Another Grumble

Today I go to the Vet to Vet meeting that we have every Thursday at Bay Pines VA hospital. I go there to look for ways to cope with the issues I have but usually walk away more messed up and more useless than usual. It's kind of hard to go there knowing that's often the outcome.

I get to listen to other vets talk about how well they are doing financially, how their portfolios are doing, the new Harley they bought, how good the wife is treating them, retirement bennies from jobs they were able to keep, the 100% disability checks, etc., etc. This messes up my attitude and I'm not sure what the source of my anger is. Is it created by jealousy? Envy? Self Pity?

I know I'm jealous about the jobs they were able to keep. I keep blowing my jobs through attitude. Something happens at work, something goes "click" in my head and my mouth starts saying things that I know are wrong but cannot stop. The same thing happens in relationships with men and women. I can't keep a wife, a girl friend, a lover a close friend or a job. No long term benefits from any relationship have any part in my life. Each day stands on it's own terms with little personal relationship with the day that came before or the one that might come next.

Maybe that's it. I believe that right now is all I have. The next moment might not get here. The last moment was the one I just lived and I survived it, now it's time to move on. There is nothing permanent in my life. Nothing lasts and what is here can be gone in an instant. The only friend I can really count on is me and I'm not that good of a friend to me most times.

I know on an intellectual level that the last paragraph is not current reality. Viscerally I know that it is the truth. My head tells me to relax and take it easy, the war is gone and over. My gut tells me that there is a sniper or rocket or mortar or anti-aircraft battery gunning for me and those around me. No matter how much I tell myself that I'm safe, no matter how many times others tell me I'm safe, I don't feel it. My reflex is to maintain what I feel is a healthy scepticism. If it moves, I see it. If it moves close, I track it. If it moves close and fast I'm ready to kill it.

Therein lie the seeds to my steady, sequential failures. One after the other. It just doesn't stop. I try not to be angry or sad. I try to keep the hopelessness out of my daily routine but the older I get, the harder it gets to keep some kind of positive energy going.

I hate asking for help. I hate accepting help. It makes me feel vulnerable. It makes me feel that the only friend I have, me, has let me down, has fallen down on the job and I can't trust the dumb ass any longer. This is how I feel. Right or wrong doesn't factor into this. The reality is what my gut, my instincts, my perception tells me. I perceive myself to be a failure because I cannot support myself or provide the simple things that I need to stay alive.

So today I go the the meeting, spending gas money I don't have, just so I can listen to fat, self satisfied REMFs (Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers) bask in their success in gaming the system and hope that someone is paying attention and help me get to where I need to go so I can continue breathing for just one more day. Happy, happy. Joy, joy.


No one gets out of here alive, so live it like ya mean it.