Is this the first time out?
I am attached to a SEAL team and our assignment is to rescue hostages from a ship controlled by pirates.
The infiltration was successful. They keep coming from here and there like targets in a shooting gallery and all I can think is about how simple and scary it is all at once. My team is working our way through and the bad guys keep shooting at us. I see one of our guys dive down as the bullets are flying past him. I think he's okay, but I can't tell. I am feeling trapped. I can't escape and the only thing to do is keep on fighting. I can see my guy now. He's still down on the ground. He reaches up to me and sound but no words come out. Just then I swing around and shoot at the guy behind me, but he's on my team. The bullets heal like wolverine and I am stunned that my man isn't dead. I have no time to feel bad for the fact that I fragged a member of my own team, or to understand why he's still alive despite my shooting him. Why didn't I recognize him? I look down at our team mate and he has two wounds to the torso. One in the abdomen and one in the chest. The blood is redder than it should be. Is this real? It felt like one of those Frank Miller graphic novels. As the pararescue of the team it falls on me to save him, but I already know that there's nothing I can do. His wounds are fatal and it all seems so pointless. I take out my fluid, which is really just water. I pour it over his wounds and it makes him feel better somehow. He looks up at me and my miraculously still alive team mate, and the life fades away from his eyes. I was helpless to save him and now it will be on my conscience forever. Luckily this is when I woke up and realized that it was all a dream.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Panic?
1:30 AM.
I am looking in the mirror doing a routine many of us know well. Perhaps we all do it differently or not at all. I am rinsing, flossing, brushing... when suddenly it hits me.
First I freeze up. I look in the mirror and my eyes are reflecting back a look of terror. Then I realize I have stopped breathing. My chest is solidly immobile and I start to feel the room closing around me. What's happening to me? Why do I feel this way? Have I made a horrible mistake? Breathe. It's okay. Breathe. I am okay. Breathe. It's over. Breathe. Just breathe. As the oxygen starts flowing through my body again I can feel a sense of relief. The panic is over, and it only lasted a few seconds. Was it even that? It felt like time stood still, as if I had stopped the world around me for just a moment.
What brought this on? Why is it that when all I feel is a numbed and stowed version of the pain that I cause, suddenly it has the ability to lash out at me? Perhaps I am not so invulnerable after all. Through all of these past days, months, and years, I have felt little. Sure, on the surface I am happy, sometimes I even show a little frustration. When the pain that you trap inside comes flailing to the surface, gasping for air, begging to live, I only see one option. Breathe.
When you let these feelings take over, they control you. They don't just live in you, they live off of you like a parasite. It's healthy to feel things. Everyone needs to laugh, cry, even occasionally be angry, but it's so important to lead with a cool head and know that you're in control. As powerful as sorrow, anger, remorse, or 'love' may feel, I will not let them run my life.
Happiness is something I chose a long time ago. When you feel the deepest of depressions, sometimes the only way out is to fly. Just remember that if you fly too far, you may get lost, and that's okay. Sometimes we need to be lost. Sometimes we need to fly too far and lose our way, so that we can learn that the air flows through our wings differently here than it does there. Only then can we really understand life.
So just breathe. It will pass. Just breathe.
Breathe.
I am looking in the mirror doing a routine many of us know well. Perhaps we all do it differently or not at all. I am rinsing, flossing, brushing... when suddenly it hits me.
First I freeze up. I look in the mirror and my eyes are reflecting back a look of terror. Then I realize I have stopped breathing. My chest is solidly immobile and I start to feel the room closing around me. What's happening to me? Why do I feel this way? Have I made a horrible mistake? Breathe. It's okay. Breathe. I am okay. Breathe. It's over. Breathe. Just breathe. As the oxygen starts flowing through my body again I can feel a sense of relief. The panic is over, and it only lasted a few seconds. Was it even that? It felt like time stood still, as if I had stopped the world around me for just a moment.
What brought this on? Why is it that when all I feel is a numbed and stowed version of the pain that I cause, suddenly it has the ability to lash out at me? Perhaps I am not so invulnerable after all. Through all of these past days, months, and years, I have felt little. Sure, on the surface I am happy, sometimes I even show a little frustration. When the pain that you trap inside comes flailing to the surface, gasping for air, begging to live, I only see one option. Breathe.
