Personal Journal

Well, Crying Wolf Again, eh?

An odd day, to be sure. My birthday is tomorrow (47). They are not particularly important days or birthdays, nor to me is the concept of 'birthday' an important one to me personally. Again, someplace where my 'army repurposing' removed from me. I turned 19 in Basic Training, 20 on the border of East Germany, and 21 in the sands of Saudi Arabia a couple months before Gulf War I started. And after the Army, I was detached well enough from all of the abuse I'd suffered, things like 'birthday' fell into the same category as 'family': something unimportant to my self-identity.

I'm thinking heavy today for a few reasons; the one striking me most recently is recognition for the first time that I had a couple of comments back in 2014. That kind of overwhelmed with guilt that I wasn't around to interact with people who could relate to me through here. I didn't do anything wrong, so I shouldn't feel guilty. At various times I had only one month subscriptions. Without a paid subscription I am unable to access this journal because it's in a section of Writing.com that's not accessible to free accounts.

At some point they changed interfaces and I lost familiarity and I didn't know how to look for comments, nor did I recognize that comments had been posted. My apologies. I used to crave readers and contact (and I probably still do, but I am trying to pursue a life where I crave nothing and am grateful for everything).

So that was an overwhelming emotion for me (guilt) when I saw I had comments from 1 and 4 years ago. I titled this "crying wolf" because if you are weird enough to have kept track of this journal over my periods of inactivity (and god forbid you're one of my former stalkers), I may or may not remain here long. If I have stalker problems this time, though, the laws are better developed. I will pursue police protection in addition to Writing.com's. (Yeah, this is all serious. People don't believe men can be stalked, or that it's fear-inspiring.) It scares me just to bring it up again, but if they're still here (which I doubt, or I wouldn't be here), I want them to know that nowadays, they cannot get away with what they got away with before, and I want them to be scared of me and what the law now protects against).

Alright, I'm way off track now. Emotionally raw at the moment.

My brother sent me a gift and card. My brother was my chief physical abuser and tied with my mother as emotional abuser. My PTSD traces directly to him as the primary cause. It is because I went into the army with PTSD that I refer to it as my 're-purposing'. Life made much more sense after the army than before.

I have not spoken to my brother since summer 2012 when my mother died. That experience seemed to go fine for him, and not so well for me, but I don't want to bring it up here now. I just let him fade away and for the three years until this summer, if I had much feeling beyond "Good Riddance Mother Fucker" to him, it wasn't as cheerful a thought.

One of the things that my therapy with Dr. D has accomplished recently is my work on forgiveness. My brother's 50th birthday was this summer, and for some reason, I felt like it would be a shame if he didn't have someone to tell him happy 50th birthday. So I sent him a card and I wished him a happy birthday, but I did not say "Love Dane."

My brother's card said "Love S" and my reaction to that is confused. It is only incidental to the subject, but his gift was another excellent and expensive book about world war 2 tanks.

When I sent the card to my brother, Dr. D had a phrase that I was using (and still do): what is your motivation (for action) and what is your expectation (from that action). My motivation was to tell my brother "Happy 50th Birthday from your only living family member and brother" I don't know if there was sentiment when I sent it, but I'm all sentimental now and I don't like it.

So I'm exploring what to do with that right now. I don't want to let it upset me, and when it starts to upset me, it seems to be threatening to bring up past sorrows and pains. To forgive is to live without attachment to the wrongs that have been done to you by others. Or so I conceive of it. And I feel strongly that I am in a place of forgiveness where he is concerned, but when the memories threaten to revisit me, man, I don't want that. That is not something I want to have to deal with anymore, and because that's my reaction to it, I probably will have to deal with it.

I wish he hadn't signed it "Love S" because I do not know what to do with that. I told Dr. D that I take him at his word on that. And I must try not to have delusional fantasies of reconciliation (there never was a period of equanimity nor respect prior to the army). Nor do I want to have imaginary confrontations with him about how PTSD has negatively affected my life, and how its root cause is him.

I just did not want to feel anything anymore where he is concerned.
And now that dam is under pressure.
To be continued, I suppose.

To those who read 4 and 1 years ago, thanks. It means a lot to me now, today, when I'm discovering the comments.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn