This is the most difficult thing that I have ever written in my entire life. But nothing is easy and I'm not going to be doing nothing. I've done that too often in my life and it hasn't really worked out for me. The most difficult thing a man can do is admit he has acted foolishly and selfishly. Gaining wisdom doesn't exclude one from being foolish, I think it is a requirement of it.
So it's time for a change and it's time to be completely honest and upfront about everything. I'm going to call myself out for my own bullshit and I'm going to be pulling from everything that I have learned and know. Because this is who I am. Naked and proud. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Dear Melissa and Taim,
I know I've screwed up, but I don't believe anything that I have done is unforgivable. The last two years have been the most difficult in my entire life. And it is for good reason. The path that I had been walking was one of self-destruction and hate. It is seductive in the worst ways, especially when you feel powerless and hopeless.
I left the United States never expecting to be able to return. My testifying to the German Bundestag for the NSA investigations was supposed to be the end. I mean, I had nothing but myself to give them, so I gave them everything. I invested my entire self into that inquiry. And I got a full standing ovation from everyone. I tear up thinking about how much of a humbling experience that was. To give yourself and be immediately recognized for it made all those years of shit and fear of the unknown... I had overcome with nothing but myself. But I was willing to die for the truth. That was all that mattered. It was inevitable.
I think I could probably spend a lifetime trying to describe the relief and never be able to touch more than the surface.
Behind all of that my body has been slowly failing me. I've lost over 25kg in the last 3 years, and not without a terrific struggle to keep my strength. After my accident in SERE and the subsequent dismissal and lack of health care, I had taken matters into my own hands. I would deal with it. I would push through. And for a while I thought I was making headway. Pain meds and Marijuana kept me going. I was backflipping and wrestling and weightlifting and running harder than I had when I was training for SERE because the physical pain was more tolerable than the existential pain. I took a page from the Spartan playbook and when the pain threatened to overwhelm me with, "if you give in to me then they win." And my response was "If."
The human body is not immortal like the gods and legends of yore. I knew that my fire would burn out eventually and I was going to be as a falling star. If I hit the ground then Hell would tremble at my entrance because heaven was closed to me. Like the Samurai say, "those of us that have participated in the worst that life has to offer, the killing of another human being, have no reward in the afterlife. We have to create heaven and beauty while we live."
There is a sort of freedom when you are willing to die every day. The breath in my lungs felt fresh. The pain made me feel more alive. I could feel the earth move under my feet and every beat of my heart was like the ocean waves crashing against the shore. In combination with the way that I was raised and the training that I had acquired, it was euphoria, and it kept my demons at bay.
Or, more likely than not, I was able to dance with my demons because life became a play. I had accepted that I deserved to be tortured by them just like I had deserved to be haunted by what I had done. And I don't think anyone can be a real man in our modern world until they reach that point. I had become something other than human it seemed at times. The wrath of all the wrongs that had happened to me burned with righteous rage in my stomach, and the veil of lies had burst into flames for me to see what lay beyond.
However, I still had not integrated my shadowed self into my whole being. Those quiet nights where I was alone I wrestled with him as the "Other" instead of realizing that I was fighting against myself and perpetuating my own horrible torture that even the Devil would be envious of it. And because I had only been applying Spider-Man bandages to my PTSD, I was amplifying it beyond measure.
You've seen the effects of my nightmares. Something that I never wanted to subject you to. In those times of emotional ecstasy when I was with you, those pure raw moments of lust and new love, they were changing me. There was one time when you asked me who I was because you thought I was having a psychotic break, I answered as myself, to your great relief, but I could also see the doubt building within you. I was changing because of your love and it was time to face myself.
From what I've read of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, among others, is that those episodes are required for the spiritual transformation of the self. Who I had become was trying to align with who I was supposed to be. My core self was self correcting due to love. It was spiritual alchemy at its finest, strongest, and most grand.
