Dedicated with love to all who stand outside The Village”

Scarredheart – John Paul Ritchey 092022

An ancient River is draped across our land, a ribbon wrapping The Earth. Try as we might we will never rise high enough to take it all in, but we don’t have to go far to see that from the dark, churning depths that launch every dawn to the reflections of the stars cradled in the midnight skies, Everything is One and Everyone is Here.

Let’s call the Present Moment “Now,” Upriver, “Past,” and Downriver, “Future.” No surprise if this perspective is disorienting. It’s always a challenge to navigate while you’re still composing your map, especially when you’re neck-deep and desperately fighting to stay afloat, but in moments like that new perspectives are the tools one needs to survive.

For now, just watch. The travelers you see, will they be greeted with fair winds or will they have to brave impossible storms? In both cases many will just drift down the River, passively expectant of … something. Others will turn immediately, anxious for whatever adventures may come, fearless bundles of barely-contained energy racing forward to their destinies, oh so proud of the waves they leave in their wake, however brief those tiny ripples remain. The water hides an undertow, an invisible counterweight with a monstrous grip that can pull back in an instant. Debris and flotsam will rise up, their surprise impacts forcing response, perhaps teaching a lesson or two in the process. One can become so transfixed on a point Upriver it will never leave their gaze, or become so expectant of a perceived destination they will miss their Downriver transit entirely, which is at times a blessing. There are other, hidden, dangers, shared in lonely whispers and never-heard prayers, if spoken of at all. When encountered, these are never forgotten.


… you were The Universe before, you are The Universe now, and you will be The Universe again.

There it is, for what that’s worth. The entirety of my wisdom.

Well, that and the importance of Balance. There is a sense of Balance in our existence. Call it a midpoint between Self and everything else, though it doesn’t always seem that way. Well, at least to me it doesn’t, and from the look of things I am not alone in that opinion, especially when one is forced far away from their Self and left questioning everything around them. I have no idea if any of this relates to the Before or Again parts of the above equation. However I will humbly submit, and I am sure you will all agree, we should get far more relaxed floating there than we get in this Reality. The conspicuous absence of floating around here makes me wish we all still came with tails.

Just have to make do, I suppose.
Now, where were we?

Oh, yeah.

You are The Universe. Balance.

I’ve learned, usually the hard way, that Balance is difficult to find, challenging to understand, hard to hold onto, and very easily lost. This also happens to make it the central focus of every human’s journey, realized or not. Once Balance is achieved Reality is a little easier to see and perhaps a touch simpler to navigate. It’s no less frustrating to deal with. That part never changes, apparently, but it does give you something to laugh about now and again. So there’s that, I guess. Anyway, the whole jumbled mess has been a topic of philosophical discussions that have fascinated humanity for a long time.

A VERY long time.

Nope. Longer.
Much longer than that.

Much, much longer.

Long before our old friend Rene Descartes ever thought about thinking he was. Before Humans ever thought They were, probably. Farther back than anything we’d currently consider normal was around, that’s for sure. The occasional conversational fodder between our most-ancient ancestors as they learned to use fire, count, hang door-frames and plant seeds, much like good friends still share to challenge and entertain each other on warm summer nights? It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Face it, that’s what we did and what we still do, especially when we’re bored and around people we love and trust, and what topic sums up our inner quest for Balance better than a single word that seems familiar while always being overtly confusing, strange, and a tad bit squishy, the greatest adversary of every parent, “Why?”

I mean, there has to be a reason kids love the word, right? There’s power there. Old power. They feel it. We feel it, too.

Now then, does “Why” happen to leave you more than a bit overwhelmed? Take great comfort in knowing you are not alone in that opinion. We all feel that way from time to time. For me this occurs hourly. Or more, depending on how my day is going. I’m also starting to realize it hasn’t helped, at all, that for at least thirteen thousand years or so the whole of our existential mess has been studied, ignored, maligned, dissected, massaged, abused, obfuscated, set to music, and conflated into multiple fictions by just about anyone who has ever been, often to steal a coin, hurt an innocent, or tell a lie.

