#WAR: WHATS ALREADY BEEN SAID?

What can I say about war that hasn’t already been said? My experiences reflect those expressed by writer’s far more talented the me.

Even the greatest writers admit their inability to fully capture the experiences of horror, the crushing fear, the fury, the odors, screams and silence one suffers in between the disturbing peace. Like making love or the taste of fine wine, words on a page only trigger imagination and illicit a dark sympathy. Empathy without experience is nothing more than fantasy.

I do not make these claims in offense. My own empathy is a rope that over time has become a noose. Random moments are capable of producing the most unpredictable triggers. A playful child’s scream might reveal the man, laid bare beneath a shattered wall, his stomach and intestines uncoiled across the huts dirt floor. A door slamming shut behind me and a memory long suppressed plays in a loop just behind my eyes: our medic bagging a severed, yet still camouflaged soldiers leg. The smell of a rabbit and a phantom smell of burning tire and human flesh lingers for days.

We forget so much of what we see. This is true for almost everyone of us. War is no different. We can’t recall, but we never really forget. These shocking visions, buried just below the conscience, erupt into our lives like films about ghosts. They are insidious magic tricks, pictures from the most evil of theaters. None of us are immune, it’s just that some of the afflicted can overcome the inflicted. Count me as not one.

It’s like my best memories have been erased. I’m like a mixtape that’s been over recorded with the voice of the devil himself.

Where do I go from here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 TRILLION GALAXIES

A new study using the Hubble Space Telescope has increased estimates of galaxies in the known Universe ten fold…at least. It was previously estimated that there was 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. I’m not even sure what that means; the difference between 100 billion and 2 trillion; both representing unimaginably large numbers? I mean that not in a literal sense as I majored in Physics, but in the sense of comprehension. Many people will read a headline like that and say, “wow, that’s a lot,” without really grasping the enormity of it all. You find it with many folks if discussing evolution over great spans of time. Like what does it really mean when you say something like “a million years?” Only through time of this magnitude would the Polar Bear basically breed out all but the white furred version of the bear as it is the best adapted to hunt from the ice-packs covered in snow.

Read the story from space.com here.

Just thinking about this discovery tonight fills me with a familiar, exciting sort of dread. My former self, prior to the forces of combat on my psyche, would have enjoyed flipping the new information over in my head, considering the expanded possibilities of it all and what it might me in a larger, fundamental context. Today the vastness it represents, the insignificance it lights our race, the human race, in, sends pulses of anxiety up and down my spine. Do I matter? Does any of this matter? What are we? Where are we? There was a time that I enjoyed the numbing frailty of our certain insignificance. Now, all it offers is a darkened window the looks out upon forever.

Will I ever redeem that curiosity? Maybe that’s not it, maybe I am still curious, however, I cannot get a solid grip on the possible answers? What if I’ve wasted a tremendous gift in this time, at this place, worrying about morality when I shouldn’t get stuck in the guilt, but simply appreciate the conscience? What if, in all this space, through all this time, being a speck, on a speck, on a speck, on a speck, on a speck where the ostensibly and incontestably smallest of chances smashed together this one time to create me, us? To waste that is indefensible. It’s this kind of pressure I could have handled before the war. Today, tonight though, it’s releasing from places like a horrible acne. I look in the mirror of my black computer screen and see the past with zero hope for the future.

2 trillion galaxies X 200 billion stars X 10 planets divided by…. the mathematics of the possible.

 

 

 

 

 

ONE LAST CIGARETTE

Here I am in the local Barnes & Noble coffee cafe trying to relax, write, and enjoy a lazy Friday night. Too bad the man closest to my corner table is having some sort of episode? Speaking to himself, swearing, moving fast enough to force the rancid, stale alcohol smelling stench through my space again and again. Should I leave? Should I temporarily walk away, browse the shelves, with hopes he either leaves or finds the missing item so important it’s causing this electric shitstorm? What I really want to do is plant my fist right through his face every time he inches nearer my personal space on his way to the trashcan. I probably wouldn’t notice the screaming child across the room if it weren’t for his sporadic gibberish, nevertheless, tonight the poor child is only amplifying my frayed nerves. It’s like I am stuck in the worst coach trans Atlantic middle seat. No escaping this hell, albeit temporary and voluntary. Do I on some sick level actually enjoy the abuse? Why else would I continue with this Starbucks-Boarding though unshackled, my Machination bond posted in full? I’ll sweat it out this time. The pounding in my head out of sync with the irregular thumping in my chest. He’s still at it. I look around to catch a friendly glance and a knowing smirk. He looks at me though and says..”sounds like that damn kid is mad?” I smirk and get up for a cigarette.

