ONE AM, AGAIN

ONE AM, AGAIN

It’s one AM, again. Eyes wide open. Gasping for breath, breathe, you have to breathe. Assess the situation. Breathe. Wait to deal with racing heart and sweat soaked shirt, these are no longer foreign things. Breathe, you have to breathe. Ray’s couch, Ray’s house, no threat. There never is. Breathe, you have to breathe. Snap back to reality. Now what? It’s one AM, and I am slipping back into combat mode. Run at 110% for 20-22 hours. Sleep like the dead for two to four hours. It is nearly impossible to wake me during those brief moments of peace where my body tries to fit eight hours of sleep into two. People have checked my pulse in the past to make sure I was actually still alive when I am in this mode.
Three hours? Two and a half? Does it matter? I am done sleeping for the night. Bullshit, this is bullshit. Get up, smoke a cigarette, try and convince myself I’ll be able to go back to sleep. Lay back down on the couch. Close my eyes, open my eyes. My body and mind are running full throttle, ready to go. Sleep will not be on the agenda for the rest of the day. Bullshit, this is bullshit.
Get in my truck, drive home. Try writing about it. What the shit do I write about? I’ve summed it up already. This is the nightmare. I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t remember it, I never do. I am left with a shirt you can literally wring the sweat out of and a foggier mind. I know the importance of sleep, I talk to everyone about it. The counselors, therapists, neurologist, friends, even strangers. Bullshit, this is bullshit. I have sleep medications. I hate taking sleep medications. They leave me groggy and cranky when I wake up. At very best they get me to six hours, on a good night, without the nightmare. I’m going to have to start taking them again, this is bullshit.
I try what they tell me. Breathing techniques, clearing my mind, laughing, crying, none of it works. The nightmare is my dark passenger whose only goal is to survive. Basic instinct, that’s all it needs. My senses functioning just enough to stay alert for the next threat. It feeds on threat, the adrenaline dump. I used to get tired after the dump, now like a junkee I just look for my next fix. Problem is, wars over. I’m no longer in the service. I no longer have a playground in a sandbox on the other side of the world to let this dark passenger go play. Enter the next problem, those fucking cowards won’t stand and fight like men. They won’t wear uniforms. They will use women and children to deliver their payload to schools, hospitals, and areas of mass public gatherings. They hit the world trade. They hit Boston. They hit our embassies. They are fucking cowards. I know they won’t kick down my door and rush in screaming “Allah Achbar” before setting off a suicide vest. I’m not paranoid or delusional, but most nights I wish they were man enough to try. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry, and that would make me angry. And that at least, would give me a fight.
I don’t know, maybe I am paranoid and delusional. But I can’t help thinking what a perfect target they would consider some of the public gatherings I attend, or Walmart on a busy Friday night, or a town hall meeting full of Veterans. They are fucking cowards and they have proven these are acceptable targets for spreading their goal of terror. I assure you, the chicken shit who would attack innocent civilians in the name of a God and a book they obviously don’t understand does not instill fear or terror in me. It instills a rage which most nights I hope I never have to visit on another human being, but given the opportunity would not hesitate to unleash on any person willing to commit the atrocities they are.
With that being said I feel an apology is in order. To the jackass who honked at me the other night while I was stopping for 60 seconds to give a pan handler a few bucks I am sorry. I never give money to those guys, but this one’s sign hit home for me. All it said was “anything helps.” This guy was genuinely grateful, and even if at the end of the day he walked over to his BMW and drove home to his mansion in the hills (which I strongly doubt he did), at least it was a fellow American I was helping. But you had to go and honk right as a tear was forming in his eye and he was saying God bless you sir, thank you. At that point in my day, honking was everything but the right the thing for you to do. So when I stepped out of my truck and kindly begged you to step out of your Escalade (I only used a few encouraging terms that would cause my mother to rinse my mouth out with soap) please understand that I did so out of an anger that comes from somewhere you will never understand and I hope you never have to. I’m sure you were just in a hurry to get to wherever you were going, maybe you were hungry or had a crying kid in the back, I don’t know.
So when you see us crazy ass veterans in public, acting on edge or being drunk at 11 in the morning, please try and understand that our anger is not necessarily aimed at any one in particular. Rather, it comes from our desire to protect that which we hold most dear, our freedoms and way of life. We have seen the ugliness that these terrorist cowards spread and we are doing our best to bear that burden for you. But that ugliness did a little re-wiring in our brain, we know we are different, we know you can’t ever hope to truly understand and we do not necessarily want you to. So be patient with us if you can, don’t ask us how many people we killed, if we have PTSD, what crazy shit we saw over there. Just say thank you and let us know that we are appreciated and cared for. If we want to talk about our experiences we will, as I am to some extent. But in order for us to want to talk about them, we have to feel welcome and see that you’re not just interested in the “Hollywood” version of what we have to say. Watch a movie or read a book for that, with us, just smile and let us know you care.