WHY I CHOOSE TO WRITE

“I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be som...

ewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up...."

~ Alysha Speer

 

 

Today I need all of those things, escape, a place to hide, the need to be somewhere else. Don't we all once in a while?  But do we ever admit it?  Do we ever say I need healing?  I feel pretty messed up. I want to run away.

 

I became aware long ago that more often than not the only time I feel heard, listened to, or understood is when I talk to my dogs.  I am sure many of you feel, 'poor woman'.  That's okay.  You have the freedom to choose to read further or to feel however you wish.  Just as do I.

 

It is in talking to my dogs that I feel I can say the truth, say exactly what I am feeling.  I don't have to wander around muttering under my breath, fearing someone will hear me or escape to the bathroom or my office and hide behind words that I don't feel comfortable saying outloud. I quite simply tell them what is in my heart.  I tell them when someone has hurt me...someone I least expected to.  I tell them I am afraid and feel lost and cold and alone.  I tell them that life isn't what I had expected and try to convince myself by convicing them that we all have to live the life we have and yet still wonder do we really?

 

Yesterday a warrior with severe PTSD/TBI and Military Sexual Trauma shared with me that she has been abused, beaten, and almost killed by her husband and has lost her son, her mother and had to put her beloved dog to sleep, all within a period of months. Her husband emptied her bank accounts, stole her computers, and the list goes on. Okay, how do you live with that?  What could I say to her?  How in God's name could I help her?

 

Because of her brain injuries from multiple deployments, she has no remembrance of how to do anything for herself, from keeping a check book, to remembering where she is going when she gets in the car.  How am I to help?

 

She calls me mom.  She has a service dog and told me the only thing that has kept her alive is when she looks into her dog's eyes she wonders how he could get along without her. What would happen to him? How am I to help?

 

She has called the VA multiple times and an attorney. No return phone calls.  She has seizures and no one to take care of her should she have one.  How am I to help?

 

This morning I tell my dogs I want to hide. I don't know what to do.  But on the phone she told me it was okay because she understood me and she knows I am having a melt down because I too have PTSD.  She was worried about me!

 

So I talk to my dogs as I sipped my hot chocolate at 5:00 AM.  I look into their eyes and find peace and solace and a place of consistent healing, understanding, and reality.  A place where I cannot hide from the truth, from pain, from the horrible feeling of being alone on this earth.

 

So with my dogs clustered around me as I find my old friend, writing, I try to come alive again and awaken aware of the injustices and hell that so very very many of our warriors endure.  So this morning, I have no choice.  I will try and find a way to help her.  Afterall she calls me mom. And that is what mothers are for.  To be there no matter what.  To love no matter what. And to answer again the call of a warrior.

 

Please remember how very much is sacrified and how many warriors in need are abused, deceived and used brutely by those that say they will help them.  Please pray for help for them all.