Life got in the way.

I know I have been absent as of late. I am still alive and fighting. I promise.

Life has just taken a few turns and I'm along for the ride.

My care giver went out of town for a week or so, and I started a new job. So I got sucked into the excitement of a new career, and forgot everything else.

Yea, I am writing this post, admitting to my faults. I forgot to take my medication. I forgot to take the trash out. I forgot to pay bills, and my internet got shut off. I forgot to eat. And I forgot to drink water, I work in the desert now. So water is more important.

I am posting this on my mobile now, my caregiver and I are working on getting things back in order. I still don't know when things started going downhill because I was so focused on my new job, and stress was piling up.

I hate the fact that I am helpless sometimes with things that others find so easy.

I am more upset with myself right now, than she is at me. She just rolled her eyes and carried on. But inside I am angry and frustrated.

I'm not lazy or crazy. But when I look back I think I could have done more. I just can't think of what else I could have done. I fear my mind is slipping, and I am losing touch with reality.

I tell myself not to be mad at my actions. Or lack there of. But I am, I am mad at myself. I feel like I let people down. And now my depression is on the rise.

I love my new job, I truly do. So I have my highs and lows. My highs are when I'm at work. My lows come with the two hours of travel to and from work. I spend that time in silence beating myself up.

The medication I am on is working. I haven't had a moment or thought where I considered death as an option. But the silence is my new enemy.

Please don't be mad. I tell myself.

Please don't be mad, I ask my caregiver.

But fear is creeping in, and I fear I am mad, I fear she is as well.

Shouting through walls

I have had two types of reviews on this blog from people who I have spoken with, one being positive. The other was not negative at all, but constructive.

I am going to talk about the second review first, because it is important to me. The second one stands alone, and still bugs me to this day. In a good way mind you, but still it nags at me. I remember the words "Your blog is a muddled rambling, with a message at the end".

Now I'll be the first to admit that those may, in fact, be the wrong words used by the person. I may have embellished the words to be kinder, and more romantic than they actually were. But the meaning is there. And it is loud and clear.

My blog is a bit of rambling, but with a message at the end.

And that is amazing!

That is exactly what it is like in my head. All the time, day and night, awake or a sleep. I used to watch movies that took place in "crazy houses" where actors portrayed a mentally ill person, and they would hit their head over and over again. I never understood that, but there are times now, that I get it. I understand having so much buzzing around in your head that you lose yourself, and the only thing that makes it stop is a good whack to the dome.

That does not mean that I am mentally ill, or admit to being mentally unsound. It means I get having a head full of nightmares, fears, voices of doubt, anger, and all around mental noise. So for that person to say that this blog is "rambling with a message", that means a lot to me. Because it means that even when I am at my worst and I am losing it, I am able to try and show someone what it is like to live with PTSD.

I don't know if it means I am healing, or I am just living. But for me to find the ability to cut through the noise and show someone who has never what it takes to receive PTSD, what it is like inside the mind of some who does. That is a small victory, in my book.

Now about that message part of the review, that means even more to me. Because not only am I able to convey what it is like inside the torrent mind of PTSD, I am able to cut through all that noise and show them, you, anyone, that there is still a human being inside me. There is still a clear, and level headed, responsible person inside. I am able to find that voice, and use it to yell louder than all the demons, I am able to share my world with those who can relate, AND THOSE WHO CAN NOT.

If that isn't a shining ray of hope, I don't know what is.

So for now, I think I'll keep on living with PTSD, and doing my best to shout through all the walls.

A week off is what I needed

So I got laid off, I sorta quit before the end date and I would have been walked off the property. Anyways I have had a week off, and it has been a stressful week. I have done more work in this last week than the last month at my previous job. From paperwork, to taxi-ing people around, and even a few treasure hunts of my own, I managed to stay busy and not sleep the whole time.

Which is what I wanted to do.

But with bills piling up, stress rising, and that new job looming over my head. It is time to get back to work. I have had the time off I needed, badly. But it also gets boring for me. I haven't posted everyday, but I am still sticking to writing everyday. On top of that I completed several projects in my shop. My hands ache, my back is sore, and I am tired.

But it was the break I needed to find my center once again.

Through out this week I have shared my projects, my writing, and my plans with others. The resounding reply was "I wish I could find time, to do stuff like that". Now, YES, I did have a week off, but I think we all need to take a break sometimes and clear our heads. Find time to dedicate to ourselves. Now I am not saying we all just skip picking the kids up from soccer, or not cooking dinner a few nights a week to make jewelry or whatever your passion may be. I am saying, instead of vegging out in front of the TV, instead of wasting time on our phones, or whatever your distraction is in life, take a break.

