A few weeks ago, I learnt that my medical malpractice case is too complex to likely win.

It’s not that I don’t have a case. I have every reason to file one. The problem comes that those responsible shifted the blame too well.

Now, as you’ll likely expect, I felt angry and upset by this outcome. It was something I’d feared but hoped against hope wouldn’t be such an issue. 

What I’d hoped for

It was never about the suing itself, although I would have every right to want compensation. The damages, let’s be quite frank, were irreparable and large, after all.

To me personally though, it was about two key things:

Firstly, holding people accountable for their actions.

Secondly, stopping them from doing it again and again.

I really wanted to get people to open their eyes. To stop them from continuing to look away from a prevalent issue at this specific hospital.

I’d dream about being part of a domino effect that would lead to stopping all the individuals involved.

This, in time, would’ve obviously stopped another patient and family being hurt.

Only life doesn’t work like that. 

It’s sadly not as simple as someone does wrong = they are punished for that. It should be but it’s not, I know that, although my heart doesn’t necessarily.

Often people get away with crappy things and the victims are left to pick up the pieces to rebuild their future or just, in the meantime, be able to get up in the morning and continue breathing.

It can feel like a sharp bladed slap when you’re trying hard to just continue on with the scars they’ve made. Or when you have to fight to regain some of you, whoever that may be.

Furthermore, it can feel like you’re drowning in a freezing cold, dark pool of water when you’re trying your very best to stop them from being able to do it to anyone else and no one’s listening.

It’s been a long running theme in my life as much as I hate to say it. A roundabout of being hurt, used and abused by different individuals and trying desperately to stop it from happening to another soul.

Trudging water

The thing is I never healed from any of the “trauma events” because of this. I was always trudging those dark waters, using up my increasingly lacking energy.

To add to this, I became more and more wary, angry and disappointed with the world.

I’ll show some kindness to myself (shocker, didn’t know I could do that!) and say it was completely understandable with everything I’d been through.

But it doesn’t stop the fact it was hurting me deeply, a thick wound only growing, and leaving without the energy to do things I wanted or, even, needed to.

Furthermore, it impacted my relationships with others. I wanted to ask for help, or simply to make (online) friends, but I was often too wary of anyone new – especially professionals.

For the first time in a long, long time, I feel free.

Only then I heard that this case wouldn’t make it to court and I felt something entirely unexpected; freedom. 

Ironically, I have struggled massively with my mental health in the past two weeks or so due to other reasons; meaning I haven’t been able to properly soak the freedom feeling up.

However, after being put onto more mental health medication and some CBT sessions, I’m sat (*cough* led) writing this. I feel finally free to own my story and tell as much of it as I want to.

Moreover, I feel confident enough to find out how much I want different people to know. I feel able to say “no, I can share about this part of this thing and not owe the blog (or whoever) everything about it”.

Not sinking myself to help others

Being online, for example, and sharing in the hopes of helping others does not under any circumstance mean that I have to share more of my life, my story or myself than I want to.

While I want to help and give to others, and I hope that I can do so throughout my life, I’m also more than allowed to help and give to myself.

Just because I can’t be apart of a domino effect to stop someone else from being hurt, doesn’t mean I have to sink myself to try and hold someone – anyone – up.

Moreover, if I sink myself, then I won’t be able to give out because I will be at the bottom of the pond.

I won’t even be able to be a good partner, a good friend or give as I want to into my family because I won’t be able to show up at all. Not that it’s all about others, but I hope you get what I’m saying.

Those individuals don’t own me anymore.

No one that has hurt me owns any part of me, my story or my voice. Those are mine, some bits shared with those I love and who truly love me. They are also mine to decide to share.

I get to establish which bits of my story I want to tell who, being unafraid that it will cause problems for a later legal case and will prevent the people responsible from being held accountable, for example.

The thing I was afraid to lose if I used my voice has gone, now there’s only things to win: establishing who I want to be, what I want to say, who I want to help and – hopefully – helping those people.

I’ve spent the past decade (actually more than that) being a number – as a patient, in a necessary complaint forms, even in a lawyer’s inbox.

I’m more than ready to be Tig Ellis, the survivor – not the victim.

And I’m more than ready to see what a wrecking ball I can be, in the fights against my own crappy body and with my voice so raring to speak.

Who’s ready with me?

Lots of Love,

& Big Gentle Hugs,

Tig xx

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