BOTH WAYS

Nothing seems to make me feel worse than when I reflect on my earlier life and what would have become of it had I resisted the urge to enlist in the Army after September 11th. Would things have turned out worse? Instead of the towering shame and sense of betrayal that overwhelms me today, would I have just found replacement feelings of ignominy and victim-hood? Either way I lie awake at night hoping to erase the shame and wake up with the fear born of my nightmarish anger. So I do my best to occupy my brain with the drone of the never ending internet or the fiction within the screen; anything to dam the current that flows from another life and the future impossible to replace. Death comes, it seems, the moment that barrier gives way, opening up the closure our fiction has hidden.

There is no justice for the self-righteous among us. I say that in the context of modern day truth tellers, those who do what they believe to be honorable only to be treated like the villain. The story is familiar. I can relate. The idiom, I believe, is: “no good deed goes unpunished.” My entire concept of right and wrong was challenged, and defeated the day I was discharged from Army service administratively, essentially, for doing “the next right thing.” “The war is bigger than this young man,” I was lectured just days before I was unceremoniously shipped home with two fellow “troublemakers.” “We are in the middle of a war, son.” “Why are you doing this to yourself?” My answer, in the moment was as honest as it was naive and simple. My answer, paraphrased, was something like “I signed up to fight for the good guys. I enlisted….” The meeting was over.

Even in my initial shock, there was an ember of dignity deep within. That I could somehow hang my hat on that simple truth. That my war was over, yet my humanity carried on. In a rational mind, this could have been logical. Instead what settled under my atmosphere were the competing forces of embarrassment and shame. Embarrassed that I came home physically unharmed, yet profoundly hurt by what felt like being abandoned and shameful for trusting the forces of power to begin with. My self-righteousness encumbered my ability to prosecute the immorality of war. I should have known as much. I did this to myself and that’s ultimately what today hurts the most.

You might be wondering: “what could have been so terrible that it forced me/us to press the issue to the “event horizon,” if you will? In not so many words, I am ready to let it go. The only person outside of my unit and command that I told was my now deceased Grandfather; a Veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam Wars. It was unexpected that he expressed his lack of shock. In fact, he thought it lucky to have an honorable discharge in the face of such deliberate malfeasance.

After 8 months deployed to Afghanistan in late 2002 early 2003, our unit was quickly turned around and refitted for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. During the final 4 weeks prior to the invasion we were stationed outside of the Middle East with several additional coalition forces. It came to my attention that soldiers were visiting a brothel regularly, then sharing video captured during the sexual escapades. It wasn’t the idea of a brothel that bothered me, nor the childish passing around of amateur porn. What seemed quite disturbing then -revolting today even- was the open knowledge that many of these girls were underage and that several of the homemade tapes included violence. My first reaction was disbelief. Just sailor stories, I thought? Pretty sick shit, but almost certainly untrue. The more I heard however, the more it became evident that the rumors were, in fact, true.

The second thing that killed me was few seemed to give a shit? Is this really what we are all about? Supposedly traveling halfway around the world to liberate oppressed peoples only to victimize some along the way? So we took it to the PL. Long story short; four months later, following a capture mission in Iraq and three separate meetings since first reporting the incident, one final chance was given to drop the issue. Six hours later I was extricated from Iraq; ten hours after that, from the Army itself.

About five years ago I stumbled upon an article that caught my attention. Some private contractor for the US Military had been accused of shielding individuals caught up in a scandal involving underage prostitution very near the post I had visited years before. A corporate whistle blower had come forward with evidence of the myriad crimes only to be fired and returned to the States ingloriously. According to the piece, the corporation settled with a moderate fine and no admission of wrongdoing in the matter. The article went on to reveal that the crimes continued for another year at least. No charges or further investigation was ever instigated, according to the piece.

