Children were dying then

And so were miners–over 250 of them up in a blast at Pontypridd in 1894, which pissed Keir off so fierce he stuffed his deerstalker on his head and proceeded to rage at the House of Commons. Five years later perfectly respectable ladies were practicing take-downs in their back gardens, collecting bags of stones to throw through shop windows, and smacking bobbies right in the face, when they weren’t spitting on them. But the ladies who were fighting and the miners who were fighting weren’t on the same side. And then there was the War, which was actually good for all of them.

Yes, it was the best thing that could have happened. Interesting story there . . .

9-11: One giant PTSD trigger

Today is the anniversary of the last day of the past. On September 12, 2001, things started changing in America. Seeds had been planted: seeds of ideas, seeds of change, and seeds of terror. The terror seeds put the great majority of us into a damaged state that to looks, feels, sounds and smells to me like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Like countless PTSD victims, many of us went into avoidance, quickly building up what seemed like walls of defenses to secure us from ever having to live through that again,  and brought entire countries right down with us.

The western medical community mostly agrees now that PTSD is a serious condition brought on by extreme trauma, and it is diagnosed by its symptoms:

• Intrusive memories, presenting as flasbacks and/or dreams;
• Hyperousal, presenting as being easily startled, hearing or seeing things that are not real, insomnia, irritability, anger, and/or self-destructive behavior;
• and avoidance, presenting as avoiding talking about the trauma, emotional numbness or coldness, memory and concentration problems, difficulty maintaining intimate relationships, and depression.

As detailed by the Washington Post recently, our nation built a security infrastructure at rapid speed (visit the entire Top Secret America site for yourself), out of the scraps of our fear, and now we have a web of lies, silos, back alleys, secret technology and laws that have completely stripped our privacy and our civil rights. It hangs over our heads, lurks around us in the shadows and hides in plain sight on our phones, computers and police cars. But like any defense put up by the traumatized mind, it is full of holes, too thin to hold from the very start, and frays.

Complex PTSD (what I like to call the Tackabery variant in my lighter moods) causes psychiatric injury (brain damage which appears in brain scans) and results from repeated exposure to traumatic stress. It’s not just the event–it’s the events. Again, and again, and again. A major marker of complex PTSD is captivity–the inability to escape from the traumatic stress. Abused and molested children and spouses in abusive domestic situations (ding ding ding!) are obvious examples.

It may seem a stretch to some that an entire nation could be experiencing complex PTSD, but I see the signs. Barriers built up via psychological, electronic and other means, which put the bad guys on one side and us, the poor innocent Americans, on the other? Classic avoidance behavior. Just like the vet who holes up in his house with a gun and shoots anything that moves. Which pretty much describes the U.S. of A. right now, if you ask me. And the end of that road? Well . . . for me it was suicide, which I survived. Most PTSD victims don’t survive suicide-by-cop, however.

But, you know, it’s just a theory, and hey, I’m on medication. What do I know?

Without leaving

Hope by Bern Altman of Great Falls, VA courtesy stockXchng

I know my own luck. I know how rare it is for a person to be able to do this. And I know more and more what I’m doing it for. I feel a kind of strength starting to happen that is wholly legitimate, that is not some trapping I wear until it falls off. It is though the thing has roots, and seeks the sun with its face turned toward it. And I know I never would have found it without leaving. — Elizabeth Berg, from The Pull of the Moon (Random House, 1996).

Since I’ve been working in marketing writing, I’ve had four jobs, and each job has had something of a dramatic ending, followed by a period of some trauma or painful event, followed by a surge of skills growth and personal development.

So I suppose it should come as no surprise to me that the ending of my fourth and latest job should have been dramatic (soap-opera worthy, complete with tears and walking out with the contents of my cubicle in the biggest empty box I could find), abrupt (my contract was terminated at 7:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, over the telephone–oh the havoc I could have unleashed if I had been in the mood, with all those passwords active and the big Box none the wiser! but I digress), and painful (securing my unemployment benefits took almost 9 weeks).

What is surprising is the flow of speculative project work that has been coming my way, all of it enormously promising to my career in a make-it-now-and-don’t-look-back kind of way. I am working on a killer book project with a college friend; a potential booming new business with an old colleague is in the works; and just today, my sister asks me if I want to, um, I dunno, start a business with some help from an angel investor who looks like my brother-in-law? While I was navigating the perils of an unsteady contract, fearing every day that I would lose my job and oh by the way, starting to hate that place, I was frantically searching for a life preserver in the form of a new job. But if my contract had not been terminated, I never would have seen all those safety rings waiting in the water.

