Hey everyone. Sorry I've been so absent.

I've been trying to think of how to word what I've been going through. Ennui doesn't feel like enough anymore, and if that doesn't flawlessly describe the point of apathy I'm at, I don't know what could.

Everything feels like a haze, you know? Everything feels like pain and frustration. For weeks I have been in this absolute maelstrom of emotions, mostly just despair, and now I don't even know what I feel. I'm just alive. Breathing. Trying to count the breaths as I go. I can't sleep anymore--maybe five hours every other night. Between the restlessness and the nightmares, everything just feels...empty. Unreal. I live in a perpetual state of surrealistic emotion surrounded by the same four walls, trapped in the same house, with the same people, day in and day out, never knowing if the sun is going up or down regardless of how aware I always am of east and west.

One of my guilty pleasures is the band Hollywood Undead (you should listen to them; they're awful.) They have this song called "Bullet" from the album American Tragedy. Lemme tell you, it is the happiest little song about suicide. I've had a line from it going through my head a lot lately, to the point where I've started mumbling it to myself. "If you can't sleep, then you can't dream. If you can't dream, well, what's life mean?"

I get it. I don't dream anymore. Either I'm awake and trying to do something to occupy my time or I'm fighting off whatever fresh Hell my mind has decided to put me in. That's where I am: either awake or in a nightmare.

Before the pandemic, I had a meeting with my therapist. As usual, he asked how I slept, and although it's incredibly difficult to open up to people, even the professional, I told him honestly that I've been having nightmares a lot. He asked me to describe my latest one. One of the best worst parts of PTSD is vivid nightmares--and I mean vivid. I can tell you in depth what it smells like when an intestine is torn open or a person is gutted; I can tell you what it sounds like to hear the people I love howling in pain and blaming me for it as I did everything I can to save them only to fail every time; I can tell you what it feels like to have adrenaline coursing through your veins as something rips you to pieces, limb by limb.

This nightmare, I was in the dark. Everywhere I looked it was dark, but something was watching me. Something angry, sadistic. Something that wanted to hurt me. The first night, I was unarmed. I stood in the dark wearing what I'd worn the day prior, reached for my knife and found nothing. When it struck, I didn't see it, just felt where it clawed me open. I got to my feet and whipped around, tried to track it, tried to find it. I wanted to fight it because I don't fucking die without getting my own shots in.

I never saw the cunt. It just came from the darkness, lacerated me, then disappeared again. I screamed and swung my fists and I always hit nothing but empty air. It felt like hours before I finally lost enough blood to die and pull me back into the realm of the living.

The second night, my brain had the wherewithal to give me my knife: a simple pocketknife, one I never leave home without. The same fucking thing happened but instead I swung blindly with the knife. I still died. I still don't know what it was in the dark that wanted to kill me so horribly.

I explained this to my therapist, and he asked me what I would have done if I could have caught it. I then went into a graphic description of how to perform an autopsy, because that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to tear into it like it tore into me, but I'm not a monster. I wanted to do it my way. Calculated. Cold. Analytical. I wanted to know what the hell was in this thing and I wanted it to know that I was going to find out and feel every. single. inch. of flesh that I dragged my knife through.

He says that it all comes back to control for me. My fear of vulnerability is a fear of losing control over a situation and my constant fear of something happening to the people I love is my fear of powerlessness. It's never an "if," it's "when." I don't know whether to be happy the VA set me up with a good therapist, or if I want to be furious for this guy getting into my fucking head.

For the record, I can't express how much I appreciate my therapist. He's a great guy, even though I go hot and cold between wanting to tell him everything and wanting to keep my guard up.

All of this leads me here. To tonight. With me in the throes of sleep deprivation, my ex in my inbox trying to talk to me about Avatar and Star Wars, and I go back and forth trying to decided if I really did make the right decision in leaving. She always texts me at night, in the wee hours of the morning. The facetious part of me thinks she knows; she knows I'm not sleeping well, she knows about the nightmares, and she knows I've got my doubts about how the last two years have gone down.

She said something to me that I hear every day. That night that I told her I wanted a divorce, she said something that broke me inside. I know, without the shadow of a doubt, that if she hadn't said just eight words, I would have gotten back together with her within a few weeks. I would have taken time away, cooled off, tried to talk again. We could have continued being in love and found our way back to where we were before I got out of the military. We could have found our way back into being happy.

"Max would want you to stay with me."

Max was my best friend. He's dead. He did it himself. A bullet through his fuckin head and I didn't find out about it for three days. Her Hail Mary to get me to stay with her was to use him against me.

Rationally, I know I made the right choice. I know that if we'd tried to get back together she would have held my desire to leave over my head for the rest of my life. She would have used every opportunity to strike out at me for it. I know I'd be worlds unhappier if we did. She didn't let me talk about what was wrong before, when I needed to talk about how hard my transition from Staff Sergeant to civilian was--she just wanted to talk about her and how hard things were for her. Rationally, I never would have gotten involved with so many programs at school, I never would have gotten involved with some really great people, and I never would have gotten the chance to embrace my hobbies or start making audio erotica and find I'm pretty decent at it.

That doesn't stop my heart from knowing (knowing!) that she is my soulmate. That person, who was willing to fucking eviscerate me as a manipulation tactic, is my person. Mine. The one I'm meant to be with. I still love this motherfucker, and I miss her every fucking day. Even now as I get angrier and more upset thinking about it, I just wish I could pull her into my lap and sob into her shoulder like she let me before, just a few times. They weren't all bad, not everything was so terrible. I could live with everything else if I just sought out those little moments of tenderness, right? I miss being a husband so badly. I miss buying flowers and cooking dinner and watching TV and inside jokes and having a date to someone's stupid wedding that we could judge together and having a guaranteed roadtrip partner and someone to go to the store with and someone who understand when my joints stop working and I need to take a break. Fuck, I just miss having a fucking person who loved me almost as much as I loved them.

But I hear those words and everything goes to shit again.

This is where I'm out of control. This is the feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability my therapist says I'm so afraid of. This is me, staring into the dark with a knife in my hand and sweat on my brow and a deranged look in my face as I try to fight off what I know is coming and yet can't stop. This is sleeplessness groping me in the dead of night to elicit an emotion I don't want to feel anymore.

In summation--y'all, I am not alright, lmao. I want to be okay again, but fuck me if I know what my "okay" is. I want to be happy again but I haven't the slightest idea of where "happy" is. What does "happy" smell like now? What does it sound like? Fucked if I know, but I don't really have any other options except to push forward--and so I will.

I'll try to record soon; I owe all of you that much. I love you all, deeply and truly, and hope that life hasn't taken advantage of you as it has me.

Good night, and good luck.