When you let these feelings take over, they control you. They don't just live in you, they live off of you like a parasite. It's healthy to feel things. Everyone needs to laugh, cry, even occasionally be angry, but it's so important to lead with a cool head and know that you're in control. As powerful as sorrow, anger, remorse, or 'love' may feel, I will not let them run my life.
Happiness is something I chose a long time ago. When you feel the deepest of depressions, sometimes the only way out is to fly. Just remember that if you fly too far, you may get lost, and that's okay. Sometimes we need to be lost. Sometimes we need to fly too far and lose our way, so that we can learn that the air flows through our wings differently here than it does there. Only then can we really understand life.
So just breathe. It will pass. Just breathe.
Breathe.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Feeling
It punctuates the air like an exclamation point in the growing darkness of night. The cold is sharp and fast. It flows over my body as a river over the bedrock. Still the stinging produces nothing. My eyes are welling and tears begin to flow. This isn't emotion I am feeling. I do not shiver and I respect the cold like a local in a village I am passing through. I choose not to give in, even though my eyes have already shown a response. They produce more fluid, and it continues to run down my cheeks, like so much windshield wiper fluid on the freeway. I know that it's a natural response, to protect my eyes from drying up. But it's the closest thing I have felt to crying, and it feels good.
Here I go
Well keys,
It's been a while since we've done this dance together. I use you so much on a daily basis, but our meetings are short. The most I seem to have caressed you in the past few months was a fleetingly short email or snappy reply on some news wire.
The keyboards of the past have been many things to me. They have been a resting place for my hands when all I could do is stare into the abyss that is a computer screen and the vast sea it contains. They have been my solace when I was so upset or angry that I had to pour out my emotions and thoughts through them.
I have practiced the fine art of killing using keys like these. I took pleasure in the way my fingers could manipulate the always returning buttons labeled w, a, s, and d. In a finely choreographed partnership with the mouse, thousands of foolish have fallen at my hands.
I have written lines of code, dull and dreary. Fueled only by the desire to create something. It was a need that could only be fulfilled by the tireless effort of typing every < and every /. Only when the end result was a page that I knew I had created from scratch, was I able to take pride in what I had done.
All of that is gone now. I am back here again, thinking about what time may have been wasted on such frivolous endeavors, seeking only to fill the time with something more than the sounds of the clock ticking on the wall or the crickets chirping outside. It could all be drowned out by a soft, random clicking sound if only I had something to say.
Once again I come back to these perfectly shaped friends. Tickling each of them until I am content with the end result. Perhaps this time around, the affair will have meaning. Perhaps, this time around, I will find true love that lasts in these strokes of thought.
It's been a while since we've done this dance together. I use you so much on a daily basis, but our meetings are short. The most I seem to have caressed you in the past few months was a fleetingly short email or snappy reply on some news wire.
The keyboards of the past have been many things to me. They have been a resting place for my hands when all I could do is stare into the abyss that is a computer screen and the vast sea it contains. They have been my solace when I was so upset or angry that I had to pour out my emotions and thoughts through them.
I have practiced the fine art of killing using keys like these. I took pleasure in the way my fingers could manipulate the always returning buttons labeled w, a, s, and d. In a finely choreographed partnership with the mouse, thousands of foolish have fallen at my hands.
I have written lines of code, dull and dreary. Fueled only by the desire to create something. It was a need that could only be fulfilled by the tireless effort of typing every < and every /. Only when the end result was a page that I knew I had created from scratch, was I able to take pride in what I had done.
All of that is gone now. I am back here again, thinking about what time may have been wasted on such frivolous endeavors, seeking only to fill the time with something more than the sounds of the clock ticking on the wall or the crickets chirping outside. It could all be drowned out by a soft, random clicking sound if only I had something to say.
Once again I come back to these perfectly shaped friends. Tickling each of them until I am content with the end result. Perhaps this time around, the affair will have meaning. Perhaps, this time around, I will find true love that lasts in these strokes of thought.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
