Chasing Love and Revelations: A Reflection Part II

Everyone has problems in life.  And everyone has problems in love.  I'm not so sure those things are separate anymore.  Life should be love and love should be life.  Or more accurately, Love is the action that should drive life forward.  It should transcend thought and feeling.  Love is about being, and doing.  All too often we forget that nowadays.

Now intimacy, that is a beast that I've struggled with for 11 years. Growing up as I did in a Christian household, I had always been told to save myself until marriage.  I had no reason not to believe it with Great-grandparents who had been married almost 70 years, and Grandparents who have been married almost 60.  I even had a great example of what love was NOT: my father leaving my mother to raise me on her own and the men who came into her life afterwards.

A situation that has repeated itself in my own life, but with the mother of my son forcing me away and keeping me from my son for reasons only known to her.  I am not my father. For as long as I can remember all I've wanted was a family.  To have a wife and children and be good to them both.  I had thought that my dealings with the military and the Drone Whistleblowing had killed that dream until I met her.  Now I'm struggling with this absurd situation that makes no sense to me and the answers are hiding in the shadows avoiding the light of truth.

Since the answers are not forthcoming, and speculation will only lead to anger and hurt, I've decided to address this issue with a continuance from PART I, because if she were any other person and this was any other situation that didn't involve my child, I would have walked away and never looked back after how she treated me,  manipulated and lied to me.  If she were any other person...

In the end, however, I can do nothing but love and forgive her.  In the end, we can only be who we are. No more. No less.

In my striving to find love, true love, I've made many mistakes.  If you were to meet me two years ago, before my testifying to the German Bundestag, I could be seen carrying around a mountain of guilt.  It was crushing the life out of me.  I had loved my country, but it had betrayed my trust.  I had loved my brothers and sisters in arms, but they had shown me to be cowards.  I had loved my people, but they are blind and refuse to see.  I threw my lot into the wind to see where it would carry me.

I've mentioned before the freedom of release once you believe that you're going to die.  I knew my days were numbered.  People have been punished for less.  I've been punished for less. Through it all I never succumbed to the crushing weight.  I had finished what I had believed would be impossible from the very beginning.  I had struggled with my own demons, and ghosts, and shame,  yet I still managed to cross the finish line.

The end is a strange place to be.  I had no idea what to do with myself.  Where death had seemed inevitable, with the mother of my child it became impossible. Where intimacy had hidden behind the closed doors of my heart brandishing a knife, the fear of life's consequences faded away, if only for a little bit.

I've only had a handful of other relationships, each ending mostly because I couldn't get past the intimacy roadblock.  I know where it started.  It started when two women decided to take my choice of who to share myself with away from me.  It continued when I had told a woman in my squadron I was dating what happened and she belittled me, then accused me of rape to our superiors when I refused to shotgun marry her, then when I confronted her about it she told me she used me to get over her ex.  It was four years before I had the courage to put myself out there again, the trauma was so bad my self esteem had been destroyed.

And in that case it was a woman I had been friends with that came on to me, which lifted the burden from my shoulders.  We had a fun time.  She opened me up to start exploring that part of me that had been secluded away like a cloistered monk.  As it turns out, holiness isn't all that it's cracked out to be. In the end, I'm pretty sure that we both knew it wouldn't be forever.  I couldn't be open with her emotionally.  So we had our fun and parted ways as friends and I started to explore myself again.  Here is where my true difficulties began.

I never really allowed myself to be open with the women that I dated, always keeping my heart superficially open. In a way that attracted them, and in a worse way it caused me to drive them away.  In the year between me getting out of Active Duty Service while I awaited my fateful SERE moment, I connected with a strange and lovely crowd, many of them part of the LGBTQ community.  Some of the women were crazy and manipulative, I was told that I was eye candy for gay men, and overall they got me comfortable talking and joking about unmentionable things that their military counterparts could only elegantly grunt and beat their dicks at.

But still, the issue of intimacy was a vital thing held close to my heart.  I knew I was only attracted to women, so the gay men who flirted with me unabashedly only served to boost my ego.  The women who took interest in me quickly fell away when I would hammer their intellect trying to find something more than just a pretty face.  I learned quickly that the deeper questions in life are not ones that most pursue in their leisurely time.  For me, because of my experiences, it was imperative.

Not to say that there is anything wrong with any other pursuit, it is just my needs were more than physical.  Still are.  And it's difficult to be attracted to somebody, even beautiful women, when they don't have much cultivated behind their pretty eyes.  For me, that cultivation is essential.  I only wanted somebody who pursues life with equal gusto.  Who wants to find more than what is shown on the surface.

