Tag Archives: challenges

Dreaming on the Couch

I fell asleep on the couch with the windows open. The rain briefly woke me, but I rolled over, snuggled into the cushion, and propped my leg over the back of the couch. I tried to go back to the dream I was having about a girl that never met her grandmother. It was in black and white. The grandmother died during the war. The Greatest Generation was not able to save her and was forced to let her go. I don’t know the whole story, but my mind had been filling in the blanks as I slept. Before the dream was interrupted, the grandmother was visiting with the girl, telling her stories of when the girl’s dad was a small boy. Only the girl could see her grandmother. The dad played along with the girl’s imagination when she would tell him the stories from grandma but got chills when hearing some of the events of his childhood that the girl could not possible know. Then, the rain stormed in.

I was unable to return to that dream. Instead, I found myself in a mystery upon revisiting my slumber. I am unsure if I was the mystery or if I was trying to solve a mystery. The clues to this mystery were in a large, yellow house from a dream I used to have as a child. A house I’m not familiar with during consciousness but knew very well in recurring dreams from many years ago. There were hidden rooms, stained glass, and a fireplace on every floor. All the stained-glass windows were framed in yellow creating an ominous feel to the house as the sunlight shined in. I could never make it to the top floor no matter how many flights of stairs I climbed. The house apparently went up without end. I’ve never seen that house from the outside, I would have no idea how to get there, except to go to sleep.

My dreams are vivid, almost always in color, and feel very real. They aren’t even about war that much anymore, but the intensity and adrenaline feel the same, sometimes waking me in a fit of yelling or punching. Often times I can feel my heart pounding when I wake after one of those dreams. Sometimes the people I served with at war are in my dreams, just doing normal stuff, but the dreams are still intense to the point of waking up fearful or startled.

When I fall asleep, I see tiny flashes of light inside my eyelids. I think that’s a side effect of the medication. The medications work well for me overall, despite being jolted awake occasionally from seeing flashes when I’m half asleep. The original PTSD medication the psychiatrist put me on a few years ago made it all worse. But we found the right one, despite the slight side effects. Some nights I start dreaming during that time between consciousness and sleep, while I’m still aware of my surroundings. For some reason, that can cause me to wake up freaking out. That usually makes for a long, restless night. It becomes difficult sleep. I think my body or mind, or both, are trying to prevent me from sleep, for my own protection. Am I trying to protect me from myself? Interesting.

Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day trying to decipher a dream from the night before, wanting to figure out if it has some meaning to me. Most of them don’t. But some of the dreams become reality. I would tell you about them, but you wouldn’t believe me. Hell, if I wasn’t the one having the dream and then seeing it unfold in real life, I wouldn’t believe it either. But I’m not even surprised anymore when it happens. I like daydreaming. I can control those, most of the time. Unfortunately, none of those come true. Or fortunately, who knows?

I envy those who don’t remember their dreams or are not affected by them. But if I didn’t remember mine, I might miss something. Because they aren’t all bad. I have good dreams, too. I guess the occasional good dream is worth suffering through all the weird, bad, vivid, crazy dreams. Just like life. Sometimes there’s more crazy restlessness and worry than good, easy, peaceful times, so enjoy the good when it comes. Sleep well, my friends. See you in my dreams. Good day, God bless.

Dave

Check these out, too, for more on my writing on dreams:

https://storyofmylife.blog/2017/10/28/the-illusive-dreams/

https://storyofmylife.blog/2017/09/23/abstract/

 

My GPS Needs Therapy

My GPS needs therapy. Or some kind of addiction intervention, or something. I think it’s high, or maybe bi-polar. And it definitely needs help. As I’ve mentioned before, I drive 500+ miles once a month to Ft Jackson, South Carolina for my army reserve training. And then, 500+ miles back home. It’s a grueling drive some months, depending on what time I get on the road, traffic, weather. It takes at least 8 ½ hours one way. It’s taken as many as 10 hours.

When I started going to this reserve unit in 2015, I drove from where I live in the Florida Panhandle up through Atlanta, then took I-20 across to Columbia, where Ft Jackson is located. If you’ve ever driven through Atlanta, you know why I desired to find a different route. Now I take the Georgia backroads from Mariana, FL (after a short drive on I-10 from where I live) up to just west of Augusta, GA. I call it backroads, but it’s not as bad or stereotypical as it sounds. However, the first few times I didn’t go through Atlanta, it was almost all backroads. Some of which seemed barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic. And one road that might forever be imprinted in my mind is Old Balls Ferry Road. You can insert your own jokes here.

