I Don't Know What Time It Is

I wake up, nearly a million times in the night. The turmoil, the decisions having even their gross affect in my dreams. It's become routine. Regret on the cusp of opportunities wasted. Of time lost. The amount given up is beyond what I ever thought it could've been. I'm reminded by as little as a smell sometimes, and it makes the hurt that much more.

A constant is said to me, and I still don't believe it. "Do what makes you happy." I'm not even sure what that is. Because it's always said to me when I'm making the decision to do what makes me happy. If that involves someone else, so be it. "You deserve better," is a poor cop out. That's an ideology that I try not to harbor. You have to understand what you're blessed with, not what you think you could be blessed with.

I gave my life away. The hour glass of life is running low on sand. It's not something you can just flip over and do again. You have to fight through the sand to get what you want. If you're willing to fight for it, is to give your heart, your time away. That's precious. But can you mend the broken heart? Can you bandage the hurt and act like it was never there? You don't sleep because of it. Can you love because of it?

The convenient thing always gets you killed. Easy roads were meant to be traveled by the weak. I'm strong, taken on a lot in my life, but at some point you need a break. You need someone to be there. It won't be who you expect it will. The person you think will be there for you, they'll leave you in your time of need. They, who can give the advice they can so easily take themselves, will do what makes them happy. And when that's not you, it's devastating isn't it.

It's already been four months since I've been back home, and it still doesn't feel that way. It feels a lot of what the world I came from felt like. Temporary. At least in training or deployments. I had a home. I had friends. I even had family. I had happiness. Now I have question marks, and sleepless nights. Fairytales, they're not true. They must not be, because the biggest of believers in them, doesn't want to live it.

It's not the answers that I'm looking for, it's the questions.


...the leaves to rake up...

Hit Me Like A Hammer, To My Head

I took my eye off of it for a split second, it was gone. The prize in the eye of the beholder had vanished. There in it's glory and beauty, and gone in it's brutality. I doubled over. Couldn't breathe. I staggered like a wounded animal, holding myself up on whatever was available. I frantically called for air that could not be found.

I don't want it to end. I don't want it to die. Not like this. Irrational thoughts invoked by alcoholic demons raced forth from the darkest wretches of my own soul. How long had it been since I hadn't had a drink. Since I had thought clearly. Identity questioned itself in the mirror. Who was I, and what was I becoming. A fragment, a sliver, a catastrophe. My perfection of thine self began it's slow crumbling as I watched it go. Wasting it, wasting it, wasting it. It's wasting me.

I crept behind the man slowly. He had no idea I was there. Knife drawn, sweat holding silent on my brow. My breath trembled, then steadied. I stabbed him in the back. He fell to the ground, motionless. I kicked him on his front. Staring at the man I had once been lying there. Staring at the man I was becoming standing there. Losing focus on the way. This vast knowledge of the world and the lack of years lived to understand it. It caught me up. Time, not my friend, neither yours.

It's the two constants; self-discipline and perspective. Mastery I had been working at in both, but never found them consistently. Do I have them now? Can I have them now? If I work hard enough, believe hard enough, it will all fall in place. It's saying no to the easy yes'. It's letting all that's dear to you go. Let it free. Release it to release yourself. It always works out in the end. It's always better that way. Trust the experience, trust the instinct. Cast emotions to the wind and look down from a new angle. Trust it. Swing it. Being strongest at the weakest time is the test right? There's only pass. Confidence through self-discipline leads to new perspective. It's so easy, so do it.


the hardest things I've done in my life have always proven to be well worth my struggle with them, in some fucked up way or another

Till You All Just Disappear

My mouth tells lies most call truths. I hear truths that were told as lies. Denial kicks the bucket out from under you and before you know it you're swept up, caught up in the web of growing up. It's a slow process, from beginning to end. A lifetime for most is never enough to grasp or comprehend it all. Perhaps no one ever has.

It's the perspective that changes, and changing it is your best tool. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as it's known is unbecoming of it's own name. It has nothing to do with disorder. It has to do with time. Realistically we place a name on it so that we can treat it as that simpleness can afford to be treated. It isn't drugs, it isn't therapy, it isn't a dog or some cheap filler that helps you through this. In all senses of it, it's explainable only as my best attempt to further understand myself as I can muster. Right now.

Time is the enemy here. There's plenty of time. Years go by through your life. You skin your knees playing bounce ball in fifth grade. You kiss your first girl when you switch from velcro to laces on your shoes. You learn how to masturbate. You get laid. You go to college. You buy a car. You love and lose. You experience life. It grows you. With combat, that luxury is taken away from you. Taken away at a young age. You condense twenty years of living into a year, a week, a day or even a moment.

I cry during the National Anthem. I cry thinking about friends. I dream about terrible things that are talked candidly about when watching a movie or playing a video game. I'm no longer fit for the world at my age. I'm closer to 60. That's the PTSD, it's time travel. It's experience that isn't handled in as few a years as I've lived. I lie the truths you think you should hear. I 'play' to my age. The fact of the matter is that there isn't a drive that should be there. I'm ready to cut the grass, twiddle my thumbs and sneak a drink of scotch when the old lady thinks I'm just organizing my garage again.

I have done a vast amount of little in my life...