Usually all of the above.

That our most-sacred question has been twisted into the primal force that births the very delusions masking our shared consciousness is a species-wide embarrassment regardless of our evolution, allegiances, or rationales. Individual Balance has been contorted into anathema by religion, political belief, nation, tradition and culture. Our liberties have been stolen by the false promise of security through orthodoxy and its impossible, eternal, vacuous rewards. Simple observation, while naive, reveals nearly everything held as real to be nothing but random collections of shadows, the silhouettes of ancient, sociopathic group projects back-lit by rabid, virulent, organizational gangs of misfits and sycophants, holding lamps fueled by tallow rendered from the remains of the innocent.

All of Us, kept from our destiny, locked in chains and anchored to walls built upon rot, framed by falsehoods, propaganda, fears and duplicity, finished in cracked but shiny, well-kept surfaces on a dying planet, led by fools coveting an impossible vision of the future and desperate to avoid having to take responsibility for or even learn from their own mistakes. They limp and they lurch through time, fed on nothing but lies and half-truths, all to maintain the agonizingly useless traditions of an inbred aristocracy who are themselves a frail, pasty collection of foul, weak-chinned parasites, as addicted to intraspecies violence as they are to their self-anointed importance, insane traditions, and shiny trinkets.

Which is, of course, just a dry, snooty, barely educated, and overly dramatic way of saying that if you happen to find yourself a human, as I happened to have found myself recently conveniently enough, the search for Balance is almost always a lonely, confusing, and individual journey. One that’s often highly discouraged by any and all external conditions and groups one may happen to be surrounded by in any particular moment, much like beautiful flora is choked by foul nuisance weeds in a garden. Another thing that never changes, apparently. I bet our ancestors talked about that, too.

Probably while gardening.

This also means that if you happen to find yourself on a search for “Why,” one sure way you can navigate is by focusing upon your own Balance. Think of your Balance as the intersection of Self and everything else. Absent Individual Balance every interaction outside of one’s Self is a difficult pantomime at best and impossible at worst, and in either case it is a false act and literal self-torture, best avoided regardless of what the external world may say or want at any given moment. You are Balanced or you are not Balanced. This is not fancy nor is it complex so do not make it harder than it has to be. Set the external down, metaphorically or otherwise, and find your Individual Balance in real terms.

Your path to Balance is always there, but depending upon who, where, and when you happen to find yourself it can take a variety of routes and distances. It pays to remain cautious, open, and aware. Deep within Athenian caves, high in the Himalayas, surrounded by cherry blossoms or reclining at Walden Pond. Sweat lodges, rocks, pews, campfires, bar stools, psychedelic sessions, prison cells, creative processes, wild grass, music, elders, honest labor, petrichor, sexual bliss, sport, and on and on, each one as valid as the others in the process and cycle of self-realization and transcendence.

Find your Balance and you’ll begin to see that those chains? They were never there.

The quietest whispers and most hushed of tones are reserved for the Rapids.

Unexpected events that disrupt travel Downriver, the Rapids affect everyone differently. For the fortunate the Rapids release quickly, and for others they never let go. From that point forward nothing seems real yet never more real at the same time your thoughts get scattered, Louderfaster! Heavier. Your mind and body rebel against the situation making it hard to triage, let alone heal, your injuries, which begin to pile upon themselves as you pinwheel through existence, damage and destruction left in your wake, held between the grip of the undertow and drag of jagged rock, desperate and gasping to survive. Even kindness and assistance seems to hold you under. You are forever changed. Shattered. More than anything, you can’t draw your attention from Upriver, from what you were before all of it transpired.

Your path may also find you.