I don’t need my GPS for directions anymore, after almost three years of taking the same route, but I do use it for traffic updates and to see my travel time. Traffic updates have come in handy more than once. And we all know that when plugging in the destination, the initial GPS estimated time of arrival is really just a challenge to see if we can beat it. I usually do.

Here’s the deal with my GPS. I plug in my destination. It usually gives me two routes to choose from, with one of the routes having a variation somewhere in it. Basically, my options are the shortest time or the shortest distance. The shortest travel time would be to go through Atlanta, which I hate. The shortest distance (at least when I first started doing this) was literally through some of the weirdest backroads I’ve ever been on. It was the shortest distance, but without using any common sense. Of course, it’s just a GPS, it probably doesn’t have common sense, although I talk to it like it’s a real person. But eventually, I refined that route with one that is both shorter in distance and makes sense. But most importantly, keeps me out of Atlanta traffic.

My GPS also gets confused. I’ll glance at the screen while driving (the onscreen display is wonderful for seeing how the road ahead is laid out). There, on the screen, is a suggestion of a different route with a little arrow pointing to a display that reads “32 minutes slower.” Or “54 minutes slower.” I’ve seen it up to an hour and 10 minutes slower. Why? Why would I want to go that far out of my way? The other thing it does is gets stuck in rerouting mode because I go the way I want to, a way that makes more sense. That’s actually amusing to watch it tell me for 10 miles to make a U-turn until it finally gives in and changes to my new route. I imagine the GPS getting frustrated with me as I drive down the highway passing on its suggested turn. And there’s one small stretch of road on my way back home that my GPS won’t even recognize. And what’s funny is, that’s the way it takes me on the way up! Did it completely forget that road? And why only on the way back? I seriously think my GPS is stoned sometimes.

Either I have some cool life-lesson to offer with this story, or I’m just a sad, bored soul that enjoys pissing off his GPS and then writing about it. Well, today’s your lucky day. It’s both. It is probably a little sad the enjoyment I get from knowing that if my GPS could cuss at me, it would. Is there an app I can download for that? “I said turn left you M#@&$er!”  (In the voice of Samuel L. Jackson).

But seriously, find your route that you’re comfortable with in life. There are a million ways to get where you are going. Some of them will take less distance but more time, some might be quicker but a longer distance. Only you can decide which is more important, which route is better for you. For me, not dealing with the stress of driving through Atlanta was important to me on my monthly trip to South Carolina. As with driving, you can change your route in life anytime you want. Whatever your GPS is (family, friends, coworkers), it might not understand where you’re going, or tell you to turn around, but as long as you know your destination, it’s all good. Go, explore, and enjoy your journey. Take some new roads, get lost, and do a U-turn if you have to. Just make sure you know where you’re going.

Thanks for stopping by this week. Good day, God bless.

Dave

What Did We Learn?

“What did we learn?” I might be the only one I know that liked the movie Burn After Reading. And that was my favorite line in the movie, “What did we learn?” At the end of the movie, J.K. Simmons, who plays a CIA superior, asks that question. You might recognize him and that line from the Farmers Insurance commercials from a while back. In Burn After Reading, Brad Pitt was excellent as a goofy, idiotic fitness center employee. John Malkovich was superb, as usual. Tilda Swinton perfectly plays a woman you want to hate. And some guy named George Clooney was in it also. Really, why am I the only one that likes this movie? It’s on Netflix. Y’all should check it out.

But this isn’t a movie review, per se, but more of a reason to ask ourselves, “What did we learn?” Throughout the whole movie, there is a comedy of errors with the CIA, other branches of the government, and even the Russian Embassy at one point. Nothing seems to be going right for anyone involved in the plot. It’s a hilarious mess. And at the end of the movie, the CIA superior (J.K. Simmons) simply asks, “What did we learn?” No one in his office had a good answer. Even though he had no idea what had happened to cause all the craziness he had to deal with, he answered his own question by saying something along the lines of, “Let’s not do that again.”

As I mentioned last week, I recently changed jobs. On a shift before I left, I was talking to my buddy I worked with in the kitchen. The lack of hours was the only reason I left that job, one of the points of our discussion. We had both been frustrated with the cut in hours. I mentioned to him that I learned a lot during the year I worked there. That upset him, at least that’s how I took it with his response of, “I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t get anything from this.” I guess I see his point. As a cook, I got very few new lessons from that job to add to my skill sets of working in a kitchen. So many people, like my friend, fail to see the bigger picture. I did learn some things, albeit, not much related to cooking. But I did learn.

