In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  ***, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.
…


After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)

Stop and start my heart again
Put my chart in its yellow bin
take my roaring pulse
feel my blood calamity up
how do you fix broken mind
because I'm flying blind

Whats the cure for frostbite of the heart?
again, I don't really want to start
I have a medical history
of a freezing heart
and in this summer
the feelings growing number

measure the beating of my heart
look at the EKG
my life in a pattern
up down up down up
...
isnt that a way to go

fix my broken bones
i tried catching up to you
i tripped over myself
and now i have to stop
untill i can see you again

There is a city that only I inhabit, and there is one in you, too
but that must mean houses are there
or a hotel one may stay during a visit. I guess it depends
on who you ask, if they believe in an everlasting love big enough
to fill the whole metropolis inside a person.
I did not know until I met you that cavities within me
could welcome a second resident and he would stay staring at
these organs without
thinking they look unnatural, like paintings x-rays EKG screens.
I am sorry for explaining this to everyone but I am just
so happy that my heartbeat  sounds like
a ticking clock to you – we hold bodies that tell their own time.

When I tell you you're beautiful,
I need you to believe me.

I need you to know
That I know what I'm talking about
When I say that I love
Every little nook and cranny
Of your entire being.

You must understand that
I love the way your
Hair parts on the side,
That small wrinkle in your forehead.

That is my wrinkle.
I am the cause of that wrinkle.

I love that sparkle in
Your plain brown eyes.
That cute little nose
Complemented by
Those luscious lips.

Lord, have mercy.

I could go on for
Forever and a day
Just to say the
Same resounding message.

Sweetheart, you're
More than beautiful.

You're heart-stopping.

day negative nine hundred and something:
Sally starts with aspirin. (She has done the math- 37 if you're lucky, 43 to be safe. And 50, just in case.) She falls asleep after 35. When she opens her eyes, it is dark and nauseous. Sally stares glumly as the glowing numbers flit on her alarm clock. 17 hours, maybe 18. ****.

day zero:
She is alone in the parking lot. She checks the time on the radio, glances at the back entrance of the BevMo building. Sally cranks the volume **** clockwise, and reaches into the backseat. Unscrews the bottle, swallows two, hesitates-- swallows two more. Her throat is tight, bone-dry. Zipping up the outer pocket of the ancient leather pack is uncharacteristically tricky. The driver's side door opens, and she smiles.

day one:
The battery light on her ****** flip-phone blinks red, in sync with the beeping of the EKG machine. She wonders if the read-out will show her disappointment. Sally's father sits motionless in the corner of the tiny room. Sleep will not come, though not for lack of trying. She glares at the ceiling. Tangled up in tubes, wires, and needles, Sally counts the ugly, white tiles. Again, she has failed.

day two:
Her parents' blue Volkswagen follows the McCormick ambulance. Sally looks awkwardly at the chiseled EMT stationed next to her. He smiles, offering comfort. It is staunchly refused. Later, the paramedics will roll her through the triple-locked doors, still strapped to the stretcher, where a room full of hollow teenagers will stare her down. They will appear as empty as she feels. Nurses will make jokes, and Sally will quickly understand that she must pretend to laugh. She will look them in the eyes and lie through teeth just out of braces, telling herself, "at least I tried."

day four:
Sally waves goodbye to the boy who tried to drink drain cleaner, carefully avoiding the the gaze of the boy who followed her into her room the night before. (She tried to tell, but no one listened.) After sloshing through mountains of concerned texts, emails, and phone messages she stops for an impromptu celebratory dinner on the way home. Sally has learned only to redefine and reinforce the *******. "I'm fine."

day seven:
The new medication has stolen her concentration. She chucks it. She can no longer sit still, begs her parents to teach her how to drive. She learns that the Volkswagen is far less austere from the inside, though the front bumper will be forever tinged with nostalgia.

day fourteen:
She attends the first court-mandated therapy session. Not that bad. The truth is hard… but deception second-nature.

day fifty-nine:
Sally no longer sleeps. Her mind is a city at night and her thoughts are technicolor billboards, all screaming the same message: 'You put me in the hospital and you never even called.'

day three hundred and forty-eight:
She practices tying nooses with a shoelace in the dark.

day three hundred and sixty-four:
She hangs herself in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Third time's a charm…
Right?

day three hundred and sixty-five:
Sally awakens on the cold floor. Again, she is surrounded by tiles.
Those white ******* tiles. Her neck bruised, a broken shoelace trails to the floor. Quietly, she resigns herself to life.
There is nothing left to ****.


s.h.

WARNING: THIS IS EXCEEDINGLY EXPLICIT...

(when for a pinpoint (the exact moment) i am nurses sift home again EKG's

it all went wrong
CT scans on the timeline
i will repeat this then i am whole again
i will defeat this hole again)


when I first
there was had in my stockings caught it something about the small red, i did not believe it. them like cardboard, and ******* now i, caught saw it, my ****** high heels, i did not believe it. them kunts like cardboard as a child i loved

and the great swan **** with a straight razor, hot water, shaving cream

dragging these white are in four directions ******* my ***   hows my ***** sheets me with a ***** and licking she said
for another my thick dark ***** juice colors my arms have too many carry the face of  emptinesses  i  **** me *** tongue on shooting that i did not look

regarding my ***  me blow jobs  with **** *** in attention. cannot help what wet ***** happens in me pink ****** fingers will happen without  smiling attention. I  ripped dripping my bra off ******* off i do not think so. i do not think so. the moon's concern is with my ***** ******* hard. **** me **** me with the particles of destruction

i **** up.  am i my **** a pulse hard and swallowing

lick my ***** loved its perfections **** is my dead self    one that **** could is not flat only be perfect  such flatness cannot make a heaven  i am not ugly.  i am even beautiful.

Sometimes there’s this emptiness in the soul
With which the saddest songs would not heal
And the soft kisses of tissues would not soothe
The burns of the acidic tears
Something in there
Cannot be resurrected
Nor stimulated  
With a thousand voltage defibrillator

Most of the time,
the rotting flesh is still alive
The heart still beats
The EKG device monitoring
Each stubborn peak and trough

Sometimes
In this blind bleakness,
There is still a small spark
An iridescent bubble that refuses to be burst
And with quiet determination,
There is a defiance to live
And sometimes
This small act of defiance
Is the greatest courage of all

Nah you were a corpse with a noose around your neck with just a blip of a heart beat on an EKG made of trees laying to rest.

She's a scared little girl and the only way she knows how to survive is off the blood and life of other people.

So I tease and tease the needle injecting, inspecting the vein liquid.

Laying up in that bed for hours with your kidneys being your friends and your head ripping your chest from your intercostals tossing your throat out your teeth through the grate lain cross your open gape

A chamber we both never wanted you lain.
Gas chambering hospital of mucus and babies puking their dead guts out.

Septic ulcer, septic shock, sepsemia.
All the bacteria love you like your their mother inlaws.
And finally you set us free from mine
That caniving, ruthless wretch watched you in the bed.
Floated above ours watching us both.
Escaped we did and finally we won't go back.
Anorexic we starve ourselves now of sharing carbon and gravitating space pits.
The blankets still make dips where we lay but they aren't the same blanket, the threads aren't long enough to cross and make up the same fabric between 100 miles so that an immediate affect between the atoms can be felt between us.

My babies still kicking though.
That's safe.

Let's play a game
grab a glass and take a seat
let's play until you or me
can not rise to our feet
think about your lover
and where she is now
that she isn't with you
and the sweat above your brow

Did you over think?
Drink

think about your life
where you thought you'd be in 10 years
20 years ago
how you're holding back tears

Did you over think?
Drink

think about yourself
the man your parents raised
have you lived up to expectations
as your EKG plays

Did you over think?
Drink