Before when I went through the process of the Dark Night of the Soul, Albedo, and the rest, those had been refining processes. Survival, pruning. None too pleasant at all. But like the Mystic Rumi says, like clay that needs refined by heat, so does love need to be refined by pain. And like the great Rastafarian Mystic Bob Marley said, "everyone makes you suffer, you just have to find somebody worth suffering for."
But I'm also sure that your past sufferings has caused you immense pain. The biggest reason that I was attracted to you is not because you're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, anyone can have physical beauty, but because I could see the strength and intelligence that had shaped you to be who you were when we met. And I remember spending Thanksgiving together at Laura's place, with all those people gathered. I read some poetry, we danced, and I knew in my heart of hearts that I would love you forever.
I'm so sorry that I let my fear poison me. I blame the idiot that wrote about me and made those videos about me. I was terrified. In my terror I had to fight back. I became obsessed and it led my imagination to make wild scenarios of harm and danger. I couldn't relax. And that is my fault. Entirely me. I should have surrendered to love instead of giving into fear.
That is a foolish mistake that I will never make again. I hope you will forgive me.
And from there, a lot of speculation could be had of what went on. For some reason you refused to listen to the advice that people had given you to trust me. There was something off about what I was doing. I was hiding the obsession of my fear and when I could no longer stand it I was hiding in the make believe worlds of video games. A poor man's excuse, but I am a poor man without you.
I should have continued my transformation, the metamorphosis. I think you directly fed off of my fear, and my newly released heart resonated with yours. I don't think I could ever blame you. But it doesn't abdicate our responsibility to one another to trust and love. It doesn't absolve us of our own responses and our own thoughts reacting to our emotions. We should have trusted one another to get through this.
However, Norway is shit. I'm going to straight out and say it. The bureaucracy, the lack of suitable help for one recovering in my condition. I never wanted you to save me, I was trying to save myself, we just didn't have the resources or understanding of the situation to make it an easy thing. So we panicked.
When things started to fall apart, I was very confused. Everyone kept telling me that it was the baby blues, hormones. Even you told me that, and your friends told you that. Why we never sought help for it was a matter of pride on our behalves, I believe. So much going on it was difficult. I missed your breaking point. I wonder if it was before I got back from the US, waiting for the Veteran's Administration to get its shit together, hoping that I could use them to get help at a distance. What we didn't know at the time, is that the Montana VA system seems to be falling to pieces. And again, we were caught in the landslide of the world's mess.
If it wasn't for you I would have given up a long time ago. If it wasn't for our son, I wouldn't have the strength I have now to bear the heartache I have. I sometimes wonder if the pain I feel is entirely my own. To be in love is to feel the pain that your lover feels. My fears and doubts say that it is my imagination plaguing me. Do I dare to hope that the pain we feel is shared? That question's answer cannot be found right now.
I never wanted to hurt anyone. I think that is why I'm in so much pain. Because I feel like I keep hurting those people that I love through my own idiocy. I withdraw because it is easier to be alone and I can justify it to myself as slowly murdering the devil of my ego. Over 10 years ago, when I last dared to actually try and love somebody, she murdered my heart and shit in the void where it had once sat. She had done everything that she could to take my power and worth away from me. It was devastating. After that I promised myself I would never ever do it again.
Then I met you. It always comes back to that. It always comes back to that I was drawn to you like a lodestone. I was caught in your gravity and you pulled at my emotions like the moon pulls at the tides. And I think that is what true love does. I wasn't ready for it. But then again, who ever is?
The ego is a terrible thing. I'm not sure it can love anything other than itself, and it does so at the cost of everything else. We can see it in our modern society as the cancer of the soul. And it has made me do some really stupid shit.
And again, you saved me from doing the worst of the stupidest shit I could have possibly done. Where in my quest to seek healing from shamans and holy people, you saved me from blindly rushing into disaster. Where I was headed down the path of self destruction by allowing people to use me for their own political purposes, you had stood up for me and kept me from losing my head. And when I had sought to punish those who had hurt me, you had brought me back from the cliff that I had been running at full speed. In all these things, and more, I had given my power away, not to these people who had wanted to abuse me, but to my ego which was blinded by pain and shame.
