Where is my respect?

Where exactly is my respect for being a person, a man, a Disabled Veteran?  I get treated most of the time as if I am some inadequate person who doesn't deserve any respect for any reason.  No matter where I live or where I go I am treated as if I am a lesser being put on this Earth to be treated as such so that others can feel better about their lives.

I so long for the days when I was short, bald and cute and everyone just adored me.  Sadly those f'n days are clearly over and now I am a fat guy who goes through each day praying his life will finally end.  I am likely to live till I am in my late 90's not that I will be treated as that age because my baby face has everyone convinced along with my dysfunctional immature behavior lead them to believe I am younger than I in fact am.

So I ask...WHERE IS MY RESPECT?

Some people worry when I write

They can't possibly understand how I express myself through the darkened words on a page.  How they keep me from the edge where I swallow alcohol and pills trying to drown my body into a hypnotic state of the death march.  I have been there before willingly begging for relief from my pain, my soul, my life.

Rather I have been held longer than my expected stay here on this mortal coil we call Earth.  I have passed my expiration date and have no idea why.  Are my words helping anyone?  Have I become the spokesperson for generations of sufferers?  I don't think so.

Maybe when I'm gone they will read these words and finally understand that when I wrote I was trying hard to not harm myself.  To avoid branding, to avoid suicide.

Please don't say, "Happy Memorial Day" to a Veteran

For many years I cringe when Memorial Day comes because for me and many like me there is no such thing as “Happy Memorial Day.”  We remember the many who were our brothers and sisters who paid the ultimate  sacrifice serving our country in the military.

I still remember names scrolling down my TV screen in 1991 while sitting with friends who kept reminding me of what I had at home.  Trying to get me to let go of the idea of going back into the military that no longer even wanted me around because of my mental illness that they said didn’t actually exist when they discharged me.

And since my discharge it has been a dangerous thing for people to say that to me because I never know how my mind will respond.  I might attempt to fend it off but during the night I cannot keep the nightmares from taking over and creating a brain full of chaos in my mind during the day.  Sometimes I am not even aware it starts but I sure know when it hits the tearing up button all too well.  Every little heartbreaking memory hits me at once.

This can leave me for days if not weeks of tear filled days and nights I trying to stay awake for fear I will have memories that will only keep this going longer.  I cannot easily bare the chaos as easily as I was mentally able to when I was a younger man.  My body responds by higher blood pressures, fatigue draining me all day long till the dark of night comes to beckon me again to make another choice I don’t want to make.

Please keep this in mind when you decide to say to any Veteran, “Happy Memorial Day.”

It can be hard to comprehend

It can be hard to comprehend how much I would rather be laid to rest with my Brothers than here.  I should have been with them January 1991 but due to my mental faculties getting triggered and costing me my military career in 1989.

Don't think for one minute I wasn't at the recruiter begging to be let back in that year repeatedly because I was.  My girlfriend at the time was upset because she knew I was doing it despite her begging me to not go and ask to go back in.

By the time they wanted me back I was in my mid to late 40's and too many health issues to even consider going back anymore.  If they told me I wouldn't have had to do basic over I might have gone.

Funeral detail messed my head up and I still wish they were doing mine tomorrow.  My regular doc at the VA wasn't exactly supportive but did suggest I see my therapist soon after I told her I wouldn't be upset if my body quit when my Blood pressure is in stroke levels all the time.

I don't fear death, I fear being disrespected, I fear no one caring that I am gone, I fear being laid to rest and the only people there are the Honor Guard and the preacher.

I have pushed so many people away because I really fear causing their death by just being near me.  So many people have paid the price with their lives because I have longed for mine for most of my life.  I feel like it's all my fault that my cousin died when I had the nightmare of dying the same way just three days before.  That night I called home and woke my Mom up to beg her to make sure I was brought home to be laid to rest.

I stood in my Dress Uniform at her funeral as if I was on another Funeral detail.  I didn't want to leave her side.  Just a few months before that day I was home on leave and ignored her because she had been running with the druggies in town again.  It was the last time I saw her alive.  To this day I wish it had been me.

I'm tired of people paying my price.  I have been told I'm going to hell.  All I can say is I'm already there.

Just don't do it

Don't even attempt to ask me to be happy that I am almost 50 years old this year.  I live with a demon inside my head that is manipulative, controlling and feels like a freaking roller coaster ride on a daily basis.

Over the years I have been told this or that about if I don't work harder to take care of my health.  They fail to understand that at times and that's more times than not after 20 plus years of the struggle I have just about resigned myself to the idea that dying a natural death while eating what I want and doing what I want just like my Great Uncles is the better way to go.  At least I am not stressing over how many calories I eat at each meal, am studying the clock figuring out how much time I have before I can eat again to keep on a diet without cheating...

As for the personality issues I am all too aware that some of my so-called closest friends make every attempt to avoid me when I arrive.  I know what I sound like and I know how hard it is to deal with me after all I have been divorced twice and if I could leave me somewhere and live a happier life don't you think I would have long since done that?  Of course I would.