Are we the country we proclaim to be? Am I insensitive to the bigger picture, or, am I simply unwilling to take accountability for my own behavior, projecting my anger to deflect the truth? I remember that flight home so many years ago and the slightest ember of confidence that remained deep within. That someday, if I pressed on, someday my actions would be rewarded. Yet, like so many other high and mighty idiots, that redeemable moment never comes. Instead, we just add to the long list of victims assaulted by the “big picture.”

Why write this today? The truth is, my slow fall from normality has inflicted emotional harm, not only upon the self, but upon those who knew me so long ago. This guilt is yet another scar. I wanted to at least try to explain in a way that’s to not explain away the forces that interrupted my trajectory and shifted its orbit. I am sorry. My stubborn reluctance to talk and my inability to cope is on me, period. Be assured, the end will come despite your genuine concern, not in spite of it. I’m sorry you couldn’t help me. I am gratified. The truth is, it’s unclear if anything will prevent my ceding to the fear and noise?

I wrote this for anyone who cares enough to read it.. It’s the single thing I’m capable of doing. Hopefully these words will offer a modicum of reason and eventual closure. Remember me for the man I once aspired to be, not the coward that ran away.

I’ll post this tonight for good measure. If possible, another time soon, more will follow? It’s impossible to say everything. All life must one day pass through the seasons of creation to be born once more, cleaner somehow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nonprofit Corporation: Oxymoron?

If I could be granted one simple wish before leaving this world, it would be that I had somehow captured on paper the genesis of this sadness and grief I endlessly suffer. I so want to leave an expression of my frustration and guilt that one day, a long-lost friend or loved relative might read and somehow “get it,” somehow comprehend the level of internal, immutable struggle. Leaving this world behind vacant of that record, ironically, or paradoxically, as it were, bends my will ever so slightly to live, if only in hopes of discovering those words.

That conversation aside, the present nature of things, politically speaking, have sunken to depths I’d otherwise assumed impossible. Can it really be true that our, some might say, “great society” has been lost to a celebrity worshiping, dumbed down, get rich quick ethos so prevalent that a buffoon the likes of Donald Trump could actually be elected the President of the United States? Could it be that I surrendered my future to fight for an America that can name more Kardashian’s than Supreme Court justices? -a recent poll finds that 81% of Trump supporters and 65% of Clinton supporters could not name even 1 current SCOTUS judge- As a white male growing up in America, the concept of “white privilege,” in retrospect at least, was supremely evident. Yet, could I have actually brought myself to enlist in 2001 to fight for a country that is, in fact, so prejudice to nominate a man like Donald Trump as the GOP contender for POTUS? Why would anyone in their right mind volunteer to fight on behalf of a nation -at least halfway around the world- so divided at home, for the idea of another’s freedom elsewhere? 

I actually like Donald Trump. What I do not care for, what I find depressing and pernicious, is the simple fact that I fought for a country, suffered, experienced others suffering, put friends in body bags even, that considers Trump suited for the job Commander-in-Chief. Can there be anything worse on a spiritual level than to discover your sacrifices were not only unnecessary, but harmful? That this man speaks to an electorate so many have given so much to protect, is disheartening and jarring. My guilt is such that no amount of time will ever heal the burden. The realization that not only did my service harm fellow human being’s so irrevocably, but that it produced a sense of righteousness within those perpetrating the ongoing tragedy, squeezes me so tightly within, that finding air to breathe becomes ever more difficult. Not only did I temporarily prop up the madness, I lost my future to its pervasive continuance.

As a person, I don’t like Hillary Clinton. As a politician I find her deplorably acceptable in a moment of terrible strain. Unlike Trump in his role as a politician exposing the worst in our society, Hillary represents the worst of our political system at large. “Stronger Together?” Not unlike her campaign in general, her meaningless slogan represents her largest flaw, which from my perspective is: Does she want to be president because that’s what’s next, so to speak, because if I were asked, I couldn’t tell you why she wants to be the next POTUS? So Donald Trump isn’t? This truth is overlooked largely by the media, yet I believe it heavily represents her seeming inability to brush The Donald aside, as I suspect many other Democratic candidates would quite easily. Comparing herself to Trump when pressured to explain her own actions comes across as mealy-mouthed and cynical. 