I’m 47 years old. There is not quite as much new stuff for me to learn as when I was in my 20’s, and there’s even less desire to learn some of it on purpose. I doubt I’ll learn Mandarin at this age. I’m probably not going to learn how to rebuild a car engine at this point in my life. And I’m certainly not going to learn how to perform brain surgery. There’s a ton of new things I’m not going to learn as a whole, and I accept that. However, every day I can find something to add to what I already know. I think that’s why I’m so engaging with people, because I might learn something. And I’m always open to new experiences and adventures, and the lessons that come with them.

I’ve learned a lot of important things in my life. I’ve learned there’s plenty more things that I don’t know than what I do know. I’ve learned that listening can make a world of difference for someone. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to sound smart is to say less. I’ve learned that others can make me happy or sad, or elicit other fleeting emotions, but that I am solely responsible for my own happiness in my life. And that starts with me being happy with myself. Which I’m not. At least not completely, but I am working on it. It’s hard sometimes with periodic bouts of depression, some of which last for weeks. But I’ve learned it doesn’t last forever. I’ve learned to keep moving forward.

While I might not learn something new like how to navigate a ship using the stars, I will continue to take each day as an opportunity to add to myself and learn something. What did we learn? It doesn’t have to be profound or life-changing, or even a good lesson for that matter. Because even in the craziness of life, no matter what the lesson is, you should be able to give an answer at the end of the day when asked, “What did we learn?” Even if the answer is, “Let’s not do that again.”

Thanks for stopping by this week. I hope you learned something. Good day, God bless.

Dave

Listen

Listen. That’s all. Not, “Listen to me” or “Listen to this.” Just listen. Sometimes the best way to help someone is to simply to listen. You don’t even need to have a solution to their problems, you just have to listen. It could make a world of difference. Aside from the mandatory, “check the box,” training we get in the army about suicide awareness and prevention, I have had plenty of in-depth training with respect to actually intervening during a serious suicidal ideation. I’m comfortable with that role. And I have done that more times than I want to remember. Not to mention, I have my own personal experience in failing at an attempt. I might not be able to relate to a person’s specific reason, but I certainly can relate to the feelings someone is going through when they are contemplating suicide. But most importantly, I listen.

Years ago, a friend of mine was going through a rough time. Not only that, he was also being moved to a different unit which contributed to his downward mental spiral. Knowing he would be leaving soon, I pulled him aside and thanked him for his impact in my army life. He was a role model to me in many ways. I was a better Soldier for having been under his leadership, and I wanted him to know that. Then, unexpectedly, he started talking. He opened up to me. He talked for about 45 minutes or so. I mostly just listened. Everything he told me is confidential because, as a chaplain assistant in the army, it stays confidential. That’s the rules. And even more so, in my mind, since he was coming to me as a friend. I didn’t think much more of it until later.

I emailed him after he left, to check on him, to see how things were going. That’s when I realized how important it was that I took the time to listen to him when I did. He made it very clear that my taking that time altered his life. Actually, saved it. In his email reply he said, “I appreciate you man because your words really gave me the chance to live another day. All jokes aside, you can really say that you saved a life man.” Funny thing is, I don’t remember talking very much. That’s because I mostly listened. Sometime later, in a Facebook message, after my failed suicide attempt, he gave me encouragement and also details about the day I stopped to talk (listen) to him. He stated, “My roommate was gone. I had all my ammo and my rifle. And I planned on doing it…I was headed to the room and you stopped me and said I love you brother… Man, I went back and loaded the weapon and cried to myself because I knew people loved me…You saved me and I am always here.” That day, the day I just wanted to let him know that I appreciated his leadership, the day that I listened to him, that unknowingly important day. I had no idea he was even considering suicide. No clue.