Most of my life I pursued “something else” because I believed writing was never going to pay off.  Now I sometimes mourn all that time I wasted, not writing. I supposed middle age is a fine time to realize I could make the very most of the lots of time left, if I get off my ass now.

Oh, and poems are coming back to me now. Poetry!–something I thought I’d never feel a spark for again! I had not written a new poem in at least seven years, and in the last three days I’ve written three. They suck, but still . . .! Poetry. Wow.

Listening to music on my television

Interconnectivity is the feature creep of our age. Facebook’s resurgence and now blatant armed takeover of online content means that every piece of text you enter, tag, or share, which is the same thing, pins a data chip in the 360-degree portrait of your marketable self. You are now either a consumer searchable by gadget, or off the grid with only pre-industrial skills to keep you alive. The cyberpunk future is here.

Stop forgiving

Recently I was personally asked to support a Wolfpack basketball player who is going through rehab for a severe spinal cord injury. I decided not to send money to his rehab fund. Why talk publicly about that? Because the details matter.

When news of this player’s injury was announced, I was flamed on StateFans for saying that the details of what happened to him mattered when deciding whether to support his rehab fund. I understand the principle of forgiveness and I do wish the family well, but I can’t support someone who got into a car and drove while impaired. I was accused of being judgmental, throwing stones, etc. But I feel compelled to argue again that someone has to stand up and say no when asked to support something that goes against what I consider a fundamental ethical, moral issue. Getting in a car when you are too drunk to drive it is a choice that puts hundreds of people at risk of death–whole families and communities, and not all of them are basketball players with people cheering for their sincere athletic efforts. And I can’t reward that behavior even if it means not helping someone who is injured, because this behavior has to cease.

I sincerely regret and feel sorry for what happened to this man and I know his friends and family are doing everything they can to help him. He’s lucky. But we have to be vigilant in changing our world, and changing our standards in the name of forgiveness is not the way to do it. In North Carolina we continually put people who are charged with DWI back on the road, over and over again. On average, a first-time DWI offender has driven drunk 87 times before he was arrested.

Get the facts straight and stop talking about forgiveness. Start stopping drunk driving.

Maybe some of them was in tunnels . . .

The light at the end

Some folks has a lot of things around them that shines for other peoples. I think that maybe some of them was in tunnels. And in that tunnel, the only light they had, was inside of them. And then long after they escape that tunnel, they still be shining for everybody else.

I watched the movie Precious again this weekend, and I think it was more painful the first time. I felt so much pain watching that movie because of Clareece’s illiteracy. I think not being able to read may be the worst handicap a poor person can have in this world. If you can read, you can at least get the hell out of where you are by following the signs that say “exit.” It was so hard to imagine, a life so terribly hard that there was no escape in books. I understood her fantasy escapes, no matter how silly. There’s no difference between those dreams and flying dragons on faraway planets, three-foot tall, hairy thieves and ghosts in computers.

Yet I identified with her in some respects, especially with food. My grandmother punished me with food and then ridiculed me for doing what she bade me. “Eat it all,” and then, “you eat all the time.” And then there was her relationship with her father . . .

My father never had sex with me. But Precious made me understand how a grown man might want to touch a four-year-old. It connected that final link for me. I don’t think I heard it clicking into place, but I feel it now. I know what my father did. Knowing doesn’t make it better. And I think the catharsis Precious got to experience–being acknowledged by her mother, having someone admit her abuse–I am never going to get.

Nothing is easier. Only that I am past that journey at last. Now I know I can write the book. Watch out for the light.

Image: Clarke quay underpass, Singapore. Christine Ma

The Smell of Life

I have been reading William T. Vollman‘s The Royal Family on my Kindle. It is an addictive read, but a long, indulgent slog — I find myself wanting to stop reading but unable to, like the lost crack- and smack-addicted whores in the San Francisco Tenderloin hell Vollman has brought to life here. I’ve read 37% of the book (welcome to the new Kindle math) and Vollman’s writing is so visceral, you can  hear the characters speak in their cracked and weary voices, you can even smell and taste them, their piss and sweat and accumulated stink clogging up your nose and their pain swelling deep in your arteries, their need crackling through your nerves with electric sparks.

It reminds me that ultimately we’re all egotists, no matter how high above the gutter we climb. No matter how nice we smell and how soft our clothes and beds, we can’t escape the rushing, pounding feel of our own blood in our own veins, throbbing in the dark when we lie down at night. The wanting to be touched and held, to be heard, to be comforted, welcomed and understood. And as ugly as the world Vollman reflects is, as harsh, stinking and slimy as it gets, it’s so amazing to be alive in it. To feel that rushing blood. To hear your own thoughts in your head. To breathe the smell of life.