It is still a very intimate and personal experience, but unlike a willingly-undertaken quest it is completely unexpected, terrifying, and isolating. There is no “guide.” Instead of a gentle, spiritual understanding of chains and walls you are brutally thrown headlong through and past the reach of both and left questioning Reality. The effects are so damaging it is often impossible to heal and move past them without assistance, which, frustratingly, one can only provide to one’s Self. From a gentle nudge to a violent collision, a brief moment or a nightmare that lasts a lifetime. Sometimes it fades quicker than it takes to happen. Sometimes, not. It is often incredibly painful and overwhelming, sending one farther through themselves than they would think could even be possible, often to the point of becoming unrecognizable, even to themselves. We will never save those we lose, making any survivor desperate to save everyone they can from a similar demise. Society brushes off any responsibility regarding the fate of these victims, many who stand as living testament to the infinite failures of the orthodoxy. Witnesses to the above are also outsiders, many refusing to accept or attempting to fathom what is even happening, aghast that anyone would dare make them feel, blindly loyal and desperately grasping, white-knuckle tight, to the ephemeral world around them, abandoning the traumatized who watch helplessly as they wander back into the comforts of fog and shadow as soon as they can, convinced they did what they had to, regardless of how damaging it may be to the traumatized.

I found that the only thing worse than personally enduring this was the realization that others do as well, often with little or no support, so I decided to write about my own life with the hope that my story helps someone else. I have not found communicating my thoughts on personal trauma to be an easy task, but there is a huge disconnect between the traumatized and the world they happen to find around them, and that chasm can be bridged in both directions through the creative process. Let this project serve as a working example.

I have lived multiple realities, each one almost completely isolated from the world around me, each one surrounded by others counseling stoicism and silence at the worst possible moments. We each have a challenge, all of us, and in my case it is my health. If it was not for random chance I may have never realized the depth that I was out of Balance, which is exactly as scary as it sounds. I can see that, while far from a rare experience, it is also one seldom shared or communicated by victims, often because of the questions and challenges it presents to contemporary mythologies and traditions as much as it is withheld due to personal embarrassment. I gave up writing this many times, was discouraged to write it even more, and counsel the reader that this story is unsettling even to myself, and I was there when it all happened. I realize the story was needed much more than my personal comfort or privacy. I have tried to be as honest and open as I can because these events and recovering from them, however painful, are also what taught me to focus with Balance on the Future by accepting both my past and the Reality of The Present Moment.

Nothing special. Nothing fancy. Offered to my gentle reader free of charge as the most valuable thing I can give. I expect that it will continue to be difficult for me to find value in my trauma, but I believe I create value in the experience by sharing it with others. Is this the same as answering “Why?”

To me it is. As hard as it is to process my trauma, like many others I was also taught not to share the experience, which made healing an almost impossible task. I felt trapped. Frozen. My identity was fractured. As desperate as I was to find an answer, I only began to heal after I honestly shared my trauma. Absolutely no one deserves the burden of Silence, and our experiences cannot be for nothing. Yours or mine. I heal through my creative process, which has allowed me to focus and find my Balance.

Is this the only thing that works, in real terms? Of course not. It is the only thing that has worked for me, and I believe others can heal through it as well. Art is the only form of communication humans possess that can originate from an individual, outside and untouched by civilization, orthodoxy, or religion. Human to human. Art allows every story to be told, even the stories that are forced silent by the world around them. Even the stories that disturb the comfortable, because those are exactly the stories that comfort the disturbed. This alone makes artistic expression invaluable and cathartic, both for the artist and their much-beloved patron.

Having said all of that I may still have kept my story and situation to myself except for one sober fact: As time moves forward I find the most common, truthful, and shared experience we have between each other is trauma, and that fact is never to be feared or denied. Honestly communicating our trauma to each other through Art fosters the healing of our Self and others, while creating a community ready to heal those yet to come.

You’ll see it with your own eyes, just as I saw it with mine.

