One could say I am reactive. One could say I am aggressive. Both statements are far too true, but lately I have to acknowledge it is only getting worse.

I don’t believe it is just me. There are certainly instances where I am reactive to what I would just consider none-driving-bastards, and those people probably don’t deserve this aggression. The justice for that aggression doesn’t exist outside of my internal anxiety of being trapped by other vehicles and getting stuck in the unnecessary traffic caused by lazy driving. The other side is there are those times, as shown by my father’s self-righteousness and self-importance, where they are simply playing cop and decide for you that you don’t have anywhere important to be, so you should be just fine stuck behind him 10mph under the limit. The very same people that bitch about liberals taking their rights, and repeat the motto of “Don’t tread on me”. They never have any issues treading on the rights of others if those rights are of no value in their lives.

In both situations, my adrenaline is rising to a point that is not necessary, and there are times I feel I crossed that line into being a bully.

Sometimes, far less often, there is good reason for that aggression. Sometimes you do have to stand-up yourself and your safety. Sometimes you have to be prepared to defend your reasoning for being a dick in demanding your space. Sometimes, you can’t help feeling the local government is going out of their way to foster such emotional rises with absurd, and unpredictable timing of traffic signals. Sometimes, you realize you are now living in an era arming yourself is the right thing to do.

For me, it isn’t easy accepting the wisdom of carrying a weapon wherever I am exposed in Oildale, or Bakersfield proper. But, this is where I am at. I struggled with this denial. I struggled with the this reality, but it can no longer be ignored that general aggressiveness is on the rise. I can’t hide from the fact that I am starting to be singled out as an easy target for the aggression of others. I can’t hide from the fact that my aggression is too likely to be creating unknown enemies for myself, and I don’t blend in too well.

If it were just a matter of defending my own aggressive tendencies, I am willing to grapple with justice received, or justifying my actions whether it makes a difference in the long run or not. It has moved past that point. We are now in a point of time where my aggression is on the lower end of the scale when looking at the populace as a whole, and is libel to be a spark to setting off dynamite.

This will demand a change in attitude. To carry a weapon, is to carry additional patience. With the availability of defense tools, comes the need to check one’s offensive tendencies to prevent that need to defend.

It isn’t easy to consider having to tamper that rush of adrenaline because the reactiveness is rewarding. It requires accepting and living along a good amount of vehicular inability to keep myself calm, and lessen the likely hood of situations that are far removed from a requirement of violence. I have to acknowledge this will be far from simple for me, but with this reality of rising tensions, ever increasing violence, and weekly, near daily murders, I have to accept the need to speak in a far quieter voice while carrying a far bigger stick.

It is hard to think of this being a good check for my attitude, and a weapon as a calming presence. It is easy to remember despite my fears, anxiety, and paranoia bringing out the worse in me, there is a really good person under all that, that is horrified to think I may severely hurt someone. Reconciling those two opposing truths will be hard for my psyche with tools of destruction by my side. There is still that reality that this is a very stressed society I need to defend myself from, and there is that reality I need to stop contributing to that stress.

I am an extremely good person, faulty, but good. This is an extremely good society, faulty, but good. I can’t fix the faults of others, but at the very least I can strengthen myself, emotionally and physically, so when a fault within our society slips, my faults don’t have to slip with them.

It is never easy choosing the harder of struggles, but choosing this harder struggle is the struggle that will make my life easier and make the lives of those touched by me easier.

Shhhh- as I put to sleep that over-extended aggression. Shhhh- as I choose my Big Stick with a quiet sigh.

Shhhh- the lion is not needed at this time.

Duckin’ Kev

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