Delicious Decadence

I began writing about delicious decadence and all the joys of the last few days: the smooth creamy texture of the butter pecan ice cream; the sweet, crisp crunch of the maraschino cherries; and last night, the cool breeze across my naked skin, the soft texture of the sheep skin blanket creating a warm tomb of solidarity that was ensconced with vivid dreams of my deepest fears. While I spent several days in contented bliss, I read the words of a fellow "caretaker" and to my chagrin, all was lost in the dreams. Her words echoed my own pain and that of many others. My temporary reality was rocked again by the painful truth, the loneliness, the emptiness that we all feel. To be together, yet utterly alone. I allowed myself to slip into self-pity, feeling sorry for myself and the situation in which I find myself.
I am lonely. Too long has it been since I have felt the tender caress of my lover. To feel soft kisses, to hear I am beautiful. It has been too long since I have felt like a woman, since I have been made love to. I miss it. I miss the feeling of a tender touch, of a candlelit dance locked away in the security of our home, our private moments that are just for us. I miss him. My greatest fear  is that our time will be cut short or worse yet, he will be better physically and forget me, allowing the restless spirit to take over and run again.
Today, I felt his eyes on me and there was a genuine contentment in them. He was watching me as I worked in the treeline, sitting there, smiling. It is times like these that I lock onto and hold with a ferocity very few understand. These are the moments that keep me going when things get really bad.
So, I am contented once again, despite the pain of my fellow suffers. I refuse to be stuck in self pity. I understand pain, I understand grieving, I understand loneliness. I have lived a thousand lives alone and am ok by myself. I can separate myself from the situation and from him. I will survive, with or without him. But I will never stray, no matter how lonely it gets. Like the lone wolf, I mate for life and I will stand alone forever more.

How much can I stand?

How much more am I willing to stand? How many more lies, deceptions and hidden secrets am I willing to accept as part of a condition? When does it become too much?

Love, real love, endures. It stands the test of time, human faults and everything in between. It is not jealous, it is not possessive. It is patient, it is kind, it is strong and unyielding.

I am learning that lesson, every single day, every moment. I am changing, I am going through a metamorphosis. I have never felt like an adult, always felt like a child trapped inside an aging body. Though my soul was much older than my physical being, my heart was innocent and child like. Perhaps because of the things I endured as a child, I was locked in that state of mind. But I find myself blossoming and growing, truly finding out what the meaning of love and commitment really are.

I have transcended the levels he is at, been there done that so to speak. It is not time to be demanding, it is not time to be possessive or jealous. It is within me to withstand the non-sensical motions of past traumas to lead to a better future.

So, to answer my own question...How much more am I willing to or able to stand?

As much as it takes.

Roller Coaster Ride...

This roller coaster ride of emotions is driving me crazy. I am angry tonight, for no particular reason at all. Perhaps it is because my hands hurt from using the lotion I do to give him his massages to help him sleep. Perhaps it is from the comment of "Well, my everything hurts all the time so I don't have any sympathy for you". Well excuse the hell out of me while I torture myself to help you find even one iota of comfort!

I am not all about the martyrdom here. I care deeply for this man, I hate to see him in pain, I choose to do what I can to make it better even if it is only temporary. But damn it, enough is frickin enough! I understand you are in pain, I get it, I live with my own injuries every single day. I fight against it to get out of bed some days. And I push it aside to take care of you. There are days when I can't and by some miracle, you aren't a huge prick and make me feel better. I love you dearly for that, because I empathize with what you have to deal with.

I don't know if the pressure, the pain, the uncertainty of it all has got you so wrapped up that you can't see past your own circumstances? If that is the case, I can understand that. I get the PTSD, I get it baby, I really do. More than you know. All the books I read, all the research that I do, it isn't so I can understand what you went through. There is no way in the world I could even come close to fathoming what you have experienced. I am just trying to understand the disorder, beyond my own experience.

Thank you for opening up to me, for baring your tormented soul to show me bits and pieces of what you lived through. Thank you for trusting me enough to lean on me. When you curled up next to me and fell asleep with your head on my shoulder, I felt you here again. You weren't gone in your mind, you were here. You let me be strong for you while you grieved. Much more so than last year. Time is a healer of all wounds, it is a builder of bridges, of trust and of love. I am not your architect, I am your engineer. You show me the path that will help you achieve what you need and I will do what I can to make it so.

The roller coaster is part of the ride, and for now, my little rant is over.

Missing You...

Dear Love,

I missed you today, I missed you yesterday. I have missed you everyday since you went away. My heart breaks silently wishing for your return. I don't know where you went or why you stay so far away, I only pray for your return. It is so lonely here, so bland. Life lacks color and vibrancy without your presence. I hold you in my heart, the way I remember you, full of life, full of love for me, where I never doubted you or our future. That is all I have to hold onto. Everything is so uncertain, so confusing, so sad. I am tired, am literally exhausted with this torment that I call life. It is time for a change, a change only I can make. I have to let you go. I have to say goodbye to what I had hoped for, for what I imagined and got carried away with in my mind. I have to grab hold tightly to the reality and make the best of what I have been given. Perhaps, that is a better future anyway, something real, something genuine, something tangible..not a fairytale that can never come true.

