A corner

When an animal is cornered it fights tooth and nail to survive, it taps into it’s will to survive to perform outstanding feats… it’s a maddening and short lived burst of action that in the wild often means survival.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a creature of emotion; The passion bleed out of me quickly when I learned how to survive in the world. Nothing more then a machine programmed for survival and to seek pleasure. It’s not an uncommon existance in this era, not uncommon that we sever our emotional bonds and build walls to protect ourselves… that we turn our trusted lovers into targets of mistrust.

In regaining my passion and purpose in live, I’ve also regained my sense of urgency… and find myself painted into a corner. My choices were poor because they were not guided by my sense of purpose. They did not fit into my life plan… because I lost the sense of it, you could call it my sense of destiny. The destiny I averted was of a machine, an empty soulless pleasure seeker. It took a great deal of healing and self-realization to reach this point, and without help it would not have been possible.

I am however still painted into a corner, fighting with all my heart to find a way out of the maze I’ve staggered into. The magnitude of fixing an entire life that has fallen into disrepair is staggering. But nothing is more troubling to me then the finacial problems, especially going from a large surplus to nothing because of the unexpected, it inspires nothing less in a person then guilt and shame. Everything else is great, but this one massive clusterfuck threatens to bring down my entire life.

Just like an animal I will claw, bite and push my way to the other side, but I worry how much will I have left by the time I get there?

A story of some note

When my world fell apart months and months ago I fell into a deep depression. I had enough problems and they were compounded when I simply gave up trying to fix them. The only thing I could do was to put one foot in front of the other in the vain hope that I would eventually recover; but in my heart I didn’t believe I would. I merely went through the motions of life trying to hide my pain.

That changed when I moved in with my uncle. Looking at him was like watching what I used to be… what I should have been. He was very much in his happy place; just like I used to be, and it forced me to confront the sadness that was eating at me and the lethargy that kept me from doing anything productive. But more then that he was able to challenge me… something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I used to live to be challenged, for the thrill of personal combat, a battle of wills, Verbal sparring or breathless debate. But I wasn’t the same as I was, all it did was draw attention to the fact that I was hollow. Although my recovery from near death was impressive and improbable… it had left me with deep scars. I felt disconnected from everyone I loved… which lead to the collapse of my relationship. Those events haunted me despite all the healing I managed with my new surrogate family.

For the last few months my sleep has been haunted by those events. Like the shock and horror of those events etched them deep into my sub-conscious waiting for sleep to bring them back out. Then one restless night I dreamed my entire life; all the highpoints and low. It didn’t finish because I awoke in a cold sweat from the intensity of the dream. But somehow it jump started a long forgotten thought in my mind. I decided there and then that I would join the United States Air Force.

I felt different almost immediately, I felt like I had a purpose again… like my life could find it’s meaning again. I had succeeded before against countless trials because I loved, that love gave meaning to my life. That night awoke another long forgotten emotion: Duty. It was a different kind of motivation for me… it seemed somehow pure and untainted in comparison to the twisted mockery of love that still ate at me.

I pushed myself twice as hard. Starting with 5 mile runs every night with pushups and situps to follow. I studied twice as hard in school and managed to score high on the practice ASVAB. I was able to push my limits for the first time since I fell ill years ago. I felt… impossibly good about myself, flushed with well deserved pride and confidence.

Even with that strength, the hole in my soul still ate away at me. I felt alone and disconnected at times. Sorrowful that I could not share my world with people I loved, or people that I wanted to love. I can’t help that my greatest desire to hold someone… or to be held. To simply feel the warmth and comfort of a loved one near me, that particular weakness and one other remained.

Although my migraines are nearly gone, and my fatigue has lessened over time… I’m disqualified from military service because of my Asthma. Once I realized my goal was impossible I felt crushed but went through the motions a bit longer while I tried to find the alternative path I needed. The challenge and patriotic duty that called to me couldn’t be answered there… but I have other skills and there will be new opportunities.

I feel like I am at the vista of a new era of my life. Despite the setbacks I incurred I still feel confident in myself and my abilities… and I will need them for whatever challenge I do set my mind to.

Can’t Sleep

I couldn’t sleep tonight, which doesn’t differentiate tonight from most nights lately. Even discounting the caffeine mishap recently things have been pretty grim on that front.

