Kinetic Energy

Kinetic Energy

Like an old tree, sitting high a top a hill. 
Potential energy, my aging body has lost its will

Wondering the dark fearful of the dawn’s surprise. 
Impending doom waits with every sunrise

Traveling to the depths of my heart, with a heavy sigh, 
Reflections of two souls converged, him and I

Emotions lingering weighing me down. 
Yet my feet are barely touching the ground.

Expressing trauma hidden here, for readers engaged. 
Released in my Art, made public when it is paged

The eyes of truth watching, who are you and who am I. 
Within my pages, energy kinetic potentially reaches the sky

I follow a path less journeyed, holding to my resilience. 
Will the un-shattered parts of me make all the difference? 

Like a mighty tree, in fierce winds ready to crack. 
From all of this there is no finding my way back.

On life our differing analysis of what is true. 
Within their realm, my heart and soul never grew

Of breaking what binds me, I am no longer afraid. 
I would cease to exist if I continued their charade

Endeavoring to unify time and space. 
I am now fettered in this beautiful place.

Gaining momentum through Art, blurring the line. 
Energy expressed may be a difficult concept to define

From my hand kinetic energy, my mind always in motion. 
Thoughts travel creating all sorts of commotion

With technology harnessed as my way to release. 
Like minds extremely keen, urges to chatter or preach.

Moving forward through graphics and rhyme. 
Without energy, there would be nothing, not even time. 

Through visual expression, there is a meager attempt at aesthetic. 
Sometimes beautiful or maybe unnerving is my expressions Kinetic

www.GanjaGoji.blogspot.com©1996 -2030 

Ganja Goji Graphics© 

SLP Graphics© 

SLPgraphics© 

Thus far, past my thirty-day mark in Medical Marijuana therapy, I believe other People with PTSD could benefit from the influence of this Herb. If you call me a “Pot Head or Druggie” I am going to become very defensive and could go verbally ape shit on your ass.

As with any medication, be it prescription pain or anti-anxiety meds or now Marijuana, no one should be under the influence when there are chores to get done. On days, I know I have to get into my car, drive and mingle with the general population I do not use Medical Marijuana.

Not only should the driving under the influence Laws be kept in tack they should be elaborated on. As with alcohol consumption, being under the influence of any mind-altering substance, including many prescriptions that may cause us to be distracted from reality, especially Xanax needs to be monitored by patients. Thank God, I am no longer taking this drug, but it almost killed me.

“PTSD isn’t about what’s wrong with some one; it’s about the Trauma that happened to that person.” - 

The label itself indicates that there was a trauma. After the trauma, there was damage. The damage caused stress. Stress manifests itself in many different ways; depressions, moodiness, dissociate disorders, Flashbacks, Hopelessness, difficulty concentrating, Being easily startled or frightened, reliving the traumatic event, physical illness and sleep disorders, just to name a few.  

With me, it is the middle of the night 2:30 am to be exact. This was not my first life trauma, it was one of dozens and it took the cake on October 14, 1996, when 7:30 am the shock struck me like a bolt of lighting shot a hole through my heart. The details of the story may be displayed here each day. I have it written out in my journals, so it is just a matter of copy/past.

Having PTSD has taught me many things about life, family, my people and myself in general. Everything before PTSD seems trivial and insignificant. Many lessons I learned after PTSD astounded me because life situations never turned out the way I thought they would and that often burdened me even more tribulations. I found myself in constant Turmoil with everyone. The trauma, did not affect them, they were not there and just knowing it happened did not change their attitudes. They were who they were, unaffected with no compassion for the abrupt changes in Me.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is not contagious. I did contract it because I did something like have unprotected sex with a pimp, get drunk and lay in the gutter covered in vomit. I have never snorted cocaine in the back alley. My crime, which really was not a crime at all, was that I LOVED my son and could not bear the thought that he was dead. 
My soul, my brain and my body snapped as I took one breathe into my lungs, held it as long as I could, I knew on the exhale of that breath, I would totally lose my sanity. Forever damaged as if I had been struck in the head with a bullet.

Looking back, I can see how hard I fought facing it and how much I wanted to stay in the dark about the bottom line truth of it all. It is human nature to try to protect ourselves when the truth is too painful. When we are children, it is much easier to cope by not thinking about the trauma. Children have an uncanny ability to love in spite of trauma and can just “block it out”. 