Years ago, I sold my TV. That's right, I am one of those weirdos without a TV. I occasionally watch Netflix, or go to the movies. But I stopped watching TV, completely. Once I did that, I realized how much time was wasted, sitting there watching the same predictable story lines. Now I create my own. I used to waste hours online, reading, and stressing over the "current affairs" of the world in the nightly news. Now I refuse to watch the news, I truly think it's just another drama fabricated by mass media, but that is my own craziness.

Over the last week I haven't thought of the coming doom, and gloom of the world. I haven't dwelled on the negativity that is forced on us on a daily basis. I have spent that last week clearing my mind, and having as little exterior stimuli as possible. I have focused on interior out put instead. I have meditated in my own way (I'll post about that in a future post, it's saved as a draft). This week I learned, or rather relearned, an important lesson.

Take time to focus on yourself, without the noise. Without the bothersome, annoying input of everything, and everyone else. Let ideas, and thoughts flow out, not in. Take time to be you. We all need it.

Update, to yesterdays post

First off, this started as a comment, and quickly evolved into this post.

I hate the cold, seriously I hate it. I wear sweaters in the summer, I take hot showers when I have sun burns, and I wear sweats to bed no matter the season. I hate the cold.

But I am not one to shy away from uncomfortable things either. I am not a stick my toes in, and then ease in kind of person. I flick my toes in the cold water, yes. But then I jump in and deal with the icy waters head on. Literally, and figuratively I dive in head first.

After the post yesterday, I stood on my porch (again staring at my shop), and I thought to myself:

Why am I afraid of a location that has no connection to my nightmares?

Why can't I go inside?


So I turned around, I grabbed my dog, and my keys and I left. I had an idea, and I had to get supplies. I am slowly coming around to the idea that if life tears you down, or breaks you down it isn't to destroy you.

I am coming around to the idea that if life does all that, it isn't "down" we are headed, but "back". Every time life takes you, and pulls you back your resilience is being stretched, sometimes to the max. But when life stops pulling you back, and lets go, your resilience snaps back and you go flying forward, like a sling shot.

Well, I was taken back by life, I was allowed to think that an empty wooden box was something to fear. So instead of walking back into my shop and carrying on as if nothing happened, and slowly dealing with my problems, I left.

But I didn't run.

I took the dog, and my car to neighboring cities looking for something. I went looking for supplies, and I made a challenge to myself. I had to find something somewhat rare, and make it into something someone said they wanted, but surly forgot about. So for two hours I pulled myself back, I stretched my resilience to the point that I kept telling my dog, we were "done for the day, we tried". I had given up, and then life pulled me a little further.

Someone ended up just giving me hat I had spent all day looking for. What I was willing to pay money for. A construction worker, just handed me a huge cable reel. Everyone else was either out of them, or wouldn't even talk to me. Then a random guy handed me one.

I came home, and took everything back to my shop, and started working. My bench is almost done, and except for a few minor episodes, and a night of terrible sleep, I didn't explode, or swing on anyone.

In fact I am headed out there as soon as I post this, thanks to all of you for your words of kindness and support. I'll have to update this later with pix.

Been busy, but found a new avoidance

So I haven't posted in a few day, been busy looking for a new job, and filling out paperwork for said job.

I have managed to stay busy enough that I avoid thinking about much other than the task at hand. Which isn't a bad thing if you ask me, I have felt the wave of emotion, and dread swell up. But I was focused enough, and some where without triggers, that I was able to calm it before it got out of hand.

I have had a few minor episodes, my nightmares are still in that security camera monitor filter. But I am doing good, I would say. On the outside I have been fine, on the inside, it is maintenance as usual. Sewing up the seams before they burst, wielding the beams before they break down around me.

But I have began to avoid something I love. Writing will remain a love, but I have stayed on that task, and written every day. No, I am talking about my workshop. I love my workshop, I have never had a place that I would miss, and I miss my shop. But after I tried to put words to how I felt about it. How when I am in there I am at peace, but when I leave I am a storm racing across the empty plains of my own soul.

I attempted to actually say the words, the words that I have written before. Since that night I have yet to step foot in my shop, I stand on my back patio, watching my shop. Expecting it to say or do something. But I can't bring myself to enter it. I can not walk into and find that peace again. I know that I have peace there, but I have chaos when I leave. I am torn between moments of peace followed by anger, rage, frustration and fear.

Or maintaining a quite overcast of fear, and exhaustion.

I have spent my life being that kid that had his nose buried in a book. I love books, all of them. Except grapes of wrath, I don't know why, but I hate that book. I digress, there have been a few moments in my life where I truly, truly understand a written phrase.

My time in the Army, taught what it means to be "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

I do not know what love is, from books, or even from what life has taught me. I know love, from when I held my Son for the first time, and he grabbed my finger back. I will never lose that feeling, or that definition for that crazy thing in life, love.

