GiveaPhuc transplants should be researched.

With the passing of a friend today, I have been left thinking about some heavy shit. You see not all the wounds that people get leave scars we can see. Somethings just sit in the back of your head, and good or bad they alter you forever. You can never be who you were before. You can never get that back. This is not some aging maturity bullshit either. It is not about recapturing your childhood, but rather being fundamentally changed on the deepest level of your psyche. Now this is tied into this thing we call PTSD. Its a disorder that I think is more dangerous than cancer.

I do not mean to talk about the things people see, like the health effects that PTSD can have. It is not about the insomnia, or the lowered immune system. I am thinking more about how little bits of you die, and the changes in your personality lead to death in many people that suffer from it. Its about losing one of the biggest factors in your health, that most people ignore. Hell losing the part of me that gives a fuck actually has benefits, but in most cases it can be very harmful.

When you see a dude drinking shots chased by beer, with a dip in, smoking a cigarette, you get a bit of the attitude. Its not that he doesn't know he might get cancer, its that he truly does not give two shits and a fuck about cancer. It is not a death wish by any means though. It truly is not giving a shit. Not really depression per-say, and a bit hard to explain to people. It is a part of the mind that just does not work anymore, and the sense of self preservation takes on a whole other meaning.

In this I wonder how many people die from PTSD each year. Over a decade of straight fighting. Most of this done on two fronts. Rotations in and out of theater that hold the frequency and resemble a place of expected normalcy. Add to this a lower standard in recruitment, the paradigm shift of social morality, and this unending pressure from the 98% of people that have never and will never put on a uniform. Then you look at how people expect veterans to act. You see them brush off behavior, or praise things that would otherwise have gotten somebody committed a few years ago.

Now you look at the guys that get bored, or overwhelmed, and suck start a pistol. Or maybe those guys that do what they are trained to do, and violently assist others over to their train of thought before they suck start a pistol; then think about would they have done that if their give a fuck had not been damaged? Would they take that next shot ten years ago? Or would their personal regard for all life and the survival instinct still intact, prevented them from going over that line into alcohol poisoning? Would that still healthy give a fuck have prevented them from driving in that state of mind years before?

Why is it that we can see crossing that line between hard and retard, and brush it off as just something that happens now? What part of our brain is so altered that we can not see these consequences as something of value? Maybe it is not depression but an understanding; an understanding that all things will eventually die, and being afraid of it is not going to change that fact. We all stop breathing at one point or another. All bleeding stops. All pain ends.

So in this how many Service Members die from the long term effects of PTSD? If it is by their own hand, is it still a manifestation of their illness? Is it possible to restore or heal a broken give a fuck, and if so is it even worth it? I would be interested in seeing how many vets have died over the years because of what could be considered self destructive behavior that in a time before would not have been engaged, or at least engaged with such eager abandonment? These are the thoughts running through my head today. You did this to yourself brother, but I am still gonna miss you Bat Man.

Brain drain pain turned to gain

I have so many things I want to write about today. It is a strange kind of writers block I have been having for the last few days. Too much to write about, and the inability to focus on one topic only. While this may seem like a good problem, you know like those pro athletes with their millions of problems, it is still frustrating. The main reason is that there is so much floating in my head that it is hard to stay focused. Compound that with jet lag, insomnia, and the feeling you get of uncertainty when the future presents so many paths, and you get the pool of A.D.D. infused delightful confusion that is my gray mushy little mind.

Politics offer so much with so little right now. We have this situation we can dissect like a frog in biology class that is just as lifeless. Your frog is not very different from your class mates frog. They probably have sat on the shelf for the same period of time. They stink. They all have an asshole. Oh and nothing you cut off of this little green beastie is going to taste good, no matter how much sugar you put on it. So really hard to pick on thing to talk about there.

On the personal front, its just hard to align my thoughts with people. Its just about the same as that little homage to Kermit we call modern politics. It seems that everyone has an opinion or suggestion as to how your life should be lived. However they don't seem happy with their life at all. People get so wrapped up in what they are told about how to be happy, that they can't let themselves be happy, and they have to bother other people about how to be happy so they can justify their own fucked up pursuit of what society has defined as happiness for them.

I am regressing socially to a more simplistic understanding of life. This is helping get all these little thoughts about big things in line. They are helping me think about the sound of one hand clapping at a pirate party with Captain Hook. I suppose it would go smack ow smack ow smack ow, or something along those lines. Seriously, what really does matter to us? Why does it matter? Does it matter because someone else says it matters, or because we as a people understand that it matters to us as individuals. Or perhaps our thoughts are nothing more than prepackaged hydrolyzed shots of high fucktard life syrup served in convenient individual serving sizes?

Right now my only bastion of sanity has been writing. Not writing here obviously, but rather writing on stories, and research. It is my form of escapism that oddly keeps me connected in a way that many people would not understand. I can step back and see those things that most people ignore from the outside. You see the details that change and shape the world around us with the subtle beauty of a smile.

Why do we feel the need to complicate everything. It is as if the greater levels of complexity somehow add value to what ever it is we are looking at. The truth though lies in a basic principal of a physical science. Let us look at engineering, and think about what makes a machine or structure perfect. It is not in what you can add, but what you can take away. How simple can you make a device and it still be able to preform its function? If its a toothbrush, why does it need to be a pizza slicing, fossil fuel detecting missile of social reconstruction with a love button accessory?

So in the end, I try to coalesce my thoughts and find that all I really need to do is smile. I am not worried about all the crap that people try to spoon feed me, because its my choice to open my mouth and chew. I am going to worry about my happiness, and try not to step on somebody on the way. I am tired of being fucked, but I would not mind getting laid. So in the mean time I will write, get my thoughts together, and stop being worried about things. Worry is nothing anyway and holds no value.

So if you are not offering me a hand, I will take a handie. If you are not offering me a beer, I will accept rum. If you are not offering me a smile, an exchange of Oh faces will be just fine. You can keep your grief, hate, and discontent. I have better things do than to get wrapped up in a game that people really can not win. Oh and one more thing,... Get over yourself.