just when i think that i can pretty much take anything thrown at me, in comes the grenade.
i keep wondering what i am supposed to learn from this. well, i guess the lesson is that you just can't prepare yourself for getting blown up. it will happen. period. and then you will have to put back the pieces and move on to a different place.
in my case, i just keep rebuilding a new foxhole. i feel sort of like an infantry man in a jungle war. i dig the hole carefully. i arm myself. i put myself on alert. i spend the dark night with all of my senses on overload, waiting. waiting. waiting.
and then you move the next day to another part of the jungle, and you rebuild the foxhole. you do the same thing...dig, fortify, select the weapons, go on alert. but are you as alert as yesterday? will you miss something because this has become routine?
answer: yes, you will. and i am not sure what you could do better. the energy that is expended trying to anticipate your adversary's next move is draining. and a lot of time it isn't necessary. they weren't coming in the night for you anyway. but you were prepared, just in case.
so time passes. you patrol, night after night. it gets dull and you get numb. you get to not really worrying about it. you think you are stronger. you think you are a survivor. you start to concentrate on other things because this worry really isn't that imminent.
and in it comes.
even if something in your gut told you to be on alert, even it you knew something was disturbing the universe, you just were facing the wrong way. period. you are so stunned when you see the grenade land there that you don't have time to react or protect. and at that point, maybe you just don't want to. at least if you are blown up, you aren't expending energy in the constant daily struggle to survive your own relentless jungle war. sometimes you just gotta get out of the field.
what to do with yourself. you are wounded. stunned is a better word. and then you go about the triage necessary to determine just how bad this wound is.
but sometimes it isn't about you getting blown up. were there others in the foxhole with you? were they injured as well? your attention has to turn to the others, the ones who were in there with you, the ones who had their own issues, but were near you, sort of having your back, but not completely. a lot of thoughts come to the fore, not the least of which is total confusion. which injury to address first? me? him? her? who goes first, whose issues are the most important at this point? who can be fixed, healed? and who is dead?
what did i learn this time when the grenade came in. actually, i learned that it didn't really hurt me that much. it was a good grenade in a way because it let me know there WAS a grenade, that it had already blown up, and a lot of others knew about it and had suffered their own injuries. it was sort of like the grenade blew up in the foxhole next to me and i slept through it. earplugs in the ears, a troubled sleep, a feeling that something wasn't right, but not sure exactly what had happened. then i see the shrapnel, and the wounds. at this point, what is done is done. i can't put the grenade back together. i can't undo the wounds. i can erase the incident. i just have to absorb the concussion i guess and move on.
what ends up happening here? instead of being more alert, i am less concerned. really. and in a way, it is a sort of relief. i am not worrying about that enemy anymore. it doesn't matter who wins, who loses. it doesn't matter. i was never going to be able to win this war because i was not willing to throw any grenades back. i threw one. it counted. and the pursuit of destruction has been relentless since then. it is sort of amazing that your own mother could be this determined to eradicate you as a person, as a piece of her life. it is mystifying not that she hs done what she has done, but how she could, as a mother, want to destroy her own child. the dermination to do that means she wins, especially when i don't fight back. i cannot win, and everyone else loses as well. there is collateral damage. does she not recognize that the innocent are injured in the pursuit of me? who would do that? i cannot fathom the single-minded determiness of a mother intent on the utter emotional destruction of her own child. i am not sure what will satisfy the desire to injury me totally, but at this point i think the end is near.
but not for me. you see, i have crawled out of that foxhole, and i am starting to dust myself off and, while i struggle to stand up, i am getting there. i am not on my feet yet. i am squatted down on the debris outside of this hole in my life. i am looking around, taking a breath. i am seeing who is injured, who needs my help...lots of thoughts: "what can i do?" "what do you need?" " thank you for helping me!"
just random thoughts, just random acts. just living. dust and pain and strength and new eyes.
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