Thanks, both

Yes, Hops, Mr Bean for PM! Lol, at least he would make everyone laugh

Son finds him hysterical, he was watching a Christmas special where he gets his head stuck in a turkey and I thought he was going to stop breathing, he was laughing so hard
Lighter, thank you, am staying away from anything that doesn't lift at the moment and have changed settings on social media so that I can only see posts from left wing friends at the moment, who are all busy organising help the homeless events and fetching elderly people to Christmas lunches. Am thinking we may sign up to help out somewhere next year; I've always worried that it would be too much for son, plus there are often health and safety insurance issues about under 18s in public kitchens and so on, but I think next year he would be okay for it and he would be old enough as well. We'll see.
I wanted to ask your advice about the EMDR. I currently have 32 Lever Arch and box files in my sitting room, all to do with the hideousness that's gone on over the years. Each incident has a separate box or file, with some incidents taking up several boxes as they generated so much hideousness. My plan is to work through each incident, writing about it and working through what comes up, with the EMDR lady but also by reading and re-reading helpful books about abuse patterns and corruption in local authority (and no doubt with you guys on here). What I want to have at the end of it is something coherent, that examines everything we've been put through and is, at the very least, a comprehensive summary that I can tuck easily onto a book shelf so that I still have a record after I've scanned and shredded all the paperwork. If it is something worth publishing and that might help other people in a similar situation that would be great, but if not, it's a personal achievement, a sort of self analysis of an awful situation spanning almost two decades.
What I was planning to do was to deal with the least troublesome incidents first. For example, the box I've selected to start with is relating to benefit tribunals (where we had to go to a hearing to ask for a benefit decision to be checked because I thought they'd got it wrong). There isn't much attached to it - some anxiety because I'd never done it before, some frustration that you have to fight for basic support, further frustration that they'd rather spend thousands fighting you over the benefit instead of following the law and giving you what you're entitled to, as it costs less anyway. But it's minimal, on a scale of 1 to 10 it would barely score a one. I can read through it and only experience mild sensations which are quickly forgotten.
My question is, do you think starting with the easiest boxes is the right approach? My thinking was that if I start with the easier stuff I can (a) get myself into a bit of a routine and rhythm with it and (b) work out the lesser feelings relatively easily which might mean that when we get to the bigger stuff it's not as big and i'll be much more practised at, so it will be a bit easier to deal with? Does that sound sensible to you or have you found that it doesn't work out like that? Thank you in advance
And now I have another question, for all of you, as you all know me better than anyone else does.
I had an email last night, from a guy who I often think of as 'the one that got away'. There have been several times over the years that we've got together, it's looked like it's going somewhere and then one or other of us has backed off. We have similar upbringing situations and that can be both a blessing and a curse, as you all know.
Anyway - he is living two streets away from where I used to live. I'd been thinking during the day about how much I miss my flat and again lamenting that I've moved and wishing that I hadn't. When I heard that he was living so close, I just got this image in my head of being sat in my flat, on Christmas Day, with him, and I just burst into tears.
I know it doesn't mean anything. The fact that he's living there doesn't mean we'd have got together, or that if we were together we'd be happy, or that I'd be happy him being close by but with someone else. I know that, if we hadn't moved, I would still be thinking that we'd have been happier if we'd moved away, that son would have been happier in college, I'd still be anxious about mum driving by, I'd still be resentful of friends who didn't visit. I know all of that and I get it, but it also made me realise how I really just want to be happy and how I feel that, every time I try to change my situation so that I am happy, it doesn't work out. I do try to be happy with what I have and focus on good things (there is a lot that I am grateful for and I'm particularly appreciative of all of you) but it just seems to elude me in a way that doesn't seem to affect so many others.
So my question is, can you see where I'm going wrong? From all of my posts on here and the endless ramblings of my mind, can you see where I get the decisions wrong and what I can change? Son is about to have his seventeenth Christmas with still only me as his family and I do wonder why I still don't have a strong phamily around me when I've worked so hard on myself and to create a good life for him. I do feel like I repel rather than attract people. Can you see any patterns that I'm missing? I would really appreciate the feedback, even if it's something that I don't want to hear

Thank you in advance. The cat has just attacked a reflection of herself in a Christmas tree bauble and pulled the whole tree over so my normal day has begun and I am off to attend to it. Lol xx