But when I look out on my shop, I wonder if it truly is better to have never loved, than to have loved and lost. (Alfred Lord Tennyson reference, William Shakespeare DID NOT in fact say that as some people think)

I stand there and I wonder that, because if I had never built that shop, I wouldn't be afraid of it. But If I had never built it, I never would have found a short reprise of the peace I once knew in life. I love my shop, I love the work that comes out it, I love the peace. But now that I lost it, I wonder if it is truly worth it. 

I still dream in black and white

There are nights when sleep decides to skip me, and there are nights where I sleep soundly. But there are also the nights I dream in black and white. The nights I see black and white, everything in the land of dreams is grainy, and shades of gray and off white.

Those are the nights that remind me how deep Iraq has borrowed. Those are the nights where everything I see is seen through the monitors I used to watch. Static scrolls across my vision, the images dance and wave in front of me. I fight them, I know I shouldn't but I do. As soon as I begin to fight, I am woken, but I can not move my body.

Night terrors have set in, and I know I am in for a long night. My vision is still black and white, I see the darkness everywhere. I see the demons walking through my vision, through my mind, unable to stop them. Unable to move. I can barely keep the fear down long enough to remind myself that its all a dream. A very bad dream.

My body is trapped in some bad early 90's movie about witches.

"Stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board light as a feather" The demons of my past chant.

Instead of feeling lighter though, a weight, a physical weight presses down on my chest. Black hands framed in white shadows pressed against my throat. I can feel the burning flesh of the devils pressing my legs and hands down. I can't breathe, I can' move, I can't scream.

Every terrible memory dances in front of my eyes. Flash backs, dislocation, call it what you want, I am back there, and no where at the same time. Time has no meaning, because I am every where and every when I have ever been reliving everything I have ever tried to forget comes knocking. Reminding me that I am not done being punished for my past.

my past will remain even after my shadow fades, and my last breath escapes my body. My memories will haunt me, they will cling to my soul as it claws out of my body for its final moment of freedom.

[Clever one liner]

I consider myself to be rather witty, and clever. I am the one that people go to for advice, and to open up to about whatever is on their minds. I try my best to turn it around, and make them smile. I am known as the funny guy, the smart guy, the IT guy.

I am a confidant, I am a leader, and I am reliable.

But I have a secret.

That secret is that I am afraid of being anything but those things.

I meet people everyday that are ignorant, or stupid. I am afraid to be one of them, I see how happy they are not knowing that they are the source of all their strife. I see how they blame others for the short comings in their lives. I see them so completely ignorant to that that others see this as well, and distance themselves from those people.

I see liars, and cheats getting ahead in life, and the resentment that follows in the wake of their destruction. I see people who pretend to be a friend then turn around before the other is even healed, and they stab them in the back. I see all this and fear that if I were one of them, there would be less good in the world.

I see people who call themselves leaders, and use words like "go", and "Why did YOU...". I see people who claim to lead follow, and I see those "leaders" pass blame, and hand out orders while they sit there and "delegate". I can not be like that, and I weep inside for those that do.

I am dark, and cold, and hardened inside. So I project a laughing, joker persona so no one knows how scary I am inside. I fear a slow and sluggish mind, because I see how they hold others back. So I study, to this day I read about a book a day, I do not have a hunger for knowledge, I have a fear of not knowing.

I say all of that, because in my life everything that lead up to my event was caused by ignorance. Ignorance of the truth, ignorance of the facts of life. But most of all the ignorance of war, the ignorance of the darkness that is in this world.

Inside I am an animal. I am a monster. I maintain my exterior, it appears to be a man in his late 20's. I have shaggy hair, that I hate combing, and a beard that is even shaggier. I have caterpillar like eyebrows, and eyelashes women would kill for.

But inside, I am a frothing, snarling, bleeding animal trapped in a corner of the ignorance of man. Inside I am cold, and unforgiving, I am sad for, and saddened by the world around me. I have grown cold to the world and its cries for help. I wake up and slide my scaly armor plated skin inside my "people suit" and I wear the mask of a happy, witty, joker. The price of this "people suit" is the only thing keeping the beast from tearing through and destroying everything around me.

The years it has taken to get this suit finely tailored, to get this mask perfectly detailed to fool everyone. I am not ashamed of the monster inside, that would be silly. Yes, silly. That word does not fit the tone of this post, but it fits how ridiculous it would be to be ashamed of who you are.

I am a monster. I am a beast. I am forged in hardship. Sometimes a man is need to carry on the flame. Sometimes a monster is needed to destroy the darkness. Sometimes a beast is needed to keep the nightmares at bay. A monster is not afraid to die, a beast knows not of death. Death is not an option.