So, just don't do it.  Don't tell me to freaking cheer up, think positively.  I have been spared death on several occasions in my entire lifetime all the way back to age 5 when I nearly went over the falls on the Baldwin River (my Dad jumped in just in time to snatch me before he wouldn't be able to)  and at times I am quite sure my family wished he hadn't.

Born July 1967 with a sense of death and foreboding

I was born in July 1967 with a strong sense of fear, death and foreboding as I became the constant reminder to both families I was born into as the Patriarchs passed away within the first two year of my life.

This left me with a sense that I was hated as a constant reminder which was only confirmed for at least two Grandmother’s who when we were alone told me how much I reminded them of their dead husbands.  I was very young when this started happening and it left an indelible mark on my psyche without fail.

While a young boy I watched some of my favorite relatives die slowly in hospital beds in their kitchens.  I can tell you that born under the sign of Cancer in Astrology only helped to confirm my fear that my life was brought about to bring about death to others.  With that sense came a fateful decision I knew would eventually one way or another come true, I was going to die all alone.

I could no longer bare to watch others die in front of me, go through their funerals, dealing with the nightmares.  Some of those nightmares were so real they would scare me enough to beg for someone to care for my body the way I wanted it done, no matter what. 

I couldn’t bare to fall in love for fear that they would either die in front of my eyes or they would be forced to watch my slow mental decline that seems to be unstoppable leaving me to hope my body would quit before my mind took my soul for good. 

I couldn’t stand to have anyone watch my mental faculties take over what life I had left so I would become so angry, outraged at them for doing nothing at all till I pushed them away.  Or begged so hard for emotional feelings I can’t feel inside like Love, I have no idea what real, true love actually feels like.  I know the emotional high of the beginning of a relationship but that’s it.

And so I sit in my home alone, my kids hate me because as far as I am concerned I deserved it.  I can’t deal with most of my own family who in my youth seemed destined to make me pay for reminding them of what they had lost when I was born.  Each family holiday was a chance for them to pick, poke and torment me in ways I’d rather they’d killed me instead. 

At times when I got older going so far as to tell me I didn’t even know how to my job in the Army for which was in charge of for a while after an unfortunate choice by the soldier above me in rank.  If I had told them they didn’t know how to do their jobs I would have been persecuted for it.  Most of my early twenties after having been discharged (Honorably) having began to lose my mind and attempt suicide several times.  My own father thought I was just a lazy bum till he finally saw me later in his life for what I really was, a man with a mental disorder that was eating at my spirit, my happiness, my soul.  It was too late.

Sometimes I am not sure about that

Sometimes I have a good day and night.  Sometimes I don't think it's time to keep up the fight against the darkness that is begging for me to let it go. I don't know what keeps me going from day to day.  Life is good and bad some days are just better than others.

Today I am stuck between the two sides and I don't know if I'm going to get my soul free or not.

I am already tired and I have to see my therapist to discuss how I'm feeling and what I have been doing lately.

I am a divorced father of three

I am a divorced father of three, a girl and twin boys who are in their teens currently and over the years I had to try hard as a Bipolar person with Borderline Personality Disorder issues of sensitivity to boot to be as good of a father as I could be.  The truth is, I wasn't.

I wasn't there very often when they fell down and when I was most people looked at me like I was some obtrusive idiot who occasionally showed up.  You know when they were all just standing around watching one of them cry and doing nothing.  I walk up, call to my then small child and amazingly they came to me all the while the adults who were doing nothing.

And then as they got older (My kids not the idiots doing nothing) I had to try hard to keep in mind I was there for them and not for me.  Especially when they started saying things like, "Dad if you weren't here we could be doing this with Nanna" or some such statement to that effect.  As I tried to remain calm and not take it personally which by the time I got into the car I was ready to cry like a baby.  After all I didn't beg to borrow money I couldn't pay back and a car I could not afford to fix should something had gone wrong to drive 200 miles round trip just to spend at the end of it four hours a month.

Then I finally gave up to give them what they wanted...the ability to do other things.  And despite all the "Christian Values" being taught in that home the one person they should have been respecting and being understanding of was relegated to being blamed for everything that was wrong in their world.  After all I spent twenty plus years struggling to find and keep a job all the while my mind was not in the mood to deal with existential variables I couldn't control let alone ignore.  Thus, I wasn't most of the time as they were growing up paying anything if at all capable of paying a minute amount.

And I didn't get school pictures, contact or anything else for being the father.  And as soon as I was found out that I had money then the elder child wanted a favor naturally...money for something.  To make a long story short which if you had ever talked to me would know wasn't and isn't easy for me to do...she got upset when I told her I didn't have it to give to her.

And now here I sit in my house with my mental problems and no children around with one hope that someday when I die they will at the very least show up to my funeral at the Veterans Administration National Cemetery in Battle Creek to see their father laid to rest with honors.  Yes I earned an Honorable discharge from the US Army in 1989...the one thing in my life I felt like I did honorably because I knew better than have children for fear I would only hurt them should I make that fateful choice my mind keeps begging for.