still have me listed as the perpetrator and I have no right to appeal or seek justice for a decade and a half of lost wages. I didn’t go to prison but I have lived in a virtual prison. Wondering if someone will think I am untrustworthy if they find out about this false conviction and they don’t know it was one a false conviction and two that I was the victim. 

Some offer advice they cannot support. They say “move on and don’t let the past define me.” That has been decided already. And not by me! Others say “you chose to accept a plea.” That implies there was a choice and time to consider the choices. What element of choice exists outside a courtroom when the one person who is supposed to represent me is threatening me, the victim, with 10 years in prison for the crime in which I was the victim! Who represents the actual victim? Who? This is such a twisted story.