_These unwritten rules I don't break now. Rules I haven't learned, I just Know, because I can feel. I come from Abuse, not relationships. When I feel the unwritten rules, I know everything I need to know, as if I had come from a Real Mom, and Real Dad, and Real siblings, as if I had had the ideal childhood, one that I've never known, but can feel in my chest._
I can feel myself (Him) behind my emotions and my thoughts.
This has been key for me.
I can hold on with anyone except K___. Everything I am working on he has always had. It's wholly intimidating and makes our moments together triggering for me. Sometmes it's hard to wrap my brain around how we could possibly be equals.
If I can just feel, I know everything he knows, everything I need to know, despite my having little or no experience with that knowledge.
If I can just feel, I'm whole again, just as whole as someone not-abused. All I have to do is bear it.
___________
29SEP2009
Woke from a dream where I still worked at the gas station in my teenage years. And I also worked at the restaurant job I had for awhile a few years ago. And I also still lived in the House, on lock down.
As the dream plays out I can just barely remember something about how I used to have a car, and maybe some sort of life outside of this place.
I woke from the dream feeling like sh-t, the same way I would feel waking in the House back in those days.
In the House I would wake up from dreams of Freedom, now I wake up from Nightmares of bondage.
__________
30SEP2009
In Undoing Depression -- one the most helpful books on numbness I've come across -- the author explains how emotions are physical.
That the pain you feel when your feelings are hurt is just as undeniable as the pain feel when you stub your toe.
He writes that a numb person has been split in two. The person stays in their mind and disconnects from the heart, in order to persevere.
Him feels everything, and Him felt everything, all throughout those years, regardless of how Bad, unjust, or unfair. There is no choice, no escape, even if I can’t remember a whole lot consciously.
I accept this, and reaccept this, regularly, in order to not be numb. Otherwise, I'm always trapped in my head, experiencing Life as if on the outside looking in.
When I am Him, and not this Ghost, the House is just as sharp and clear as it ever was. When I am Him, the present moment is just that sharp and clear and vibrant.
I can be Him for days at a time, but still the numbness creeps in like a bad habit. As if somewhere deep inside I still consider it a choice. That deep place, with the insecurities, the Ego, and the fire -- (and brimstone).
K__ seems oblivious to my numbness. When I'm numb, I feel like I'm doing him wrong, like I'm wasting his time as his friend, and I remain expectant that the friendship can end.
It can be hard remaining Him when K__ still likes me regardless. Sometimes I catch myself preferring to be liked by K___ than by my self.
Whenever K__'s not around I naturally become more Him. When K___ is around I don't feel the same intense motivation. It's a kind of laziness. Whenever I genuinely become not-numb, it's always because I'm doing it for myself.
It's not that I'm needy or need the friendship. I feel more secure on my own, especially compared to the messiness and triggering of relationships. But we have a bond, and it feels valuable.
Little things restore my confidence in it. I've changed sections so instead of doing regular missions I'm more on the logistics side.
During the day I labor thru half-Arabic, half-English exchanges, and a drive an uparmoured truck for different jobs. There is a world on the FOB at night that most never see, where I meet and take charge of convoys of fuel and ice, supplies and subsistence.
Before, my work hours were consistent, while K__'s mission SP's were random. In order for us to workout together, or play ping pong, or box, I would sometimes have to get up at three in the morning to go to the gym with him before his mission, then go back to bed until a more reasonable hour. Now he does the same for me, while asking if I'm sure I'm getting enough sleep; same as I did for him.
Last night he asked me about my schedule, acting more concerned than usual. _Cause, when my package comes in,_ he said, _I don’t want you meeting some convoy drunk._ I was silently surprised. It is a big deal for a soldier to want to share his bit of alcohol with you.
Late the other night, I walked out to a desolate area of the FOB, where I had seen a heavy tarp earlier that day. It was a large, and difficult bundle, but I managed it to our room, and got through the door without waking K___.
Next morning we set and tied the tarp up outside our tent door, so K___ could smoke his cigarettes in the shade. Later, we drove out to the wood pile and found a long crate and a pallet, and built a nice bench using my private stash of rusty nails. We work well together, even when we do so silently, or apart.
I have managed well with people before, but never before has someone had such a front seat view of who I am and the state of my life.
When necessary, we have drank from the same canteen or water bottle, and once -- though I don't like to admit it -- we have had to use the same chap-stick. When I ran out of laundry, K___ gave me a pair of his unused boxers. Once, when K___ hadn't packed his sleeping bag because he erroneously thought it wouldn't be cold, I gave him the inner layer of mine, so that for a month of desert cold each of us slept in half a sleeping bag.
There is a bond here somewhere, just beneath the surface, where I rarely can feel it.
I know the Him behind my emotions and thoughts is my conscience. It concerned me a little, but if I hadn't had a conscience before, I wouldn't have known that I was numb.
When I'm Him, I can almost articulate what it's like to be a guy: do your best, and hope you deserve its rewards; learn cars, sports, rock, sex, etc while trusting you're Real enough to belong in such situations.
This is the quiet conscience of a guy.
(And somewhere between those lines is Competition. And somewhere between those letters is Fear.)
The only way I un-numb, the only way I switch back to Him, is when I let go of fear. It feels like Dumb Masculinity, susceptible to the crafty, competitive insecurities of others. Maybe it amounts to stupid bravery, but that kind of faith is required. The kind that chooses -- despite what it knows of the awesome, devastating power of fire -- to hold on, and fight back instead with water.
When I'm brave, I can just make it out, on the other side of my skin, where I rarely can feel it, and just beneath the surface of the moments, and the friendships, and the world all around me -- the love.
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