6:14 a.m. - 2002-01-22
From a letter to my therapist 8/12/01
Well.. another day. I have to go see my therapist in New Orleans today. At last; a reason to leave the house. I don't particularly like going to see her. I either end up crying all ovet the place or not crying and feeling ike I have spent 75.00 for nothing. On the other hand, I do like to see her. She is a great source of support and strength. Mixed emotions.
I'll write more after the day is ended. I'm just here right now to park another letter.. one of many my therapist Lynn. I want to try to get everything together.. even if it's in no particular order.
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8/12/01; to Lynn
It's probably nothing. I just was having some recurring thoughts for awhile about life and death. When I was wounded in Vietnam, we were under difficult circumstances. My company was pinned along the banks of a muddy river by a stong force of North Vietnamese regulars who were dug in in a village just across some rice paddies from us. We were under fire both from the village in front of us and from the trees across the river behind us. We had also been recieving fire from an automatic weapon on our left flank, but being the closest to it, I had worked my way towards that position while Craig fired over my head and in a real John Wayne-esque stunt, I had gotten a grenade into the position and stopped the firing. This made me a target for someone behind us in the trees. I was shot immediately after I had stopped that automatic weapon.
I only tell you this to set the stage for my thoughts after I was shot. There was a lot of pain involved, of course, and the first few moments are a kind of a blur, but as I bled out through my leg, the chaos of battle began to recede and I was left with a kind of peace as I realized that this was the day of my death. I can well remember, laying on my back in the mud, looking at a clear blue sky above. I was not afraid. I only felt a deep sadness that I was only eighteen years old and was going to die before I had ever had a chance to live.
Well, obviously I didn't die that day. The medic got to me and gave me morphine and Worked on the bleeding. Miraculously, they were able to get medevac helicopters down in the paddies under fire and remove those if us who had been hurt. I was given another chance to live the life I thought I had missed.
Now, lately, I feel myself at the opposite end of that life. My thoughts keep returning to that and I realize that, for better or worse, I have lived that life. If I were to find myself back in that muddy rice paddy today, I would not have the sadness over missing out on my own life. I am ready to die. I guess I would only be sad because I messed up my life and wasted my chance to be content... but there's no help for that now. I screwed up by letting myself walk around feeling already dead for so long and not doing anything to try to re-capture life.
I guess all of this is why it feels so desperately important that I get out and do things and lose weight so I can begin to be myself and to enjoy being myself. It's really all I have left, and yet I find myself struggling with it and doing all the wrong things... as if I am sabotaging all my own efforts. I wonder if I have grown so accustomed to being dead that it has just gotten to be more comfortable than trying to overcome all these obstacles and struggling to become alive. If that's true, then I am just wasting my time here. I can only hope my life ends quickly, painlessly and soon. I am seriously tired of all this.
Not to worry Lynn... this is not a suicide note. In the last few days, these thoughts have not been returning so much; at least not until today when I sat down to put them into words. I still have just enough curiosity about how the story of me will turn out to keep me from actively ending it. I also think that the Paxil I am taking again can sometimes bring thoughts like these to the front.
On the bright side; My trip to the NO VA went better than last time. I only got lost once, only went down one one-way street,, and scraped the side of my van on the way out of there. The funny thing is, I am sure I went down that street on my first trip. I must have not ralized it was one-way at all last time. This time, at least I recognized where I was and was able to turn around.
I also went to the Jackson VA for an overnight sleep-study. I didn't get much sleep, but i was treated very well and told I would be getting a CPAP machine to help with the sleep apnea portion of my sleeping difficulties. That won't help me get to sleep any easier, and I don't think it will do much for those times when I hold my breath and then fight to breathe, but it will help a lot with those times when I just stop breathing. Part of the study involved fitting me with a CPAP and then watching me sleep. I learned something from that. It was really stressful for me. I was exhausted, but unable to go to sleep with all the wires and so forth. It was even worse once they put the CPAP on me. A CPAP is an air pump which forces air into yur lungs through a mask worn over the nose. I was to keep my mouth closed,, for whenever I opened it, a steady blast of air would escape through my mouth.
As I laid there, I began getting very panicky. I felt I couldn't breathe against the air pressure from the mask. I was afraid I would have to tear it off and call a halt to the study, yet I really wanted to finish it and be cooperative. Besides the mask, I was desperately uncomfortable and my legs were cramping continuosly. Evnentually, I couldn't stand it any longer and began to cry. My respiratory therapist had a camera on me the whole time,, and his gauges from my wiring must have been going crazy, but I suppose he must have gone to lunch, because no one came in to see what was the matter. Anyway, I cried for five or ten minutes and then something neat happened. It got easier to be there. Possibly the therapist changed the machine settings, I don't know. but I do know that after my tears found release, I got calmer and better able to cope. That's what I learned.
I hate to cry. It hurts and it really scares me. Even if I know it won't last forever, I FEEL it will. And I am out of control, which is the worst thing that can happen for me. That night in the sleep lab was the first time I can recall that I realized that even though it may be unpleasant, crying can actually have some value.
Well, I guess I've gone on long enough. There won't be anything to talk about on Tues. Don't even try to respond to this letter. I am not looking for a response. I am writing mostly for me, and to share my thoughts, I guess, with another human being.
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