RAZORS EDGE

Living on the razors edge, finger on the trigger, another day in hell…

How long can some one live with their finger on the trigger, what ever that trigger is their about to pull or pop? How long can pain and nothingness exist Before it has to be pulled for sanity sake for the release that pulling gives? Release from what? Release from the edge, the jiggered glass edge some where near existing and that nebulous torturous life we have been given over to. How, where, when does it begin, what starts it? How do we get there, when do we know were there? When did we give our permission to be in it. Why is it so painful? Where did our feelings go what happened to them, why can’t we feel anything except pain, emptiness and confusion?

Mine started as soon as I stopped drinking back in 1974. My sanctuary was gone no oblivion to run to. Life was to be lived every minute every second every twist and turn with no respite from the relentless mind crushing anxiety. Seventeen symptoms of anxiety are what I ended up with after seven years of no booze. Seven years of only AA, some therapy and no relief from the anxiety, I cracked. I was seriously considering suicide I sat on the edge of that black hole looking in with the anticipation of relief. I could no longer go on feeling the blackness of my soul. I actually sat down by the quarry near my house and thought about jumping in and swimming out to the middle as fast as I could swim, get tired and drown. I thought about my three young children and how they would grow up without a dad and what they would have to say about their dad, “another crazy Vietnam vet who committed suicide” It stopped me, NO, they would have a father no matter how screwed up I was. I also considered drinking in that maybe I could go to a rehab, spin-dry and get some help. Some one offered the idea that I could go to a rehab “sober” that I though a novel idea and pursued it.

I was offered a scholarship spot at a Vermont rehab and took it. I was diagnosis with untreated alcoholism and PTSD. I spent 30 days there. They told me later on that I was like a big ball of twine all jumbled up and they just kept pulling on frayed ends until I started to feel things which they promptly worked on. They also said they weren’t sure if I could come out of the world I was living in, if I could make it.

Part of my treatment was to attend a Vietnam veterans group. I found out all about resentments and that I had a huge one with the people of the USA and the Government over the Vietnam War. I found out about impacted grief and what that can do to a person, how much harm can come from not grieving the wounding and killing of so many men partictly the ones who died in my arms their blood running into the ground. I started crying and couldn’t stop for what seemed like days. So much sorrow I felt for the loss of those men, again I felt my GOD given soul and the pain it had been carrying. 58, 0000 souls in a bag on my back all those lives all those hopes and dreams gone. That was not my fault I didn’t kill them. I loved them all but I had to set that bag down one old grunt couldn’t carry that much pain.

All I wanted to be was a hero and fight for my country this great country with all its freedoms and its faults. Just to be a hero like my uncles were in WWII. I ended up a tortured soul full of shame, guilt, remorse and the pain of nothingness.

One day as I sat outside my head against a tree the thought came to me that, “I couldn’t make a tree” and I knew of no one that could. This thought changed my thinking about GOD, the planet earth and my whole concept of the entire universe and my place in it. Later on at this same rehab I sat out on the gazebo overlooking the lake. My Mom had given me a necklace with Saint Jude on it the saint of the hopeless. As I sat there fingering this medal thinking about how hopeless I felt the thought came to me that I wasn’t hopeless, I was just helpless. What an ephinany that was. I promptly threw the medal in the lake and I then knew I could be helped, and would be helped in this place of healing. I some how knew that I would never be hopeless again. I didn’t know then that there would be other times in my life that I would again feel helpless and I have but never have I again felt hopeless like I did then. I have a faith in GOD now that started back then and has grown deeper, some how protecting me from that state of hopelessness.

It some how happened over night, I felt different, the hopelessness was gone I woke up a new person. With a new mind, a new heart full of love able to look at the world around me differently because the world hadn’t changed. I changed.

Once resolved I stepped from there a changed person, kissing the flag, in love with my country once again, proud to be a Combat Vietnam Veteran and most of all, at peace with the world, me and my GOD.