There is a difference between Veteran’s of WWII and the Vietnam War. Much of that static seems to me related to the feelings of guilt and shame I, and many other War on Terror vets live with. Not only did we encounter the loss, stress, confusion and pain of war, but many of us discover the fight was fought on some big lies and manipulation. WWII Vets could/can at least find solace in the fact that their sacrifices were made for the greater good. That they suffered in truth, sacrificed in the name of justice. Sure, PTSD was common throughout the community of WWII Vets, however, the process of healing was amplified through the lens of righteousness. A simplistic opinion, maybe, but not necessarily incorrect.

I’d like to add more to this essay later, for now I must sign off and try to recollect my thoughts. But if I don’t make it back, it’s important for me to express one final thought: I don’t blame anyone for my condition, despite the possibility my words could be interpreted as so. My decision to jump into this war was made voluntarily and within the context of my historical knowledge of the world. I did it to myself….and maybe that’s what hurts the most? I wish I could take it back. I want to heal so badly. The reality is that I’m so lost, so broken and bent, that I will not. Good night- 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presidential Town Hall?

Have you watched any of the documentaries exposing the media’s neglect in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq? What seems to be clear is that much of the mainstream media has difficulty in telling the American people what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear. Anyone questioning the government was labeled “terrorist sympathizer” and quickly escorted off stage right. See, for example, Phil Donohue, who had MSNBC’s highest rated program, yet was promptly cancelled as he dared to entertain opposing opinions, suggesting the Iraq War would be a colloseul mistake. There’s no prize for being correct anymore when it comes to American foreign policy. More importantly, there is no punishment for being wrong, for even outright lying to your customers even.

I say all this in light of the so-called town hall held tonight on NBC featuring Trump and Clinton. To be most succinct: if the United States had an official State News such as that of the former Soviet Union, how little difference would there be between it and what we present as journalism today? Would an event like this be MC’d by a morning celebrity talk show host rather than an expert in the field of Veteran’s affairs and national security? Would the State run program limit the event to no more than 50 minutes total, despite the enormity of the issues being discussed?

It’s unnecessary for me to dig any deeper into an analysis of this production I witnessed tonight. The content speaks for itself. That is to say; the content was as shallow as it was Jingoistic. If we learned anything new after this hour I’ll never get back it’s this: the media treats us as if we’re stupid. The candidates treat us like we are stupid. How much further can we travel along this dodgy path before perception does indeed become reality and we are all lost?

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART II – IN HIDING section a

This is the second part of a rough draft of work describing my time serving in the US Army and the life that has followed. For PART I Click Here THANK YOU!

PART II – IN HIDING

How are you supposed to react when a person you’ve known all your life says to you, in all seriousness, “we don’t even seem to know you any more?” My reaction to this honest statement of fact was to deflect, to isolate, to just run. It was just the thing I might not have done before, in a previous life, in a space prior to this mask I now wear. The words hit hard. The words hit home. The mask was ripped off like an infected scab. The illusion of my happy life had not only been unveiled, turns out, it was never there at all. It’s not being caught in a lie, rather, it’s that they all knew the mask was a lie all along. How am I supposed to face them? How do I tell them the mask is all that remains?

The clock strikes midnight as I sit here, alone, as far away from home as I’ll ever be. Light streams in through the bare glass of the four windows, east, north, west and south, on this still summer night. At this latitude the sun is like an unbalanced friend. The winter falls hard and the summer slight. I wont be able to see the stars again for what seems like months. Will I ever? Thoughts like this are safe in a place already so distant. This shell of a structure I like to call home, a space looking out in the four known directions, I often consider the trap.

There are men I used to know that seem comfortable with it all? Are they just more at ease with the mask, or was it there all along? I wish I could walk that line between the future and the past. To live in the moment, they say it’s all that there really is. This assessment of reality, in my opinion, feels completely untrue. Like faith in a God that is cool with what comes, I shudder at the thought of such acceptable evil. What I see is the past. What I feel is the future. These are the foundations of my life in atrophy. Picture an ocean as it meets the shore; look for the present, a space between the sand and the sea. Dig deeper, let the past wash away. I came home long ago, yet never was able to touch the shore.

This loss will not be calculated into the next fools war. They’ll consider the caskets and consider the gold, but what about the suffering of those with wounds down deep? It adds up to nothing in the vaults of an immoral economy, an ignorant population marches on, slaves and truants, to the master’s of war. It’s “hooray” for the flag and hell for the children, a pattern that has persisted over millennia. Our projection of evil isn’t new or even clever. Rome would conquer new lands under the guise of relieving oppression, or, even more familiar to our modern history: as a preemption to future, imminent war. Although the truth was quite evident and clear. The Roman Empire never couched their expansion as conquerors, guided by greed and tempted by glory. The PR of the ancient world is no more fresh today. “We’re Rome, we’re only here to help.”

