PTSD is weird

I just had a PTSD moment, courtesy of a self-important, self-absorbed, intolerant and mediocre fool who fancies themselves a shining icon of superiority. She’s decided that I ama villain because I did not immediately drop everything I was doing to facilitate her request to do a charitable fund-raiser for her pet project. I am a horrible person, incompetent, prone to inaction and foot-dragging it seems. Where have I heard this before?

This is the script of idiots who believe they have servants at their beck and call, who see the rest of the world as existent solely to cater to their whims. This fine upstanding example of charitable benevolence has no problem treating the rest of us like crap if she doesn’t get her way. She is the clone of many a corporate drone who renders themselves judge and jury of their peers. I’ve got no time for that, and I’m not playing the game. I dealt with this in corporate America ad nauseum, and I am certainly not going to deal with it in a volunteer capacity. I’m done, although they don’t need to know that.

I’m not playing the game, but this is not a game. This is my life, and I’m coming into it a little late for my taste. But here I am, and I’m going to live on my terms. And my terms are this – you get nothing from me that I don’t choose to give. I owe you nothing.

That’s what I want you to know, that I owe you nothing. I do not enter into any of this with a balance due, but I deserve my just due when I pass GO. You are not deserving of my respect until you have earned it. I have nothing to prove to you. I’ve made it more than a half-century without your help, and I don’t need you to take it from here.

I’ve got a pocket full of spare change and some loose threads from the hole at the bottom, but worrying about what I might lose doesn’t slow me down. Believing myself to be a disappointment stops me in my tracks, and life passes by like a freight train on fire, all sturm und drung on its way to the end of the world. I make noise for the hell of it, and it never occurs to me that I am heard, much less understood. I am the owl hooting or its mate, and hearing only silence in the dark of the forest. I am the drummer who is off the beat, who has lost her own rhythm but still keeps someone else’s beat. How many beats make up the measure of integrity, of truth, of justice?

Are we gong anywhere, or is there where the rivers end? I cannot think my way out of this illusion, because it is a house of mirrors and I cant always be sure which image of me is the real thing. Is belief enough? Is faith enough? Is love enough? I am not sure, but perhaps wonder is enough, maybe awe is enough. Maybe stopping your heart from time to time in the incomprehensible imagining of the impossible is really the purpose of life.

I want you to know that even at the darkest hours of the night, whether that’s before the dawn or not, I’m not quitting but I’m not showing myself until I know who you are, and whether you can handle this ball of confusion, this light walker, this wounded healer with a broken heart. Everyone cannot see me because I sometimes hide from the light, and walk in the shadows. If you need to see me, you will. If you don’t need to see me, I will look monstrous and foreboding, and you will run. That is as it should be.

If you feel the need to run away, or push me away, you’re of the dark and I can’t stay there. Walk on, but retract your hooks; there is nothing for you here; the light is not for you. I would rather walk alone, and I no longer fear the solitary path.

First there was the word, they say. I have no words at times, but I have the one, clear note that calls to the heart of the Universe, before the words, before the thoughts. It is the essence of the soul, the last drop of the heart’s core, the base of being. The crystal clear statement of existence, where the answers to all the questions reside. It is a single drop from the well of all there is, and here I stand open-mouthed, waiting for the inspiration to descend but wondering if it has already come and maybe I’ve just forgotten.

It will be OK. That is the most profound of all my inspirational sentiments – it will be OK. I don’t know what OK looks like, or how I will recognize OK, but it will be OK. I have to believe that. I want you to know that I believe that, and if you don’t believe that believe that I believe it. That’s what I was told early on in my sobriety journey, and it got me through some tough days. I no longer question why. Perhaps that’s the key to getting me through the difficult days of this phase – do not question why. It will be OK. Don’t ask why, just believe.