10 Year WAR

I don’t know how to even start. I could say that it’s been almost 10 years since Brian died. That would be factual, but not even close to accurate. Brian has died for me every single day, without fail, since that day. Every day I wake up and I lose him again. It’s the most horrible version of Groundhog’s Day. Time does not exist for me anymore. Time stopped at 9pm on Sunday November 25, 2012. I found out that Brian died … and I died, too.

That is not some exaggeration. I did die. My body and my mind and my voice have continued to function, but it’s just been going on autopilot. I have not been present for 10 years. I’m walking and talking and working and creating and evening loving, but there is no living once you die. I’ve spent 10 years waiting for my body to catch up and just die along with my soul. A very dangerous nearly fatal bout with sepsis almost accomplished that goal, but 4 years later I am still waking up, still breathing, still moving and grooving and still faking it all.

In 10 years, I have had some wonderful, very real experiences. I will never say that the connections I experienced were fake or insignificant because they most certainly were not. I did indeed laugh. I did indeed love. I did indeed learn. The circle around me has grown wider and stronger and more brilliant and beautiful. I have been so blessed to have had unbelievable experiences (who lives this life?) and I am not at all ignorant enough to believe that everyone gets those experiences and I am not numb enough to miss the magic of it all. I have seen glorious things, felt powerful love, watched my children grow into humans far better than I could ever be. I have loved and felt the love another … as much as I am able. I do not think that I am able to feel anything pure and full. I have built such a solid steel wall around myself and my heart and my mind because, honestly, it’s the only way I can breathe in and out. I live in a prison of my own making and it has kept me safe and moving and giving the illusion of life.

Illusion. It’s only an illusion.

PTSD is the most fucked up thing. It is time traveling through nightmares. It is being in one place and time and then suddenly being right back in 2012. I don’t mean that I just feel like I am back there. I mean that my eyes stop seeing what is in front of me and instead they see motherfucking ignorant asshole police officers standing in front of me bungling in an almost criminal way telling me that my husband is dead and refusing to answer any questions. I am seeing the snowy creek bed with burned limbs and bloody rocks and charred flesh. I smell the frozen blood found under rocks. I am running my hands through cremains. I am telling my children that their father will never come home. I am telling Brian’s family that their son is dead. I am laying naked zipped up inside his body bag. I am frantically calling Brian to try to find him. I am finding hidden bottles. I am wearing his underwear to be close to him. I am standing barefoot in the snow in the middle of the night crying and begging the moon to come back to life. I am living the very worst horror there is to live. Over and over and over and over again. I am smelling the burned clothing, tasting the bitter tang of death. All the while, my co-workers keep answering the phone, my vehicle keeps flying down the highway, the dogs keep going in and out, the coffee keeps brewing, the meals are made and bills are paid and I am still laying there, face down in a puddle of flesh and blood and rocks and ice and snow until the next day when I do it all over again.

I wrote this morning and posted it on social media:

So here’s the thing about PTSD:

It can fuck ALLLLLLLLLLL the way off.
But it won’t.
It won’t budge. 
It’ll hide, for awhile, like a 2 year old playing hide and seek by standing with a towel over its head. 
It’ll slink around sometimes, like a cat largely ignoring you until it DEMANDS that you attend to it before it shits in your shoe. 
And it will also latch onto you like a superglue-covered starving rage filled bear, fresh out of hybernation, that adheres itself to you with a permanent adhesive before it claws and bites and tears and eviscerates you, devouring every last cell, only to regurgitate you back up so it can do it again and again and again. 

It is personal and vindictive and holds a doctorate in gaslighting. 
Like a sadist, it takes you to the point of death repeatedly but never finishes the journey, making it all that more cruel when you realize you are breathing again because just fucking stop or finish the goddamn job. 
But it won’t. 
It never will.
It thrives in those moments of keeping you neither alive nor dead and this is where you will stay forever. 
It wants you to stop fighting.
It wants you to go under.
It wants you to lose every bit of joy, pin-prick of hope, every single tiny speck of light. 
And you do. 
Because it wins.
It will always win. 
And you can never stop playing the game.

I am not religious at all, but this has to be purgatory. Purgatory, not Hell. Not Hell, because Hell is where a person ends when it is over.

This is not over. A new battle has just begun.