Before my SERE accident, I met somebody who pretended to be just that.  She was brilliant, if not beautiful. And that was a downfall for me.  For a month all I wanted to do was talk with her, dig into her brain.  Two weeks before I left for SERE, she told me that if we were to pursue a relationship together, we were just friends then, then I had to tell her what I was holding back.  I had known she was perceptive, and the shock on my face had to have been obvious.  She told me that she could handle the darkness that I was hiding. She was the first person I ever told about my military experiences.

Once I started I couldn't stop.  Once the first words started rolling off my tongue I saw her shrink away as she saw the monster that I had hidden away.  I told her everything and by the end of it she had moved herself into the kitchen out of my sight while I continued to sit on the couch unable to stop the flow of words spewing forth from my mouth.  I hadn't realized that I had been crying the whole time.  I stared at my hands in silence once I had finished.  She didn't say anything for what seemed like an eternity.  Then she told me to leave.  And that was the last time I could pretend that the world was all right.

Two months later I have my accident. In my desperation to hold on to myself, to not give into the physical pain that held nothing compared to the internal agony that I had felt, I nearly killed myself.  In many ways I would have preferred that ending.  It would have been cleaner at least.  And I wouldn't admit to have seen what lay behind the curtain of OZ, knowing that we have all been played the fools that we are.

In my final moments, resting in that hospital bed, I could only stare as I felt my will to live slowly fade to a dying ember.  I had wanted to give up.  I could see no redemption for me.  No angels singing their heavenly songs and no demons wailing their horrid curses.  Just the infrared ghosts of those that I had kill and helped kill waiting for me as Legion.  My doctor was a beautiful Eastern European woman with dark hair and green eyes.  She looked like the Angel of Death herself and the two nurses that accompanied her looked like they had been sculpted out of stone.  I saw them as clear as day, and I silently cried out to the Universe, "if there was any way to redeem myself please give me the chance."  My soul fled into the night and the dead waited for me in my dreams. 

Chasing Love and Revelation: A Reflection Part I

Back in November the mother of my son gave me the advice that I should read a book by Roger Housden about a young man who is inspired by the Mystic Rumi to go searching for the thing that pulled upon his heart.  The unknown mystery that pulls at every man to discover his own creation.  That insistence which can not be ignored, lest they worse than die.

The man that we have come to know as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic.  And a stark reminder today that it isn't the religion that makes the extremist, but the misunderstanding of those belief systems.  For he was a man whose highest desire was Love.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, one of the names he was known by, became a companion of a man who was searching for one who could "endure his company."  I'm not going to speculate on the nature of their companionship, but it was one of heartfelt love, no matter its relation.  After Rumi's companion was murdered, instead of giving into the sorrow and pain, he used his grief to understand the nature of his heart.

Inspired by both the book, Chasing Love and Revelation: A Fable about finding the Heart's True Desire, and Rumi's poetry, I had decided to delve into the nature of my own grief and longing to understand what it was that my Heart truly desired.

I know that had I read this book back in November, the relationship that I had would have probably been salvaged.  But that's a very slim probably. I still hadn't understood the nature of my own grief.  I was still in the process of digging into my wounded heart, to see what the hell was going on with me.  And if I had read it then, I wouldn't have the conviction and understanding of my heart that I do now.  And maybe, MAYBE, the self-doubt that I had back then would have overwhelmed anything that I could have learned.

It wasn't until I was back in Missoula, after I had once again lost everything my heart desired to my own pain and self-loathing, that I surrendered to my grief.  I gained the gift of love from that grief.

I spent a lot of time on the living room floor crying out to the universe to end me.  My shame crashed against me like thunder.  I, still to this day, have no idea what really went on.  Every question I asked was met with a challenge or an accusation.  Every memory examined for the smallest of details, wondering what I missed, how I could have been so foolish, what I had done to deserve this.  Most days I could hardly move, I lost 9kg, and because I lost so much muscle and strength the ache in my bones amplified.  Never in my life have I been in so much pain.  I cried for mercy, I cursed the gods, should they exist, threatened them and begged them.  But no answer came.

Back in November, on Veteran's Day, I had a suicide attempt.  My Lady had been up in a tussle, and I was getting sick.  While I lay in bed she had written out in a blue notebook all the things that she hated about me then left it in the open for me to find.  When she left, I had decided to get up and do all the chores that needed to be done before she came home so we could rest.  When I came across the notebook I was devastated.

I couldn't understand why she believed these things about me.  It was like she believed I was somebody else.  Like she was poisoned by something.  Past memories, events?  I still don't know, nor would she tell me.  But none of that matters now.  Except that she never believed me to be me.  Thought I was weak.  Maybe I was, but not in the ways she thought.

I looked around the apartment and I cried.  She had been the only thing I was holding on to.  The only thing that I felt that I could trust was our love and then... I went into free fall.  I was so numb I could barely write a note.  I simply apologized and told her that I loved her.  Asked her to tell my mother that I was sorry and to take care of my dog.  I had failed her.  I couldn't overcome the circumstances that I had found myself in. In the end, THEY had won.

I had told my truth in front of the world.  And yet I couldn't keep my world together.  I was being attacked and stalked by people hiding behind internet pseudonyms.  I had no trust in governments or establishments.  I felt like I had no one I could reach out to, and I  kept everything hidden inside because she was dealing with too much as it was.  A man who was dying heart, mind, body, and soul cannot be loved by anybody.

I had foolishly placed my faith in nothing.  In a way, many of my attackers were right.  I was just a pawn. Nothing more.  Once I outlived my usefulness I would be discarded.  And I had wasted so much energy and strength to do what I believed was necessary and right, I never gave thought that if I needed help it wouldn't be there.

That's too much to handle for anyone, much less a pregnant woman struggling with herself. Regardless of how strong she is, everyone breaks.  If I learned anything from my time in the military it is that. Everyone breaks.  I had broken more times than I should have.

So i went east, to the statue park and overlooked the fjord.  My migraine was so bad that I could hardly see anything, the light sensitivity driving my eyes to the ground and deep into my hood.  My body ached to the point where I was walking with my cane and the effort strenuous enough to drench me in sweat on a cold winter day.  But I walked as far as I could.

I came to a small clearing away from any disturbances.  In my pocket I had a large bottle of Mead and in my other the dagger that I had been issued by the 3rd SOS during my time in service.  My plan had been to sharpen a stick, ram it into my gut, and slit my own throat, in a mockery of the Samurai's honorable suicide.  I saw no better ending for myself.  No amount of honor could be regained.  I was damned.

I drank the bottle of mead from the horn I brought with me.  I poured my heart and soul out to the universe, asking for the strength to finish the deed.  I didn't want to die with a gut wound, those are painful and the ending isn't quick.  I couldn't go with the stick method so I tried to stab myself in the heart.  Every time I tried, my heart whispered, "wait!"

I argued with it.  I asked, "how could she love a man like me? I told her things that I had never told anyone else and she saw me as a monster.  She was disgusted.  The last time I tried to be open with somebody they did the same thing and it caused me to crumble with the guilt of what I had done."

"So what?" It replied."  Don't you love her? Don't you love your unborn child?  The past is meant for us to overcome its terrible experiences.  Wounds and damage heal, lessons are learned.  Wisdom is only gained through pain.  Growth only comes with struggle."

I cursed my heart and I passed out.

When I had come to it was dark and I didn't know how many hours had passed.  On top of my migraine I was hungover and dehydrated.  I could hardly move.  I slowly made my way back west towards the city, stumbling over my clumsy feet.  All I could think of was her.  How I was going to make it up to her. How I would do better and gain strength again and overcome.  I placed all my self hate in a cup, my holy grail, then made my way back to the apartment.

I don't exactly know how long I stood outside wondering what I would say.  In the end all I could think of was hugging her and apologizing.  I walked in the door, and she attacked me.  I reacted out of instinct and hit her against the wall.  And my cup spilled.  I was damned.  I could think of nothing other than my failures.  My most recent failure to kill myself burned with rage inside of me.  And I had done the one thing that I had promised myself I would never do.  Harm the one that I love.

I'm not placing blame on her, on anyone but myself.  She was terrified.  My reaction gave her cause to be terrified.  I was terrified myself.  I broke, again.  And this time I wasn't sure if all the kings horses and all the kings men could ever put me back together again.

 Fast forwards through three of the most confusing months of my life.  Pause at the birth of my son, the most important event of my life.  I think Alan Watts said there are two important moments in your life: your birth and the moment you find out your reason why you were born.  He became it.  No, always was it.

Where I will always love his mother for giving me my reason to hold on, it wasn't until I held my son in my arms the first time that I understood what True Love really was.  The reason that I exist in this world is for him.  I have made mistakes in my life that people seem to constantly want to punish me for, but for my son I can overcome all things.  That I can teach him the lessons I learned, pass on the wisdom that I have accumulated... I've come to the conclusion recently that there is no greater purpose for me.  There is no greater love that I could give than that to my son.  And I think that is why I still love his mother after all that she has done to me.  Why I can thank her for the pain, and the grief.  For destroying my inflated sense of self and reminding me of where my true heart lay.

I would give anything, have given everything, for truth and reconciliation.  I would endure all pains for my son.  I have found True Love in my heart, and it was with me all along.  For discovering that, no greater gift have I been given.  And my heart sings with Joy in the midst of all my pain.

I love you my son.  Forever and Always.

The Smutty Buccaneer

The moon had risen in the sky
As we came into port
I had put on me Sunday best
To go hunt'n for some sport

The Capt'n led us down the plank
His confidence profound
He gave us all our share o' gold
The booty we had found

Our pockets full o' treasured things
We headed down the street
In threes and fours we roamed about
No trouble we would meet

We came upon the Blooming Rose
All dressed in our attire
To drink, n' sing, n' wench away
The plunder we'd acquired

She looked up and she met me eyes
I charmed her with me smile
The serving wench had come to me
Her beauty broke me guile

The sweat had glistened in her raven hair
As she serve me sweet rum.
I was hypnotized by her dance
The rhythm of her bum.

Those sage green eyes, they took me heart
Their radiance did speak
Of all the things that I could have
If treasure I won't seek

Her heaving chest, her snowy breast
I felt me loins go hard,
I knew 'though I gave her me wile
She'd never play me card.

She knew me for the lout I was
and took it with a grin
She always seen me kind in there
Me face, it reeked with sin

I had toiled to no avail
to get her to me bed
Her gentle laugh, it spoke to me
"If you try it you'll be dead."

We dueled the night with sharpened wit
And as we left I knew
My evening plans had slipped away.
She'd given me my doux.

Me mates had drug me to the ship
Mind up in a daze
I could not get her out o' me head
She cast me heart ablaze.

Me dreams are filled with swaying hips
And lips so red and sweet
She'd be a happy lass, I know
If I could nip a teat.

Alas, a lonely wench she'll be
And I a lonely man,
For on the morrow I set sail
To far off Troppican'.

Rules from the Sword of Truth (and their explanations)

Every book is a piece of wisdom passed from the storyteller to the people.  I should have remembered that.  I read this series twice through as a child, and when the last book was finished, I met the author himself.  I can say that I've fallen prey to these quite a bit, because I had forgotten, but they have stuck with me since the first time that I read them.  I should have remembered them.

But now I DO remember. And now I have to ask my self:  What would a Seeker of Truth do?

 

1. People will believe a lie because they want it to be true; or they're afraid it's true.

Given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe its true, or because they're afraid it might be true. Peoples' heads are full of knowledge, facts and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Wizard's First Rule: Chapter 36, page 397

2. The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

Kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding the First Rule. Even then, that is not always enough.

Stone of Tears: Chapter 63, page 634

3. Passion rules reason, For better or for worse.

Letting your emotions control your reason may cause trouble for yourself and those around you.

Blood of the Fold: Chapter 43, page 360

4. There is magic in sincere forgiveness; in the forgiveness you give, but more so in the forgiveness you receive.

Temple of the Winds: Chapter 41, page 318

5. Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.

Soul of the Fire: Chapter 28, page 205

6. The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is; and from this irreducible bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. It is the foundation from which life is embraced.

Thinking is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts nor are they a means to discover them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality; it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss that we refuse to see. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light. In rejecting reason, refusing to think, one embraces death.

Faith of the Fallen: Chapter 41, page 318

7. Life is the future, not the past.

The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.

Pillars of Creation: Chapter 60, page 549

8. Talga Vassternich, Translation: Deserve Victory.

Be justified in your convictions. Be completely committed. Earn what you want and need rather than waiting for others to give you what you desire.

Naked Empire: Chapter 61, page 626

9. A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.

To believe in a contradiction is to abdicate your belief in the existence of the world around you and the nature of the things in it, to instead embrace any random impulse that strikes your fancy - to imagine something is real simply because you wish it were. A thing is what it is, it is itself. There can be no contradictions.

Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.

In reality, contradictions cannot exist. To believe in them you must abandon the most important thing you possess: your rational mind. The wager for such a bargain is your life. In such an exchange, you always lose what you have at stake.

Chainfire: Chapter 48, page 489

10. Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.

Phantom: Chapter 12, page 127

11. The "Rule Unspoken", the "Rule Unwritten", "The rule from the beginning of time."

You are going to have to read the books to find out for yourself...

The Faith of the Fallen

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.

Now

I've traveled the world and seen many things but I've not experienced you and the mysteries you keep.

Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law.

What is thy Will?
To what end?
To what end?
Love is the law. Love under will.

I have stood before nations,
I have stood before gods,
I have stood before eternity,
And countless other frauds.

We are judged by fools
Who know not our heart
Our passions, our loves,
The drives of our art.

Let me show you a moment
A touch of humanity
Be present right now
Let go of insanity

Growing Up

oh my son, 
For that which Fate hath given,
An ocean and a continent between,
Mine heart hath found a newborn spark,
The mind's edge sharpened keen. 
Broken spirit, battered bones,
Rallying at last!
A boy's first glimpse at the world
Forever running past.
I'll miss your first steps,
Me trying to keep pace
You laying on the grass,
Delight in the sun's grace.
I'll never hear the first words you've spoken,
or listen to your logic form.
See the trials that you face unbroken,
and ease the pain when you are worn.
Every day I'll sit in wonder,
At the adventures that you'll see
My love for you is all I need,
Until you're here with me.