I had done it for so long I forgot what it was like to be normal. I had forgotten who it was that I had wanted to be because I had believed that they had taken that from me. That I would never get it back. In your wisdom, I forgot that you didn't know everything. I know now that what I have experienced was outside of your keen. Your sharp intellect made connections to what you had already known, but I believe the unknown of what was going on with me terrified you. You saw the struggle that I was dealing with. I believe I was drained of energy because I was trying to keep the darker side of my soul away. My ego was telling me that I couldn't face it. And I believed it.
I've been trying to write this for a week now. And today, the 30th of June 2017, I was hit with another reality. One of my dearest cousins died. Don Charles, husband of Quinn, who lived in Vegas, if you remember me telling you about them. I had been there shortly after I left Norway, to face my anxieties and to leave the part of my psyche there that had been damage and manipulated and shaped by the powers that be. In my deepest regrets, I didn't go visit them, because I couldn't let them see me as I had become then. A broken man struggling to hold on.
The irony of that is when I had met Don and Quinn, the military was already trying to do that and succeeding pretty well. They had shown me greater love than I can remember in a long time. When I was struggling with what I was doing they had invited me into their home. When I was in IRAQ, they sent me care packages every other week. When I needed somebody to bitch to, Don listened and gave me sage advice, reminding me of my Great Grandfather, and Quinn always had something silly to say to ease the tension. The world not only lost a great man today, I lost somebody who loved me unconditionally.
See, when I met him, I was deep in the mire of religious antagonism. The shame and hurt that I had felt inside was being projected outwards towards the people we were fighting against. Not just the "Muslims" but the "homosexuals" and other "sinners". If it wasn't for the beauty of their love that I had seen towards one another, and the care they had shown me, I'm afraid of the monster that I would have become. Worse than the monster that I am now.
I got to go to a few parties and meet some of their friends. There was an old lesbian couple who kept calling me "the breeder," Quinn had warned me that they hated everyone and were nasty but they were around because they had been around for so long in their community. They ended up showing me love and kindness too. And now, as I sit here in a VA hospital, because my pain and grief had become so overwhelming that I stopped functioning, as I sit and tried to remember myself and all those things worth the cost of living, I'm remembering their kindness that they showed to a hurt little man struggling to find his place in the world.
I'm tired of the anger and the hurt. I'm done expending my emotions for people who don't matter and who have turned their backs on me. I know my worth, I know my heart, and the power that resides within.
And I know that without you I would have never rediscovered it.
I've talked and listened to some of the Veterans here speak about their significant others. Some of them rely on them completely to get by day-to-day. Some of them express the bitterness of warring constantly over children and pride, not wanting to give each other any room to love and explore. Wanting to place one another in cages and chains, thinking that control and anger will heal the wounds that they have inflicted upon one another. I recognize myself in each of these men.
If I could go back in time, I would have simply let you go on your vacation to Australia and I would have disappeared. Ended my life before I brought you any of the pain or misery that I had brought into your life. Because unlike these other Veterans, I would have done anything and everything in my power to never hurt you. I would sacrifice my very soul, my very essence, willingly, for that. There is too much pain and suffering in the world without us adding any more to it.
Some of them have told me that I give you too much power. That I need to stand up and take control for myself, move on, fuck bitches, dominate. That's not how I operate.
In my belief, men and women are not equal. Women create life. Men do not. A man's power doesn't lie in dominating a woman, but in submitting to her. A man's love comes not from control, but the release of it. To empower your beauty and grace should be my number one priority. Because my worth is my own, it is my gold, and you are my treasure. My faith comes not from gods or anything outside of myself. My faith comes from that which I give freely. And I give you freely of myself.
Because of that, I am free to suffer the cost of life. Our lives are our own. We need to rise up and live them. For ourselves. For our son. That is all that matters in this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment