_________
I notice that my deployment story can be like a condensed version of my life story. A Difficult story, ending with a difficult transition back into life.
The terrible part of my life story lasts eighteen years, the transition (the reckoning) lasts another eight. The deployment lasted fifteen months and the transition lasted about two months more.
I handled the first as a youth mainly using the right side of my brain, and the second as an adult mainly using the opposite word-filled part of my brain, and between the two of them, both transitions were resolved in a kind of brutal chaotic alchemy of a soul fight.
The transitioning began when I began to be raped. It was like I taught myself how to pull back out of the physical world, all the way to my soul, leaving the world far behind. Then as an adult I’ve been pushing forward, trying to remember and unnumb myself, not remembering the reason why I had pulled back in the first place.
Maybe it’s why I always had low-self-esteem and a loud, wordy ego filling my head with mental noise.
Truth, Understanding -- neither one is me. They’re just two different sides of my mind I swing from, trying to reconcile what each knows or understands. I am the middle. Living right on that veil between Life and Death. Eternal.
I look in the mirror and notice that the person in the mirror isn’t me. I’m on the inside. It’s going to be like this for eternity.
__________
(05APR2010)
(Monday)
A restlessness I hadn’t noticed before got a hold of me. What kept me calm about the cookout wasn’t that I was so brave and capable, but that if I were to falter I could just take a few pills and still be on the road to recovery.
I was supposed to get some more pills on the way to the cookout but it didn’t work and I winged the cookout, and it went fine. But not having access to the pills has caused an anxiety all its own. If I start to falter this time, I got no quick way of reining myself in again. I think of the damage done in the mean time.
I wake and immediately hit the road. This time I hit three different stops and again no luck. I start to get lost, start to make dumb mistakes, misreading road signs, I start tapping the wheel of the Jeep and catch myself driving wildly.
I make three more stops and got more than enough even if this first work week is the most difficult work week ever.
When I get home I pop sixteen pills, desperate to get rid of the restlessness. I googled the drug and then thought maybe I could pop more, because the sixteen weren’t working fast enough, but decided against it.
The plan for tonight is that when I get to the soul place to still be functional. In the soul place the memories are so vivid it’s like I’m living in a timeless place, the past and future accosting me they’re so blunt. (Bring it on, I think to myself.)
And I’ll be the present, not standing there stunned, but putting the laundry away, cooking some meals for later, working out, showering, making sure to get to work on time. Then with the practice I’ve had tonight I figure I’ll be even more ready for the workplace.
I take eight more pills.
I’ve worked out, and can feel the pills kicking in. I turn up I Got a Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas and put the video on repeat because the thing I like to do when I‘m wordless is dance. I jump up and down like the people nearest the stage at rock concerts, swinging my head side to side to the loud, throbbing beat.
I like having this place to write anonymously. It’s like I’m not alone even though I am. It’s like I’m on my own but I’m safe.
I can feel the soul place nearing, I know Trevor will be _just right here,_ just on the other side of the veil between life and death.
There is a morphine feel with it. Like drunkenness without the obviousness of it. It feels like waves of warmth. Not the kind that makes you sweat, but instead awakens your insides. I have to focus more in my movements: to get down the stairs, to workout, to move to the music sometimes I have to focus -- the opposite of numbness. I get this kind of metallic smell in my nose, and my head starts to feel lighter and lighter, rising.
This is the place where the choice is made, the memories vulgar they’re so clear. Do I curl up on the floor and feel the waves of warmth comforting me or do I keep cool in the face of the horrific.
The first phase came and went in about an hour. My vision got blurry so that the light bulbs in the house became like those disco balls as I moved about and spun and twisted jumping up and down to the blasting music.
In the second phase the blurriness settles and the drug doesn’t feel like such a shock to the system.
The ACC championship is tonight and I have a huge plasma screen to experience it on. I’m rooting for Duke, though it‘s a secret. Most around here hate Duke but when it comes down to the final four and none of my teams are there, then Duke’s who I secretly root for. Excellence can’t be ignored.
I still have a hard time typing, so I’m still in the second phase, but the memories have hit anyway. Everything reminds me of Everything. And I dance to the beat .. _i got a feelin.. _ he croons through the speakers. _fill’up mah cup .. mazal tuff .. look after dancing’ .. just take it -- off! -- let’s paint the town .. we’ll shut it down .. let’s burn the roof .. and then we’ll do it again .. and again, and again.._
And I spin and jump and skip in the blurry lights and the noise and disco ball that’s become my house.
__________
I went upstairs and sat on the sage love seat recliner in front of the big screen plasma to watch the Butler/Duke game.
How can a man do that to his own son?
My genetics may be Mom’s and R__’s but my soul is Him. It’s just that no one can see it but me. I think about the film Being John Malkovich. That’s what it’s like for my soul.
I remember playing basketball when I was a little kid.
I remember being little and watching basketball games.
I can remember the feel of the indoor wooden bleachers, the layer of protective polish between my tiny fingertips and the wood. I was macho when I was little, I did perceive the world that way. I don’t know what basketball gym I was at, but it feels like the one just down the street from my house, the one I would experienced as abandoned when I was a teenager. I would climb in through a window with my own basketball and play there by myself ..an escape.
I’m in the soul place now.
I can’t stop thinking about the Acceptance dream I had a few years ago and my hometown. I can’t stop remembering my hometown. Like waves of memory coloring the present world around me.
I remember what it was to be Him as a little boy. I remember perceiving the world this way. I’m in the third phase now. Where the world throbs. Where I throb. I live inside out, my heartbeat my only thing. The throbbing and double vision have stopped, now I can really watch the game.
How can a man rape his own son? How can a man rape a little boy at all? I’m nothing like R__, yet my connection to him is physically strong.
Duke up by 4.
I’m in the fourth phase now. Everything seems normal except I’m more relaxed and when I close my eyes I can see everything on the other side of my eyelids. I’ll catch myself walking around with my eyes closed, not realizing it. When I open them I find out I’m in a different room than the one I thought I was in, the scenes on the other side of my eyelids are that vivid, I’m lucky I didn’t happen to step off the second floor and crash down the flight of stairs.
I think to myself: Don’t get stuck in the comforting wisps and blurs of the disco lights, b.
__________
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