Blasted

99-word Dream Art

Today, I’m not tending a dream as much as I’m tending an emotional narrative to process living/caregiving my veteran spouse’s brain degeneration. If you are following along, I’ll give you fair warning that my dreams and somatic movement have felt like whiplash lately, so I’ll be jumping around like my Inner Disco-Loving Puerto Rican Boy for the next few weeks. Imagination is flowing like a disco strobe light over a floor of hot lava. So are heavy emotions. No better time to go inward and tend to what’s bubbling in our depths.

A little background—my husband served from 1981 to 1985 in the Army 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He was a Grenada Raider and jumped from the first plane to drop Rangers on the morning of October 25, 1983. It’s recorded as a 492-foot jump; even if you aren’t a paratrooper, you know that is low. We’ve been married since 1988 and were each other’s closest confidants. I understood at an intimate level, the pain of his military story and he shared deep details.

At the time, we knew we had a strong bond, but it is only recently that I’ve begun to know why. We are both Family Scapegoats. How I would love to talk to him in great depth about FSA. We both had growth mindsets and he was a true Ranger with “no quit” in him. I have quit. Yet, as we grew older, his behavior grew concerning. After a decade of progressing symptoms, he has suspected CTE, been diagnosed with (bv)FTLD, and has experienced strokes caused by damage to small brain vessels—the very damage the military claims to be from low-level blast exposures.

Recovery of Self is essential to me, especially as a caregiver where I agree to hold space for his illness as if we were both possessed. I think of inner work of reclamation as sorting the pieces to unite the whole. Not all my pieces are mine. Some I created. I want my authentic wholeness. Tending dreams and emotions, history or women’s struggles, nature awakens the sacred within me and that is where I seek to write. My Sacred Grove among all the Sacred Groves waking up.

This is not a dream. This is me sorting out deep emotions.

Blasted

In the beginning, they punished you—an Article 15 instead of an MRI. They released you to plant corn. An Army Ranger, your family banished you like Eve, as if their farm were Eden. The VA neglected your pain, dismissing bone-shards in your knee despite paratrooper status and a 492-foot combat jump. Your rung bell never clanged no matter how many hits and blasts. Ignorance makes clean hands. You faced the truth of PTSD while they misconstrued war demons for character flaws. You are nothing, a stained hide, Cannon Fodder. The Four Horsemen Ride the folds of your brain.