Friday, October 22, 2010

Purgatory

I'm restless tonight. I don't want to sleep. Even the anger that is a cold comfort on nights like this is beyond me. I'm stuck in a bitter purgatory more hateful than hell itself. I can't move on with my life. I'm stuck with a permanent identity crisis. So many can'ts. I can't support myself. I can't go back to school. I can't work. I can't move on with my life. I can't make the VA move any faster. When the VA classified me as homeless it pretty much summed up my life. I can't even fight it. I don't have the strength anymore. I'm just tired and bitter. I can't grieve for my dead, because I'm too wrapped up with this fight that isn't even a fight. I've always been a survivor, but I've never had a life of my own. Now I'm at loose ends and it isn't settling well. I can't even dredge up the will to feel sorry for myself. I watch the sun go up and down, and check off another day of existing. When I went to war, I was put in impossible situations. Situations that people can't even imagine. I made impossible choices. I dealt with impossible cruelty and suffered impossible losses. Through all that I had the grim satisfaction of knowing that I fought hard, and well, and my work shined. I haven't had a single accomplishment of any note since. So all that impossibility led to a certain grudging self-respect. When I got home, before I got out of the army, I used it. It was the only weapon I had. The knowledge that God and the army and everyone else threw their worst at me, and I survived. I was furiously invincible and surrounded by people who I still considered my enemies, and if I couldn't kill them, well I could make them suffer and get away with it. That person seems so far away now. No wars left to fight, no handy enemies close by to punish. So what the fuck do I do now, besides continue to wait. People ply me with petty promises of this Utopian Someday when everything will be ok again. All this suffering is good, because it means I'm healing. I don't even feel human. What to do, what to do. Time seems to only leech away my strength. It is true that occasionally I have days where I feel better, which only sets the bad days in stark contrast and make them that much harder to bear. Today most definitely qualifies as a bad day, and nights are always worse than the days. The fact that all I have to look forward to in the morning is that awful feeling of terror that I have to do it all again, only makes it worse. For tonight, at least, I don't believe in the future. Nothing further than five minutes from now exists, or I think I would go completely bug fuck insane. Its a damn shame I don't drink. Self-destruction is such an easy way to pass the time. Its not like I have anything better to do either. Damn I hate being responsible.