There are a couple of reasons this story came to mind this week. First, the son of a friend of mine took his own life recently. I’ve been messaging almost daily with that friend. And it’s been hard. I have no idea what to say. I understand the emotions my friend is going through, and it breaks my heart. But I can relate to the son that got to the point of taking his own life because I’ve been there. I tried. Without giving any details, I told another friend about messaging with the first friend, that I didn’t know what to say, that my training was in suicide prevention, and that I’m at somewhat of a loss in talking with a surviving family member after the fact. That’s when friend 2 told me I’m a good man, because I listen when people needed. That hardly makes me a good man, but I am always glad to listen when needed. That’s when I remembered my friend who says I saved his life, and I didn’t even know it at that time, all because I listened to him. That’s how this story came back to me this week. I listened. And, at the time, I had no idea how important that was. All I did was listen. That didn’t cost me anything. But it could have cost my friend his life had I not made time for him. Dear God, thank you.

Sometimes all you have to do is listen to make a difference in someone’s life. Thank you for listening to me this week. Good day, God Bless.

Dave

Milestones and Reflections

This past week, my blog surpassed 400 followers from all over the world. Granted, that’s not a huge number, but it’s still an amazing milestone to me, considering I write for my own pleasure and therapy. I didn’t set out to create any kind of following for this site, only a place for me to put some thoughts somewhere, like a way to journal. Originally, Story of My Life was a place for me to do some writing during my deployment to Afghanistan and share a few things with my family and friends. After returning from war, I took a two-year break from posting here. I then started using Story of My Life again in February 2016, as an outlet for self-therapy and recovery. Based on the number of followers, comments and likes on the posts, it seems like a lot of people can relate to what I’m putting out there.

As I celebrate a very modest milestone, I also want reflect on Story of My Life and share with some of you that might not know the progression this blog has taken the last couple of years and why I post (almost) every week. I say progression of this blog, but in reality, it’s my progression. These are my thoughts, feelings, experiences that I share here. Some entries are comical or silly. Some are dark and painful. Some are rants, usually complaining about dealing with the VA. I’ve posted poetry and short fiction stories, but mostly, real-life stories of me surviving my life.

While my first blog post to Story of My Life was 5 years ago, it’s only been in the last two years that I started a new journey of using weekly writing as therapy and sharing my story with the world. The beginning of this new journey started with me opening up about a failed suicide attempt, being taken to the psych ward at the hospital in hand cuffs by the police, and being diagnosed with PTSD and major depression. From there, I shared what I saw as obvious irony in the fact that I attempted suicide, being that I was the lead trainer in suicide prevention training in most of my army reserve units. Ironic, in a twisted way, I know.

I’ve shared stories from my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, stories about my kids, and I’ve written some entertaining fictional stories. I’ve touched a little on the end of my marriage and I’ve exposed some of the flaws with the VA that veterans have to deal with. I’ve written about the struggles I have from time to time with depression and suicidal thoughts. I’ve also written about some of the victories I’ve had the last two years, which include sharing a couple excerpts and progress from the novel I’m writing (yes, still working on that). I’ve written about the weather, traffic, youth sports, investing, the Mississippi River, and I’ve shared some about my civilian job in a few posts. I cover most everything that pops into my head in any given week. We can all see the pros and cons in that. But I do it anyway.

I write every week and post it here because it helps me. I am able to sort my thoughts and put them in some kind of order that makes sense to me. It’s a way to track my progress as well as my low points. Each post gives me a record of what I was doing or thinking and I can go back any time and see what was on my mind. I know, I can do the same thing without putting it on a blog, but I feel that making some of these stories public forces me to put more thought and effort into this project. And I know that my story helps other people, too, which is a bonus for my motivation to keep writing and sharing. Knowing there are people out there that can relate to my issues and mental illness is helpful to me as well. I appreciate all the likes and comments of support on my posts each week.

I do this for me. But I also do it for everyone else that hasn’t found their voice yet in speaking up comfortably about their own mental illness. I share it with the world so that someone that might be in the dark places of the mind, like I have been, know they aren’t alone. If you need help, reach out. If you know someone that needs help, help them find help. You don’t have to be a professional to help someone that is thinking about suicide. You only have to get them to someone that is (hospital, police, fire station, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1.800.273.8255). Helping is easier than you think.

For those of you that might be new to Story of My Life and want to get a bigger picture of my story, below are some links to previous posts that will highlight my journey the last two years.

https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/02/06/battlefield/  (the beginning of my new journey)

https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/07/16/depressed-ptsd/

https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/11/26/suicidal-anonymous/

https://storyofmylife.blog/2017/03/18/ptsd-moments/

https://storyofmylife.blog/2017/07/15/my-worst-war-memory/

Thank you all for your support, I hope that I am returning the favor in some small way here. And thank you for stopping by this week. Good day, God bless.

Dave