So…here is the easy of it! Nothing has changed!!

You all know the story-it is told here in several years of writings; PTSD and the MST that brought it on and has kept it alive…still is.

It is true that my claim against the Veterans Administration came back as 100% fully disabled; here is what that means:

I continue to live alone with three dogs as my companions; my bed sheets continually spread with sand from the two Chihuahuas that persist on being up there in comfort; my other companions are the crevice spiders; I lay down most nights praying “why can’t I be normal” and still wake everyday – meaning…everyday – taking a mental inventory of my surroundings, and my memory of the detention barrack D and the daily assault on my body. I still fear crowds and as always I have good intentions on going to art openings where I know friends will be – but my anxiety of the state of panic prevents me from going; I am so embarrassed by my absences; and – being totally void of any relationship of intimacy since 1998 is taking a toll on my spirits. I am clueless.

Yes, there is the compensation that joins with the VA 100%.

Money does not make happy. Money makes miserable. It does not meet the damage of the PTSD with any comfort. Now a days most of my compensation goes to paying my current hospital bills from a heart attack and subsequent seven hour surgery to open an artery early this year; FREE at the VA hospital….but-I so deeply fear the VA hospital….I requested the ambulance to take me to any place but there! So-I am paying for my medical care out of the compensation I receive. Next time around – I promise – I will not dial 911; I want to just lean up against a tree and watch the birds, and simply pass.

I still cook my meals on the grill-outside…there is an oven in the kitchen, only used one time by my sister in law years ago; I brew my coffee on one burner-once a day, finally – the gas company removed the cylinder due to my long periods between gas purchase since I use so little! My house? It has been tightened up better than the many years it saw too much open air; but – it is the same house since day one from its arrival to me 20 some years ago-after someone else lived in it for 20 years before.

I refuse to change living this way because the facts that led us here in 1975 are the same factors that want me to keep this place the same (the suggestions have been to bulldoze and build-are not for me) because I never want to lose the connection of why and how we came to live here; it was not easy – ever!

It was what God gave me.

Peace

Fathers Day 1970

   Forty-five years ago on Fathers Day I found myself homeless and yet beginning a journey; my life journey. I was 18 years old.

Nine years ago another journey began-a journey when I started writing this blog. I had to stop a few years ago; my own inability to handle my own life and fears became overwhelmed trying to load it with the struggles of others; in explanation-there were too much of me in others that I found that I had to let it go-or else!

I am still weak. I still battle the fear, and find myself in company with isolation. The worse of it is-the accurate visions of the pasts that disturb my life in the first place!

Last week on Fathers Day as I have done each year since 1970 (when possible) I return to the B’nai Israel Cemetery that gave me refuge on my first day.  Then I give thanks for the way God worked to lead me then-and guide me now! I confess-it will be a good day on the last day!

What I want to say is not so easy with out covering much of what is already told in the contents of this blog….a journal that began when the Veterans Administration (VA) and my experience with Military Sexual Trauma (MST) became entwined, sort of a circumstance of the VA expressing sympathy and offering hope and beating the shit out of me to be sure neither would be mistaken for true. It is all to deep to explain in just a few moments with a few words….but here is the easiest….1970 is my year of infamy, if only to me in private. I kept so many things quiet and hidden in my soul-then.

It is still the same-just is-the callous has gotten harder! The PTSD has kept right on going as a relentless foe. I celebrate alone four words that s written on my VA disability decision where the judge wrote “exonerated from any wrongdoing”….alone because the person I had most hoped to see them (my father) had died before they came. The liberation from blame belongs only to me-but yet-the guilt and shame still wake with me each morning as since 1970; I am trying to say “it is never over”!

It was a beautiful day walking through the cemetery. The city was just outside the walls but somehow it seemed quiet; the cemetery is slightly larger than it was in 1970 and even though it still has a quaint sense, peaceful and very private.

Birds are like signs to me; my photographs taken from my visit were just random. my eyes can’t focus the camera any more-so my pictures are a thing of chance; I was thrilled to learn a fledgling had left its nest-and landed on this tombstone when it did! Another sign from a bird…this time a baby bird just beginning life free from the nest….soon to mount up with wings to fly it through life; just like the wings God gave me.

Peace