Guardian training

Sometimes as a writer the noise in my head is loud and rambunctious, like having a class of first graders hopped up on sugar running amok. To get me to focus on one story idea takes a bit of distilling and jotting down of the more persistent ideas until the one story I need to tell jells within me and I can finally hear it.

I have been through a stress filled week recently, like no other. I am struggling with physical and mental stuff within. My whole life a whirling chaotic vortex with disorienting roller-coaster ups and downs with the safeties disengaged.

Where do people find the strength to keep moving forward? What is that carrot that each of us dangles before us to keep up motivated and sometimes alive? What happens when the string breaks and the carrot falls?

I am spent and emotionally and physically. Completely fatigued and exhausted. My pain levels off the freaking chart.

*************************** TRIGGER WARNING ********************************
discussion of suicide - self injury-and all that other fun stuff that rolls around in my head
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Its hard to run with the heavy pain chains that limit the mobility of my back. To try to stay ahead of what is chasing me but my own body is failing. The runners legs of my youth have been replaces with rickety old 1/2 broken stilts. I attempt to flee anyway.

Each stride sending a hammer blow of pain to my sacro-illiac joints. The ensuing numbness bringing a fear to my heart.

I can't out run this...

The darkness catches me and hooks my foot, sending me sprawling face first into the rocky ground.

I lay with eye clenched tightly.

Like some hunter posing with its bagged kill, I feel the darkness kneel on my soul. Its empty weight pressing down on me.

"Fine" I growl and raise my head enough to get some momentum and slam it back down onto the rocks.

The internal pain transfers to my now bleeding forehead.

I'm buried alive by this depression....

buried alive by pain I can't cure or get away from....

Life is kicking the shit out me and my ability to cope with it is gone.

Gone.

Nothing new here. Same old game, same players, same of broken Rubik's cube in my mind that I can't twist back into place.

No curing the PTSD. No reasoning with it either. My brain hard wired in barbed and damaged neuro-pathways. My brain hard wired differently then most. I honestly think that abused children minds work differently then normal kids.

When you grow up dealing with abuse the only way to survive is to somehow...somehow...just decide. This is what normal is....

 This is what normal is...

That even though everything else is telling me love = this. I am being told it's something else. I am being held in a prison camp and tortured and there is no army coming to liberate me. I must survive or die.

My first suicide attempt I was 3 years old.

Failing at dying, I was left to try to survive and make sense of the sunny bright happy worlds around me when I felt like a dark cloud was all around me.

That I was alone ...and even worse, invisible. How did everyone live so effortlessly? While I struggled so.

Did the abuse create these cracks in my soul that allowed the depression to settle in with out a fight?

So many questions.

no answers.

Just recently the shifting emotional currents in my head swirled downwards to the depths that create enough pressure that suicide rushes towards me like a life preserver with the promise that if I grab it and hold on I will be delivered from the depths.

I hate that head space. Its not necessarily that I want to die...I just want the pain to stop.

As a young child I used my writing skills to cope. Some of my stories I spun in my head, and acted them out. If the world made no sense then I would apply order to it within my head.

"...She was left here by the elders. Alone and out of sync. She was seven, always seven. She didn't understand that she wasn't on a path, she was the path. She didn't understand her pain was not punishment but her training. For guardians are not born of stone...they must be turned to stone.

Filled with life and hope and love, guardians are born unfocused and not committed to their roles. They allow their soft hides to distract them and keep them from becoming who they are born to be.

The rocks hurled at her by her fellow humans ripped and tore her hide. She tried desperately not to become bitter and closed off. She wanted...needed, to belong. Eventually the stonings took there toll and a hard crust developed on the outside. Now rather then shredding her soul, the stones just chipped the shell.

Until the day a heavy boulder crushed the shell and knocked her unconscious.

She awoke bloody and alone, always alone.

If I lay here and die, no one will miss me. She thought and nestled back into the ground. 

But they did see her and the painful process continued, even though she was already down and refusing to get up.

The stones piled up and buried her.

and for the first time, she felt safe. 

Buried under a mountain of stone.

'This is home.' She thought and set up house keeping, arranging the rocks into thick walls.

as the years past they grew tall.

Yet the pain continued.

Crying endlessly she found herself in need of human interaction. The loneliness clawing at her heart.

She poked her head out into the sunlight.

the warm sun light nourishing her pale skin.

Safe now? finally?

She climbed out and looked around. Maybe they had all forgotten about her. Maybe she was invisible. maybe her pain didn't matter anymore and her prison term was over. 'Maybe I will fit in now.' she thought.

But just in case danger was close she took off running, her hair trailing behind her as she headed away from the pain. Through the forest she hopscotched shadow to shadow, finding peace in this eden of silent green and brown. She felt safe as long as she was running, "You won't be able to catch me to hurt me.' she thought.

Life sent swift punishment. It took her youth, then it it took her legs. Crippling her. Panicked and fearful she re-evaulated her life. 'If I can't run, the pain will catch me.'

The insight and realization was slow and painful.

'I am not like the others on this planet.'

'I am not meant to fit in.'

'I am something different."

"What am I?" she shouted to the universe.

"You are a guardian." replied the trees.

"NO!!" she snarled angry and agitated. "I do not want to be a guardian! I WILL NOT be a protector to those who hurt me! I WILL NOT walk this path you have set out for me!" She whirled and took off running.

She doesn't get far.

Life again presses the issue and more of her mobility was eroded away as the journey to become stone furthered with in her.

Each time she ran, the faster the rising tide of stone engulfed her.

The pain chains finally stopped her all together.

She tumbled into the cool shadows of the trees and laid with eyes clenched.

"Why can't I choose to be something else?" she whispered to no one. "why is this my destiny?"

The leaves in the canopy overhead rustled as the trees conversed with each other.

"Why does my life have to be so hard? Why can't I have a happy fulfilling life?"

The leaves rained down on her like little tears."Because" they  whispered "You are a seed. You are a guardian in training."

She unclenched her eyes and allowed the forest to dilate them. She stared with saucer eyes upwards to the sky.

At last she spoke. "Well so far I have learned that guardians are made of stone and have bitter angry hearts."

The trees leaned away allowing the sun to lay a warm blanket over her. YES. The warmth pressed into her heart. Yes.

She again closed her eyes. "Then I have learned all I need to learn. I am fully trained. I am done. DONE, you hear me?"

A curt wind blew the sunny warm blanket from her and closed the trees. She felt the darkness's shadow pressing coldly down upon her. Guardians, do not speak, guardians do not fight. Guardians guard that is all they do. It hissed.

Her training continued.

She tried to smile and pretend, but nothing changed within. She was being slowly taught something she didn't want as the years slipped by. She found no rest or peace within her pain fulled body. Sleep only allowed in another teacher.

Every time she argued that she didn't want to BE a guardian, life whacked her in the knees and left her laying bleeding on the ground.

you are what you are, the scars seemed to say.

She found an escape one day, a place where the pain was held at bay, a place where the darkness didn't shine.

An import store.

And there among the incense and strange textiles and shiny talismans, she found her soul could breath. A hide away. A bubble where the madness could not find her.

A store filled of adventure. A store filled of seeking. She ran her hand over the Tibetan prayer wheels. Envious of those with faith to hold onto and wear like armor.

(To be continued)

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I am feeling a little better, and the stress at work is slowly resolving (I hope). Working with nurse practioner on my pain levels, so hopefully there will be relief in sight. I was supposed to finish this story today, however my little one is home sick. So a cliff hanger today.