WHAT WAS AND MIGHT HAVE BEEN

To simplify it in the most minimalist terms, dealing with PTSD symptoms is kinda like going on sentimental journeys that lead me onto some endless loops (or traffic circles) (or wandering pathways) where I either can’t figure out where to exit or something worse. In the extreme the memories are so vivid that I can recall even feelings and emotions as vivid as if I am dreaming what is happening or totally reliving it . . . or in a state of dissociation to be somewhere else in Spirit or on another wavelength or in a parallel universe or experiencing an alternate reality . . . somewhere that my Mind feels the need to go, apparently when in a state of shock . . . or when remembering or revisiting what happened to lead to the shock.

Everyone has probably experienced something like I am trying to describe, but if not, whatever I write to explain it just won’t make sense and may even sound sick or strange. Along a spectrum of human cognition from emotion to realization to consciousness there are the various states or stages of sleep; there is dreaming and there is daydreaming; there are levels of hypnotic awareness; there are what were once upon a time called “brown studies”; there are comas and “out of body experiences“ and near death experiences; psychosis and delusions . . . dementia; schizophrenia; paranoia; ecstasy; transcendental meditation and states of contemplation; visitations by messengers of God or spirits or ghosts, I guess.

I started this just to tell you that mid-October is fraught with Very intense memories but this night above all nights because it was the last night of my live under the shelter of my parents as a young lady, beloved daughter about to become some young man’s wife. . . forty-six years ago.

And didn’t those years pass in a flash . . . though actually sometimes not so much . . .

Years waiting for two sweet babies to become toddlers to head out to kindergarten to all of a sudden learning to ride bikes and roller skate and ice skate . . . living in one bedroom apartment then a two bedroom apartment; then a three bedroom house on the edge of the corn and soybean fields with a barren yard bounded by a chain link face—barren except for the swing set and sand box and vegetable garden—needing box elder shrubs in front of the house and at the corners; then in a snug little Cape Cod house in town with stately oaks and elms and snowball bushes in the large park of a backyard with tall bushes on its borders and a some grape vines; those were the university years.

Then temporary quarters and base houses and the house with the pool when we were first on active duty in the Air Force and that was from Texas to Mississippi to Florida.

Next and last to Alaska . . . and the dissolution. Then everything that flowed on from there, endings and beginnings and lots of turmoil . . . dreams and futures shattered. Of course the kids suffered the most as sadly they always do. But through it all life goes on even when sometimes you would rather it wouldn’t.

Now the reality of the hopes that God would use everything for good is realized. Amazingly and on so many levels and in the lives of oh-so-many more people.

And it does go on, though not always on Earth. Or I mean ultimately much longer not here, but there.

Yes, well. Wherever there is, bound or not bound by our ability to reminisce, remember, daydream, meditate, contemplate, dissociate, dream, imagine. Making the best of it; hoping that the worst of it wouldn’t materialize, and realizing that what is seen in the rear view mirror that you wouldn’t ever want to go back to also has a way of changing in your mind or heart and hopes and dreams.

Places or figments of our imaginations.

Too schmaltzy.

I know.

Was just trying to pay a tribute for what was very lovely and beautiful and lasting and fruitful that has been perpetuated through the lives that have come out of the Union and that will continue to bear fruit from the seeds of love and nurture, etc.

Elie Wiesel wrote that God loves stories, though I am not sure that he was able to complete the thought that He loves them because He loves so much the people who live out their loves, joys, sorrows, successes, failures, mistakes, angers, doubts, difficulties coping, being unable to keep from hustling, to soften hard hearts, to be gentle . . . to be able to be open to all the love.

So ultimately what was can be changed by our perceptions and reflections, but always what might have been never ever will be.

❤️❤️❤️