People survive the Rapids. A few of them seem to damn near thrive in the chaos. Others, they can become locked in trauma, impossible force to their own immovable object. Either way, when the River finally releases its leviathan-esque grip, leaving yet another of Its victims broken and shaking on the shore, they always whisper the same question while finding their footing and gasping for breath:

“Why?”

They all find the same things, or notice a conspicuous absence, upon arrival. Food. Shelter. Hope. Community. Responsibility. None of which answers “Why?” of course. When I first noticed that it was difficult for me to understand. Whether birthed in random chance or by purposeful, malicious intent, the external world is nothing more than a loosely stitched together camouflage which conceals a cesspool of lies, and once revealed it cannot be denied. Everything begins to seem distant and abstract. One moment you’re surrounded by masses of apparently much more certain people, all who follow what seem to be processes followed for lifetimes before, an instant later you’re wrapped in “Why?”

Completely alone with no idea which direction to go.

I can almost still remember when I believed the Delusion: Ignoring the obvious difference between Self and everything else, placing trust and faith in the external, navigating based more upon what others do more than anything I wanted, carrying personal guilt when ill-equipped institutions, after failing to provide a solution, would then cast me off as an unwanted reminder of the truth. Nothing a con artist hates more than someone that can clue their marks into their scam, I guess. I moved like that, out of Balance from moment to moment, transfixed on who I was before my trauma and in search of the briefest of respite, but nothing would provide relief.

Nothing could.

When trauma has thrown you on a journey of “Why?” nothing external can provide you with an effective answer. That is why there is nothing worth your blind faith with the exception of your own Self, Balanced in your own Reality. The journey truly begins when you turn your focus upon your Present Self, past trauma and all, and head Downriver into the Future.

That other stuff, the external stuff? It’ll keep. That’s what the Village is for.

“I can’t help you.”

Man, do your demons know exactly where to hit. Maybe that’s what mom meant when she told me I’d never be accepted by my family, an activity which has been going on so long it’s fallen between tradition and sport for most of them. This was not the first time I’d heard it, either. Her mother said the same thing decades before. I’ll leave you to imagine the look on my mother’s face when I shared that, or the grim fact that in the time since my grandma blessed me with this hard truth the family had done nothing but prove her correct.

Just between you and me, though? I really thought it would play out different, to be honest. That there would be some kind of happiness after my “last” surgery. Relief after decades of pain. But the lesson learned was that while healing takes as long as it takes it always takes too long for the healthy, and if you do not meet their expectations your efforts may still be for naught in their eyes.

Those closest to me had long moved on with their lives. That may have been what hurt the most. After being locked into a life of chronic illness, where I was treated and judged by my deficiencies and not my working through challenges, to not celebrate? To not be happy? To not even try to understand? You are alone when you are born, and alone when you die. Forced isolation during the time between is a criminal act, and yet it is a far too common one.

I had a few passing challenges after the Detroit surgery. 4 more heart attacks. A double bypass. Abandonment. Confusion. Guilt. Anger. Self-Doubt. That was all a real hoot. I managed to educate myself, finally, and not completely distance myself from a few of the people who cared about me, but I still lacked “direction” and “purpose,” apparently.

Surviving? That doesn’t count. It never does. It’s just expected. Lesson learned.

Different perspectives. Contrast.

There are challenges that can only be solved from within, leaving the most well-meaning of the rest of us, regardless of intent, limited or at times helpless to assist someone in distress. Having said that, it also doesn’t take long for those same someones to find hordes of delectable somethings that promise hope but leave nothing but scars. Most of the Village actually runs on that last concept and for some that’s enough. But when it isn’t?

Me, I felt like someone else. Something else, and to be fair both were quite accurate. I was focused on who I was instead of who I had become, and there was nothing in the external world that could resolve this for me.