The second I lay down for bed I am assailed by the emptiness and loneliness I repress in my sunlite hours. I find myself torn up over what is long past, wounds that will not heal from betrayal.

Nothing can fix this one weakness, this one chink in my armor. There are no techniques, no tricks and raw determination is insufficient to quell it. So I lay there thinking of all the things I could’ve said, should’ve said to keep the love of my life…

It confounds me though, because in most ways I have moved on… emotionally.  I’ve dated (unsuccessfully) and  started down a new solitary life path,  so why then does it feel wrong?  My intuition has never lied to me before, I just don’t understand what it means now… was the last year a terrible mistake? Was moving on a bad idea?

I get to spend another night staring into darkness thinking of what might have been, so tomorrow when I’m actually living my life I’ll be exhausted.

Defeated

Whenever I attempt to cut myself off caffeine my body reacts violently, first I crash followed by epic nausea, dizziness and neurological pain that borders on the obscene. All the progress I made in my personal crusade was undone in a few days of intense pain and discomfort.

The effects of the caffeine aren’t even what bothers me, it kills me when I’m dependant on something that isn’t essential. It bothers me that I have an addiction that I cannot control. I can turn off pain, shrug off physical and emotional injury… but I can’t even quit drinking soda for a few days without a nervous breakdown. It just… makes me feel pathetic after every attempt.

With the sheer amount of other stuff going on in my life I simply can’t afford to waste time and attention on something that is essentially ego. It leaves me feeling defeated and more then a little humbled. I’ve had success in cutting down but the second I have a stressful day or a role playing night it’s back to the bottle for me. (Especially when I’m the DM)

The caffine-less induced super-sleep I fell into did induce a very interesting dream which I will cover below.

Battery Pirates

During my afore mentioned caffeine-free coma I had a very unusual dream. It’s been awhile since my last dream related post so I thought I’d give this one it’s own post.

In this dream I lived on an asteroid with the descendants of a band of pirates. The pirates were famous for stealing a massive supply of super Batteries. The colony was inside a rather large bubble on the asteroid and looked very similar to a run down-desert community you’d find in the western united states. It was dusty and everything was rusty, dirty and broken… with the exception of a brand new car dealership near the edge of the bubble.

The descendants of the pirates were a diverse bunch, mostly large working class men with a few stereo-typical female truckers thrown in for good measure. One women had robot legs and arms from an accident and a male dressed like a cowboy was a Psigryant with tremendous psychic abilities, he was however quite mad and locked up inside the city hall/sheriffs office.

The early parts of the dream are vague; but not too far into the dream the descendants of the police who were escorting the batteries came to confiscate the stolen batteries. However instead of landing and taking the batteries the captain of the ship (influenced by the cowboy’s psychic powers) starts to bomb the bubble keeping the colony safe. A battle erupts on the ship between the captain and the cops immune to the cowboy’s psychic powers. Eventually the captain and his faction are forced to the surface in assault pods.

The cowboy escapes from prison during the colony evacuation and the remaining cops flee in their ship. The captains forces are driven insane and start to slaughter the colonists in a desperate attempt to reach the batteries. (stored in a secret underground bunker) The Psychic, the robot and myself find ourselves overwhelmed by police in power armor and on hover scooters.

Clearly outclassed I flee into the bunker while the robot women holds them off. The Psiygrant disappears in the mists of the battle and I find myself being chased in a massive underground storage bunker. I try hiding but the robots clearly have heat detection, so I try pushing the shelves of batteries on them to no avail.

I escape out a hatch to the surface to find the entire colony empty. (Except the car lot which still has salesmen milling around) I flee into town looking for a ship to escape with, but all the ships are gone. All thats left is a childrens hover scooter in front of a diner. I steal the scooter just as the power suits emerge from the bunker looking for me.

I was aware I was dreaming at this point, but the only things I can do easily with lucid dreaming are arm myself with a sword (Iiajitsu style) or wake up. Finding both of those options unlikeable I nudged the dream by thinking of the psygrant and bionic women showing back up to help. With a quick flick of my wrist I armed myself and engaged the police.

When the battle was over, we helped ourselves to some eggs and bacon at the diner.