When I wake-up in the morning, there is hope. I wake-up feeling the day will be a day of accomplishment. Every morning is the morning the terror will end. Every morning is filled with hope and denial.

That denial is covering up what I truly feel is a hopeless situation. I wake-up alone, that blessed aloneness. It is a gift, the only gift that gets me through. That aloneness allows me to hide within me the knowledge that at any moment that barely covered anxiety is going to sprout through the soil. It doesn’t matter how awesome I feel I am doing, despite my many small successes, the reality is that anxiety will flourish at any moment, and consume me to the point of shutdown. I am getting better at acknowledging that necessary shutdown, that need for a reboot, but that never changes that any shutdown comes with a huge cost, and a huge anxiety debt that at any moment can demand restitution. A restitution that there is never available, and the process continues with intensity I am always amazed I have and can survive.

I know I am better then my terror. I know I can find an escape from my internal horror. I know I need a better home, a home with the space to pay down my anxious debt. I know a job, a retirement from disability is the only way forward- the only to avoid that backwards slide, the only way to maintain that safe place of solitude. Everyday I feel that possibility for working welling within me. Everyday I feel a peak in capabilities, and the ability to return to financial productivity. Then a small, little, often preventable situation exposes that my anxiety is at all times barely covered with optimism. All that hope and desires for financial independence nosedives back towards earth, and the terror of having to rely on others takes over.

I have to acknowledge that despite my too many gifts, there is only a narrow band of emotional stability for me to build that future. To make it worse, that narrow band is over-inflated and rests on an extremely shaky foundation. It only takes a tiny tremor to start knocking down those bricks. To often I find I am wrong about my stability and suddenly find myself looking at this pile of rubble. There is nothing to do but piece by piece replace those bricks, and with each brick I again feel better about myself. I forget, I close my eyes, I ignore, that the foundation is still massively shaky. I don’t have any anchor points, I don’t have a firm grip on the ground to fight the smallest of stresses. Amazingly I can weather the worse of storms. I can get through the worse of trauma, but the smallest of breezes, the lightest of rains is all it take to lose that emotional domicile of safety.

I can look and see so many improvements I have made working my own program, the growth from my self-education and it fills me with such joy. But those minor, predicable, and avoidable stresses keep making their way through reminding me my issues are severe, scary, and massive roadblocks for any future. That reality brings me crashing down as my desperation rises to put this all behind me.

It is an absurd goal of leaving all this behind, buried and being further buried by the General Lee within me constantly spitting dirt on that grave in a haste to drive away, leaving all those horrors clogged with dust. Still, it is a goal I can never stop striving for, it is a goal of which I can never stop dreaming. It is a goal that always feel in reach, it is a goal I am always feeling in hand, but it is always an illusion. It always disappears as soon I think I have a firm grasp on that fruit.

I want to be that person inside of me. I want to live the fullness I believe I am capable of living. Then that confusion clouds me. That confusion of why, despite my intelligence, despite my knowledge, despite my wisdom, why does this anxiety, this terror that has no true purpose keep ripping from me that control of my life I so intensely am always striving towards.

There is hope, there is always that certainty that I will rise above. There is always that confidence I will get through, I will escape this trap, but it is a weak confidence, a fleeting hope, that is so easily burst. I don’t know if I will ever know or fully understand the why, but I least always understand I am better then these attacks upon myself.

I struggle on, and on. It is a struggle that is so much harder, and so much more winnable without those constant past dreams of suicide. The fear of slipping gives me traction, but when that traction does fail, I have to once again fight that battle for everything within me that is good.

Within myself, I trust. Within myself, I war. My dreams are more then dreams, they are such very real possibilities, but finding that path is so much harder then our society could have ever prepared me for.

I fight on, I will fight on, but I will also cry, I will use those tears to refresh who I am. Through those tears, I can reaffirm I am better then my fears, terrors and anxiety.

Those tears aren’t weakness, they are strength. They power that camouflaged self that some day, some how, I am so certain can break through- permanently. Maybe it is a fool’s errand trying to break through, but it is never foolish to strive, and through that strife, I can at least prevent sliding back.

I wish I can come up with a conclusion for this rambling- but maybe the lesson is, there is never, and can never be a conclusion when all you can do is move forward.

Duckin’ Kev