One of humanity’s most valuable tools is the story. No matter where you are on the River, as a human we all understand. Beginning. Middle. End. We learn through the stories of others, and others can learn from our story. I advise you to put the external down for a reason. You already have everything you need to answer “Why?” Before we get into all that let’s tackle a question:

Who would you most want to be in your Final Moment? I ask because I know what it is like to not be prepared to answer this particular question. The realization that you are who you’d rather not be, with no way to change it, is quite a tragic experience. One could look in the Village for an answer. There may even be something to help soothe the existential pain, but that question will remain until it is ultimately presented, as it will always be asked and answered, prepared or not.

So, who do you see?

As there is, at least to my knowledge, no way to travel through time, one can only prepare a suitable answer to this question in The Present Moment, after which they are free to focus upon that answer Downriver, the same way a reader would expect the climax of a story. Only this time it’s their story. “Why?” is asked at the beginning of that story, an amalgam of Upriver until Now. The answer to “Why?” is completely up to them, and leads to their climax Downriver.

From the first surgery to adolescence was bad. From there to the Detroit surgery was far worse. A consistent 3-year-cycle of pain for decades, I would slowly degrade until they wheeled me back into surgery. Again, and again, and again, until it could not be done any more. In between those events other, rather significant, damage began to add up. Due to my birth defect I managed to shatter my neck, slip my back, have my first heart attack, die, get better, and have a hernia, all while being constantly sick. If it had alcohol in it I usually drank it, which probably didn’t help things much. I definitely would not recommend any of it because even now I find it hard to believe I survived, and there have been too many moments where I cursed myself for not dying sooner, either for my sake or for the sake of those around me. Now, my Grandma? She knew. All of it. She called me after Papa’s funeral. Odd, as my family never calls, then or now.

As many of you already know, you can get used to anything.

After some small talk she stated that she had witnessed the way the family acted towards me during Papa’s memorial, and asked me not to come to her future event. She apologized for how the family treated me both then and over the years, but said things would never change, and in a way she was right. The family didn’t change, but I sure did. That grants me a certain perspective, but to this day I’m not sure if it’s helpful.

Waking up in post-op to your doctor sitting beside you, head in his hands, bearing bad news of a bed-ridden future are on both the “Do Not Recommend” and “Grants Me a Certain Perspective” lists. Yet there I was. I have thought of that moment a lot, along with my smart ass answer, “If you were me, what doctor would you ask to help you?” that culminated in an ambulance ride on a cold February morning to the Detroit Medical Center, holding out hope that the upcoming surgery would finally provide an answer, which it did. That surgery took me far beyond a former life which was centered around my birth defect. I never thought I would experience this kind of salvation.

Yep. I had changed. A lot. But Grandma? She was right about the rest.

No matter where or when you find it or how attractive the view, the Village is always the same. Long on certainty, short on answers. Not that you would think that by listening to the Villagers pontificate, strut about, and build monuments to their imaginary friends and the glory of past mistakes. Willingly ignoring everything to maintain their deadly charade, cheering easy victories on a fixed table while wasting an ocean of lives like markers in a rigged game. The more you observe it the stranger and more savage it becomes.

As long as your trip Downriver was peaceful, or you find something to keep you from examining things too hard, there’s a chance you’ll fit in. Reach a point where lies are proven false and that chance fades completely, and nothing gets you to that point faster than trauma. The external cannot help because trauma is real, as are the scars that remain. The Village you are surrounded by, for whatever the reason, is based upon lies. I won’t deny that the residents sound convinced, especially around the holidays, but it is all false and simple-minded nonsense, ill-equipped to guide the traumatized back to their Balance.

Let’s take a walk. Hang around here long enough and someone will stop you from healing. Lots of residents take it personally as it cuts into their profits. Fortunately our journey takes us far away from all that, at least for a moment. When you look back you will still be able to make them out: The Village and the River, I mean. They’re still there, and for some that’s a comfort. It’ll get quieter as we move further away, which is always my favorite part of this. Well, that and seeing things a bit clearer, because that view?