So, my dear love, I bid you a final aideu, tip my hat and walk away. I fair thee well.

Always,
My Heart

Knowledge is Power

It is often said that knowledge is power, the more you know the better you are. I am a firm believer in this concept and have pursued it adamantly since I was a child. According to my mother, I would spend my summers frantically studying for the next grade afraid that I wouldn't know anything about the grade I was going into. I have always been an advocate for learning, for expanding my mind, my base, my character. And when the subject is foreign to me, I throw myself into research, to better equip myself against the greater unknown. This is my driving force, it is an innate part of my being. Ask anyone and they will tell you, most undoubtedly, how terribly annoying my search for knowledge and my tireless questions and analysis will drive most sane people to the brink.

Unfortunately, during my quests, I may lose site of my original objective and make the focus of my research into a project instead of a person. That is where I currently find myself. I fear that I am turning you into a project, something that needs to be solved or fixed. I have to remind myself that you are a person, no matter how broken or lost you may be, or I may be for that matter, we are not projects. I am not here to fix you. I am here to love you, to support you and stand by your side through it all.

I delve into knowledge to better understand your disorder, which has given me greater understanding of my own. It is allowing me to see past the hurt, the bitterness, the anger and to see you through it all once again.

Casualties of War...

I am a casualty of war. I am the victim of a horrific trauma. I am the entity that lives and breathes within you, suffocating you as I gain strength. Power is derived each time you let me win. I am greedy, I am selfish and I mean to conquer. Your soul is mine.

Have you ever felt this way? That you are fighting a never ending war against an unseen enemy? You don't have time to react, no time to conjure an adequate defense. This enemy is relentless and experienced. It knows when to attack, when you are at your weakest and it is confident of it's success on the battlefield. Against such insurmountable odds, it is hard not to become hopeless.

I don't know what to feel anymore. I don't know what is right. I don't know what is wrong. All I know is I am lost, confused, hurt...

They say follow your heart, it will never steer you wrong. But what do you do, when normal rules don't apply? This is not a "normal" situation. It is an extraordinary situation and I am not an extraordinary person.

I am becoming numb. I don't feel anymore, unless it is a momentary flash of anger, then nothing. I have closed my heart, once again. It is hard to follow something that is caged.

If you love something, set it free...

Revisting Pain

Recently, while reading my newest book, "The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationship", I opened yet another door into my own heart, into my own pain. It is at moments like these that I am able to re-evaluate where I am at, be it lost in the greiving cycle or falling into the abyss of anger, these moments bring me back to reality and give me a fresh perspective.

I am stuck in the anger part of the cycle, where I thought I had moved onto acceptance. Or perhaps I am bouncing between cycles. I am not raging, but I am most definitely sad. I want someone to take it all away, to make the pain stop. I reach out to friends, tears slipping out of my eyes, pleading for help and they look back at me, lost as I feel.

I made a promise to myself once, quite sometime ago, that I would never ever again put all of my faith and trust into any human being. Humans are fallable, they are imperfect creatures that make mistakes. When you put all of your faith, heart and love into one individual and you lose that individual, the devastation that occurs to your own soul is unbearable. Putting all of that energy into a higher power helps me to go on, helps me to remain "objective" and not waining in despair at what losses are being incurred before me.

During one of my weaker moments, I was speaking to a friend and passing on to her some of my manuscripts. My favorite tool to deal with my ptsd, my pain, is my writing. Getting it out of me is the most therapeutic exercise I can do for myself. I have quite the compilation as well. While updating my novel to send to her, I happened across entries that were very vivid, very painful to come across again.

I realized in that moment that everything I had been reading, that I perhaps had fought against that told me PTSD was an incurable disorder, was true. My own pain, my own disorder, that I have been living with my entire life, hit me between the eyes like a ton of bricks. It is true, it is an incurable disorder. We just learn to adapt and overcome, getting through one day at a time, the best that we can. We learn to control our symptoms, to avoid our triggers. In the instance that those efforts fail, we somehow manage to recognize the falling out while we are experiencing it, that allows us to come back from the brink a little sooner than we did the last time.

The only advantage I have over his suffering versus mine...I've been dealing with it longer. I recognize the signs in him, the triggers and I see it coming. Sometimes his outburts trigger mine. It is an interesting life we lead together, somehow holding each other together when we are falling apart, or literally tearing each other apart when we can not stop the rage from surfacing.

I have been reliving my pain today, while dealing with my own physical pain and injuries. My day has been so-so. But helping him has helped me look past my own issues.

We take one day at a time, that's all we can do.