I ask myself, did the Legionnaires of Ceaser and Crassus’ Rome suffer from guilt and shame? I find it difficult to believe this happened in any great numbers. From history it seems clear, a striking difference from that world to this is that Roman propaganda was employed upon the masses, with the troops given the truth. Conquest today is packaged the same for all, public and plebs. This hypocrisy jumped out of the shadows as we once again marched into battle. This fight was not about liberty. This new war had little to do with freedom, for the West or the Middle East. If it was a lie, it was still for; fighting on a lie.Those in the ranks who realized this first, fought both integrity and lead. Fighting on a deliberate lie, killing in the face of dishonesty, these men, us men, have gradually succumbed to this hell, our masks melting away, the conscience proceeds.

The rest of America seems to have largely moved on to new, fresh projections of fear? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5th Point of Contact

Preface: The first time I entertained the idea of documenting my experiences in the Army, to my best recollection, was soon after browsing the Afghanistan War Logs released by Wikileaks. It wasn’t because I found them inaccurate, rather, it was their sterile efficiency, their almost complete lack of context that rubbed me the wrong way, like the reaction of a cat having its fur combed against the natural lay. It wasn’t like I had anything else of value going on. Just the week before a close relative had commented to me in private: “I don’t think I even know you any more?” Words that stung, not due to there inaccuracy, but for there cold truth. Truth was, and is, I don’t even know myself any longer.

Five years later, 2500 miles away, broke, alone, fatalistic, and angry, I have “picked up the pen” so to speak, in earnest, to document my all to vivid memories and drop bread crumbs along this slow path to likely self-destruction. I don’t expect anyone to read these musings, to give a shit or empathize. This is for me. This might be my final grasp at a useful life I once took for granted?

I begin on the battlefield, downrange, as it were, not to glorify war, but to introduce a sort-of literary speed trap. This is my testimony. These are secrets, most I’ve never told. This is the cost of victory in little battles, singular wins that lose the greater war.

PART I – INTO THE BREACH

“Army! Travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them.”  FULL METAL JACKET

Nothing could ever prepare a man for the cacophony of sounds, the putrid, unforgettable stench, the orchestrated confusion and fear associated with infantry level combat. “Smells like victory”; a cute line from Hollywood, I assure you, is not a pleasant affect to anyone’s morning. That permeating odor, so all-consuming, overpowering, the digestive gases, piss, shit, blood and bile; no sane man who’s ever tasted that air could forget. Picture that warm sense that might wash over you while listening to an old, favorite song. Memories lifting from the deep recesses of your romantic past, seemingly out of nowhere, vanishing like a wisp of smoke. Now try to imagine a similar effect in reverse, blinding terror, soot blackened snow.

Welcome to the dark side of the Earth, as we knew it then, some 13 years ago. The cyclonic rotation of the planet slowly painted this moonless night in a witheringly opaque blackness: Perfect for our purposes. Perfect for an ambush. It added up to a sort of vacant, yet vacuous strangled paralysis which turns out, is ideal for the new, high-tech tools of war. We were laying in wait, the trap was set, hidden below an invisible melody, only the sounds of the forest singing its song. A “stand-to,” in Army nomenclature. We were a often violent and seldom patient uber predator, open in wait, not unlike the steel jaws of an old rusty trap, eager to snap shut with the ferocity of the God’s.

This mission was unique for us to that point in the deployment. Seldom did we utilize these sorts of tactics while I served in Afghanistan. Apparently we had acquired SIGINT -Signal Intelligence- combined with human intelligence, prompting command to pay closer attention to the Pakistan border as a causeway for Tali fighters moving to and from the tribal badlands of Pakistan? Really, I mean, no shit Sherlock? Nevertheless, this was an operation Grunts like us trained for, and dreamed of tackling in those days. We wanted to be something more than chum, bait. Let’s take the fight to them, whoever “them” were? 

Positioned just below the treeline, straddling a well worn trail the continued up into the lenticular clouds, bending away from the peaks far above, our hopes were high. All we could do is wait. No cigarettes, no movement, no sound until dawn breaks, or the enemy falls. Those hours, slipping far past dusk, yet not quite dawn, awakens our ancestral brain to those instinctual fears. In this space, on a planet facing directly away from the sun, the hairs on the neck will dance, a primitive warning from eons past. The tension now gripping us all, like an endless nightmare, only we are wide awake. Those organic warnings, recorded as rings on every man’s family tree, this ubiquitous and not quite irrational fear of the dark forest lingers. Left alone with only your thoughts, the haunting hour arrives like a tempest, on the edge of panic and exhilaration, the fear of the unknown grips you, as you hope for the known, trained for something else. This is when ghosts seem the least shy, the countless children, digging, playing, screaming in this perpetually radioactive, scorching sandbox. Are they angels coming out to play, or are they daemons waiting to settle old scores? If I only knew now what I didn’t back then, could I make the necessary difference?

Proned out, contemplating the silent life happening now on the other side, a shooting-star caught my physical attention. Was it a sign, some sort of starting bell? The rock, barreling out of the eastern sky, voyaging across the gaping horizon overhead, like a flash from heavens’ gate, a super-sonic meteor crashing into the western cosmos, within a suspended instant, time measured in micro-seconds. The present briefly felt more tangential to peace than it did to war.

Just at that moment, my right eye lit-up as a green silhouette. The optics illuminated a man, moving in silence, about fifty meters uphill from our fixed position. Carefully descending, the extreme heights of the Pakistani mountain border to his back, this lead scout moved cautiously, deliberately, and much quieter than I previously assumed possible. More appeared, twenty-two in all by my imprecise count. Armed men, Taliban most likely, not knowing, perhaps even imagining, the dogs of war waiting just steps ahead in that darkness, killers suspended in a well conditioned silence, ready to violently shut the door on life.

One by one they crept passed my position, in the blackness, the predator as prey. Just five-fucking-meters from a steep, rocky, mountain trail, I laid there watching as they descended past. Were we manning some sort of hell’s gate? If there really is a God, or Allah, or whatever the fuck, I recall thinking, these men, every last fucking one of them better be prepared to have a face-to-face with the twisted mother-fucker. A criss-crossing mesh of green lit our night. This was an ambush. That was the beginning of my own time in hell.

Novel Idea – A Biography in Pieces

Secretly, I’ve spent much of the last two years grinding out, bit by bit, a semi biographical book reflecting on my experiences with the Army and life after. I’d never even considered doing such as thing. Besides the occasional letter, some technical writing at work, and an on again, off again journal, I had no credibility or experience needed to write an actually readable text. The project become more daunting upon losing my early efforts, most applicable art and several notebooks containing memories and rough quotes from my time in the Army, when last February, my cabin went up in flames along with everything inside at the time. I returned from a hike to find the place little more than a pile of smoking rubble, a particularly apt metaphor for my life.

These past months I’ve slowly restarted the process, albeit from an even further deteriorated mind and spirit. I’m considering publishing the work, an unedited chapter at a time, on this page for review and commentary? Even though I find my work entirely unreadable, like the reaction one might have to hearing ones recorded voice for the first time, possibly a little sliver of vulnerability would help me in improving, or worst case, abandoning the project altogether?

I do not expect any response to this post. Writing it down, here, was my first baby step in that direction. So if I don’t chicken out before then, I hope to release the prologue online by tomorrow night. All I ask if for genuine feedback, good or bad, helpful or not. Any sharing of the work would be greatly appreciated as well.

Until the next falling sun. L

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Morning Front

Is there anything more depressing than a rainy grey morning alone? Why is it then that this drab time alone, makes me feel safer, at peace even, in the humid monochrome? I almost feel like reaching out, breaking an extended silence, a phone to a friend. Almost, yet, I wont.

If I were the broken character in some morose film about the human paradox, I’d be the first one in the theater to think; just pick up the phone and make the call. Thus the paradoxical nature of our tragic behavior: even with the medicine within reach, my self-destructive stubborn shame overcomes all preventive antidote. And so it goes, the invisible scars upon my arms, each one marking another day I’ll suffer alone and drift further apart.

How far has this water traveled to rain down, melting my faith, soaking my skin? If I could wish for a power, I’d take some common sense. If I could crawl into their minds to see what they think, what would I see? Be rational, they say, stop blaming yourself, have faith.