It is simply amazing.

Absent proper medical support and reliant on a family that had both quickly moved on and displayed zero interest in helping me now or in the future, I began a slow slip into “self-care.” Self-mutilation, early-onset alcoholism, tobacco, drugs, vagrancy, fights, and more that I’ve blocked out, forgot, or erased. Anything to find a moment of relief, but to the surprise of absolutely no one, none of it helped my health, depression, anxiety, or pain. It just made everything worse.

I was told by my parents, quite frequently, not to discuss the situation. The two community events in my life were church and school. My mother was the church organist, and my father taught in the school district I attended. In both cases appearances needed to be maintained. “Pray that pain away! God never gives us things we can’t handle!” and “Keep those grades up or it’s military school, is that what you want?” Neither event possessed anything that could answer “Why?” Not that my broken, young mind knew that. Also, I found nothing helpful in “Tough Love.” Feigning confusion over the cause of my issues, always starting diatribes by strictly avoiding the central conceit of my life. Demanding I quietly accept responsibility of a problem that I did not understand, was not of my doing, and completely out of my control. Needless to say this is not an appropriate response to anyone, let alone a child in distress, and as many others know it is one Hell of a way to live.

Especially when, in an absence of answers, that child begins to believe it, too.

Here we are. The Stream. Take a moment, get your bearings. This place is quite a bit different than the River, and much calmer than the Village. Things move at your pace, the weather is always perfect, and the more you travel here the shorter the journey seems. Spend any time here and two things will happen: A leaf will drift past in the current, and a thought will float into your head.

Now, this next part? Well, this took me a minute. Okay, maybe it was a little longer than a minute. Stick with it though, it’ll click. If I can get it anyone can.

You are not your thoughts.
Peace is to be found in the contrast between You and your thoughts.
The value given a thought creates an emotion. Not every thought has worth and not every emotion is needed.

You control this at all times, or you let the external control it for you.

Take a thought. Place it on a leaf. Let it go Downstream.

That thought wasn’t you. It never was.

Another thought? Drop it on another leaf.
Thought comes back? There’s another leaf. Let it drift away.

I could hear the neighborhood kids playing whiffle ball beside the house, right outside the window where I was convalescing. I heard the dogs start at my mother walking outside. She called the kids together and told them I was back from the hospital. They asked what was wrong and she told them I had pneumonia. That may have been the first time I heard my family lie about my health, but it was far from the last. Turns out it’s one of their go-tos, and I wasn’t the first to notice.

Me? I looked the same but I was left crippled. I couldn’t evacuate my bladder, always had UTIs, was in constant discomfort and felt grossly disfigured, to the point my mental health was severely damaged. My insides were scarred to the point that I needed to constantly bear down to urinate, which would bring overwhelming waves of nausea and pain. Roughly every hour on the hour for about a half century. That’s just a guess. To be honest I’d rather not remember at all.

That was my Life, and there was a solution.

The process, called dilatation, is the mechanical stretching of a hollow organ, and was the only real way to keep my scarification under control. It is very painful and doesn’t fix anything, it just stretches to provide “relief.” The plan was for my mother to perform this procedure until I was old enough to do it myself, so I’d be strapped to a changing table with my father’s belt and away we went. To say I found it terrifying would be an understatement, and this procedure wasn’t performed more than a few times.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

We all have a vagus nerve. Think of it as a gift from our Upriver ancestors. The vagus nerve controls involuntary functions, works in conjunction with our Fight-Flight-Freeze-Fawn mechanism, can assist in focus and balance, and can be relaxed and calmed through various techniques. One such technique is Box Breathing. With Box Breathing please sit in a safe, comfortable place and perform the following cycle, executing each step for a count of 4:

Inhale through your nose.
Hold.
Exhale through your mouth.
Hold.

Repeat the cycle.

