Blog 63 Disappointment (Gary)
I have to look back to where I got that sense of feeling cheated. I spent a great deal of time alone as a kid, either looking out the window to see what others were doing or simply looking outside of myself. Then I spent a lot of time watching TV, which we did not get until I was twelve. I spent an enormous amount of time dreaming, and picking my world out of pictures. Then at puberty I created pictures in my mind and hedonistic ideals. I created my world from these images. My move from a small town in Oregon to a large city high school in California and the “greed” teaching of an elder friend didn’t help. I began to believe that everyone should have these ideals. Didn’t everyone? I don’t think they fantasized to the extent I did as I had little other stimulus. Now I am plagued by all these images, which I must put into their proper perspective, or go to my grave with a visual lust and feast that can never be achieved. I must consider the source. I placed these images in my mind out of scarity and probably anxiety for lack of of something else. I altered my situation with fantasy. So now, IF I can fill myself with what is real (Sue, Sarah, Heather, Chris, Eric, Cedar, friends), grasp the abundance in what I have, I will be okay. I have to wrestle with the fantasies. Maybe if I don’t wrestle I will be okay.
The fear of missing something comes up. I like excitement. It, too is a drug. Lament I find anxiety when I consider letting go. Maybe if I could find joy instead of excitement? I find myself sad and fearful of being still. I never could. I was moved around so many times as a kid. Then there was my fiancé’, and the hope that I could make a “still” life work. I could build a peaceful place. At the same time there was my deployment to Vietnam where my world became foreign and ripped apart by the men senior in rank to me and older than I who didn’t adapt well to living in fear. Yet we all shared a certain amount of excitement of living and surviving in a war zone. Physiologically, fear and excitement are two sides of the same coin. Alcohol and sex were the drugs of choice. My squadron commander said laughinly that we had the highest rate of veneral disease on base, WOW. I was twenty-one years old and I was going to become a good Catholic boy while I watched even the priest, who was teaching me the Catholic religion, drop out an essential part of the mass. All the while the letters from my girl were changing and I was hearing about her “friend”.
I came home to a whole new culture where my story was not wanted, my pain not recognized, my woman with someone else. I lost all hope. I recently asked my wife sincerely if the war was over, as in my heart I have never settled. I am not back. This is why I have to go back to Vietnam and the Wall. You see, ever since my mother and father separated when I was three, I had been looking for some kind of order I could rely on. I thought I found it until Vietnam. Now I don’t trust what I have. I gave up all hope. I recently visited a Vietnam veteran in the hospital and he said Vietnam left him not trusting anyone.
Wanting to include some history of the Vietnam War, I opened a book offered by another therapist who is a Vietnam vet and participates in one of my men’s groups. I thought I might find something revealing and perhaps soothing. I just flipped to a page, and found a Vietnam veteran writing about going to a veteran’s organization after the war and getting into fistfights because the prior generation wouldn’t legitmize our war because we “lost”. That was one more stab in the heart I had to put the book down.
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