You may need a few attempts before you begin to feel comfortable with this process, but soon the cycle should become natural. When it does, return to placing thoughts upon passing leaves, this time while Box Breathing. Focus on the space between the passing leaves.

Find your Contrast.

To look externally for the answers to your trauma often means never finding them. Your internal perspective reveals the Contrast between Self and everything else. It is the only place you are going to be in the only life you are going to live. How we respond to our trauma creates our Individual Future. This is a constant. Each of our Realities is the Unitary Universe from an Infinity of perspectives.

In other words, Reality just Is.

Thunder rolls and rain pelts the windows. Hard soles on tile echo through the open ward. Bleach and alcohol, coffee and cigarettes. The gauze dressing feels like razor blades on my broken skin. Surgical hose, complete with floating blood clots, slither and slide from under the sheets to destinations unknown. I am in an incredible amount of pain and I desperately want to see my wounds, if only for a moment. I need to convince myself that I am safe. Perhaps it was a bad dream after all.

But the restraints keep me from doing anything but opening my eyes, and when I do that an orderly’s salt and pepper hair, slathered in Brylcreem, is the first thing I see. It reminds me of my father. He is just finishing restraining my right wrist, and turns to meet my gaze with an annoyed glance. “THIS is what we DO to BAD little boys who can’t STOP touching themselves!” Firm tugs on the strap drive his point home before he turns in a huff and wanders off, grumbling about doing his job.

I clutch at the sheets with my toes and begin to pull the covers down. It takes forever, and with each movement there is pain as the starched cloth scrapes over my body. I shake between the agony and the effort. My eyes fill with tears.

Chest.
Abdomen.
Waist.

Not a dream. Much worse than a nightmare. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.” It was my voice that was saying it but I found I had a lot of trouble believing it.

To be honest, I still do.

After crossing the Stream and heading back into the Village the differences begin to appear both obvious and revealing. Everything still looks rather familiar, but seems somehow smaller. Less important. Gone is the earlier certainty, and from the outskirts to the center desperate, shrill cries have replaced the holy and crested language that previously rose into the skies. Far from assured of their place and fates, the now crazed and masked populace appear to gamble their futures on every bizarre fiction that takes root, desperate for any lie that supports their delusions and calms their terror, meeting with an alchemist’s luck converting juvenile pantomimes to legitimized, yet still artificial, life in a vain attempt to escape, but much like converting lead to gold nothing real is to be found in the effort. Residents find comfort gathering into herds, habitually repeating a proud past they were never a part of, transfixed by others’ dreams, retreating from their own realities.

Moving through this mass of humanity aggravates old scars and wounds, which begin to throb and ache as wave upon wave of the broken reflect memory after memory, the futility of it all pulling attention Upriver, back to the Rapids and what was.

The answer? Place the past where it belongs, focus Downriver, and create a larger story. Who you were is a part of who you are, as is the fact you survive. Self-esteem will begin to heal as self-communication grows. The effort put into healing provides value. You may even become responsible to the Village by doing what only you yourself can do: Communicate your story, lead by example, and prepare for the Future.

I probably looked like any other kid in pre-op, surrounded by my mother and her friends, their hearts full of hope and arms full of gifts, being told by an adult I trusted to go ahead and trust the nurses, too. Cold air, weird noises echoing off tiled surfaces, stiff sheets. The smell of alcohol and bleach mixed with cigarettes and coffee is a combination which can send chills up my spine to this day. I wanted to be home more than anything. To be safe. But this would be the last moment I felt safe anywhere.

Everyone was so big, and none more so than the anesthesia nurse. She tried so very hard to be kind, I do remember that. “Circle circle, dot dot. Circle circle cootie shot.” Her slight of hand was masterful. I was watching and I still can’t tell you when the needle replaced her blue Bic.

I stare into mother’s eyes as the drugs pull me into a deep sleep.

Waking up during a surgery is something no one should experience. I see my face and the surgical team’s reflection in the glass doors of a white metal storage cabinet as I glance about the tiled operating room in a stupor. I am in severe pain. My gaze slowly follows these sensations and I look down at my waist. There is no occlusive drape. It is just, well, me.

In my child’s mind I was turned inside out, as it were.

“Oh no, no no no …”
“Doctor, he’s awake.”
“Fuck! Well, put him back under!”
“John, look at me! Look at me, honey! Shhhh, baby, this is just a bad dream. Shhhh, It’s not …”

Welcome to my flashback. It has run on a loop in my head for almost a half century, at various volumes and intensities, and it never really stops. This was going to take more than time. My Self was stolen, and I still feel it as it was torn away. I was shocked out of Reality, nothing was ever the same, and everything that happened after that?

“A natural response to overwhelming trauma” is a cold, cold comfort.

Finding Balance between your Self and everything else is the goal. Your Reality is the center of that junction. Your Self is the space between your thoughts. You can find peace there. No thought has value until it is given value, which then creates an emotion. You control this process or you allow others to control it for you.

Trauma forces you to recognize that much of what is around you is false as part of your healing process. This is normal, but that fact makes it impossible to find a reliable, external answer to “Why?” and leaves victims reliant on their own, subjective, wounded self for answers, often with no information or guidance, in a world that would rather forget matters and get on to their next nonsensical thing for their favorite, nonexistent shadow.

Trauma is one of the few human experiences that, while more often than not absurdly lied about to protect the orthodoxy, also cannot be denied, especially by the recipient. The experience is real and no one can take that away. The experience can also heal, both the victim and others. That cannot be taken away, either.

You can find your answer to “Why?” through Art.

“What kind of Art?”

Hush, now. It ain’t the time to be fussy. Let’s go with the kind of Art that allows you to heal, or the Art that lets you find your Balance. Regardless of medium, the creative process is the only form of communication that can exist from Individual to Individual, untouched by orthodoxy. You will get this chance, again and again, during your journey. Communicate your external and internal perspectives, and your contrast. Communicate what only you can share. Art is the only reliable tool that we have to not only recover from trauma, but to effectively assist, as much as possible, in the healing processes of other survivors, struggling to heal in the cold grasp of the orthodoxy. You will still see masks and still hear lies. You will also find many of their stories will remind you of your own, and through your Art you can assist them as they navigate Downriver, in a language that they will understand, sometimes in ways that did not exist when you went through the Rapids yourself.

One resident at a time if need be, keep healing the Village. In doing so you’ll heal yourself. As you move from “Why?” into who you are use your creative process to become the individual you want to be, who you have to be, in your Last Moment.

Because…

Gray. What little I remember is gray, lost in a fog that has wrapped me up tight most of my life. Flashes of who I was, I guess, but a happy place? A full color experience? There is exactly one.

Sitting on the front porch with my Grandfather, listening to the Pittsburgh Pirates on AM radio, freight trains rumbling past on the tracks across the street and behind the Odd Fellows Hall, the smell of fresh-cut grass and leaded gas in the air. That’s it. Art, music, and singing like mom, and being a third baseman, teacher, and veteran, like dad. Baseball, auto racing, boxing. That’s all that kid wanted.

It didn’t work out that way.

I call it The Before Time, and I can’t get back there. Trust me, I’ve tried. For decades I fantasized about going back and doing something, ANYTHING, to change things. To escape my fate. The ignorant dreams of a fool. Maybe the next time around will be better.

Oh, this is the only life I get? Damn.

Okay, I’ll admit that makes things a little more challenging. I got this, though. I know who I was, I know my trauma, I am in The Present Moment, and I know I will have a Last Moment. When I finally rest my head, knowing that I used my pain to help others heal will bring me peace.

There is Balance in this goal, and it is found in a story only I can tell.

So, who do I see?

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