There has been a terribly negative response from people in my life, especially from family, as I attempted to face the facts and the truth about that traumatic event. When I tried talking to my parents, my siblings, or other relatives: These people, who are close to me worked hard to convince me that my issues are better, not dealt with.  I was encouraged by many to let it go, leave the past in the past, put it behind you and the worst one “get over it”.

The only way to deal with PTSD, is to face and validate the truth about the trauma and quite often that includes facing facts that my parents let me down many time before why should this had made a difference. My emotional needs were neglected or even ignored; as far back as I can remember, around the age of three. Losing a grandson was not going to affect who they were. They attended the funeral out of respect, and walked away un-scathed by this tragedy. If I cannot see what you see, I cannot have the feeling you expect from me.

Then I seriously dug deep into myself, and I remembered them. Remembered why I steered emotionally clear of them years prior to the Trauma.

As I watched my elderly father, sitting on a pew, at the funeral, I could not read glimpse of emotion in his eyes, on his face. Stoic, emotionless, cold hearted, materialistic man. I remembered that look on his face, for I had felt it many times.

Sometimes it felt worse than the trauma, when I knew I had to face the reality, that according to their actions, they never even love me. Sometimes facing some truths is more painful than the trauma itself was. My family was so impatient with me whenever I even hinted at the past. They never talked to me they always talked at me.

I know who you are Daddy, now dead and gone. You were the one who stood by and allowed un-imaginable atrocities imposed upon your children by their Mother, for me it was birth until 12 years.

The first time I really looked at his face, in realization that he would never be my hero, my comforter, or safe haven was at about three years old. I know I was little, because my mother had me stand on a stool to reach the kitchen sink to wash the dishes. She always stripped me down to my underwear because I would get my clothes wet, and that enraged her.

I had to have permission to get off the stool, it was somewhat tall for me to climb down from and several times, I had fallen because, as Mommy put it, I was a clumsy brat. Therefore, she would lift me down to avoid another trip to the hospital. One morning while everyone slept, I was awakened to do my chores before breakfast could be served. I must be quiet and not wake up anyone else. I had to go to the bathroom, but talking was not allowed. Oh, I hated making decisions, no matter what I chose there would be consequences if I got caught.

I chose to climb down, I would be careful so as not to fall. Before I could make it to the bathroom, I soiled my pants. A bowl movement, how could I fix this disaster? I decided to try to take care of it myself, wash out my panties in the bathroom sink; I could hardly reach, even on tiptoes. I found clean underwear, stuffed my soiled underwear into the bottom of the laundry basket, and went back to washing the dishes.

Mommy noticed the different under pants I was wearing. A conversation revealed my mistake, now enraged she ordered me to bring my soiled underwear to her. Without warning she rubbed them in my face, she threw me onto the bed, buried my face in the soiled panties, and beat the holy crap out of me [pardon the pun]. My body ripped of the bed and carried to a corner of the kitchen, with my face pressed against the wall, sitting with my legs folded. Here I would stay the rest of the day.

Of course the commotion woke the rest of the family, who passed by me off and on throughout the day. I listened behind me during meal times. I turned once at the sound of my father’s footsteps, pleadingly I spoke his name: Daddy. He told me to shut up, turn around; your mother is the boss. I went numb with the realization that this man would never have my back. 

The blank look on his face, 40 years later at the funeral of his first-born grandson, was the same look I saw back then. Here too he would not have my back.

I had been dismissed; I had been shushed; I had been ignored; No one ever said to me “oh honey, I am so sorry that happened to you. It must have been frightening for you. It must have been a nightmare.  Is there anything I can do?” 

The reactions I did covertly communicated to me that I was a failure, unable to deal with what Life dishes out. Somehow, I was the one that was repulsive and disgraceful. No one held me if I cried. I found no one who felt soothing to my soul, not even the ones who claimed they glorified God. 

Not one validated that something out of the ordinary happened; Mothers were not supposed to have children die at any age. So there I was with this unresolved trauma (a post traumatic stress) and I was being told that I needed to let it go “just get over it”. 

Leave this in the past without even a few suggestions on how I might go about doing that. All of it was shoved under the carpet and ignored. However, I have to now cope with all of the traumas, leading up to the one that took the cake. 

I had to go on living with the trauma and the wounds that had been inflicted on me for the sake of Love. The damage was there and it was not going away. I was left trying to figure out a way to comprehend why no one seemed to think that I was important or valuable enough to give some validation or assistance to grieve a tremendous loss. 

I had to figure out why I was not loved enough to be worth that safety. In this is post traumatic stress disorder. My depressions were seen as a weakness.  When I finally had to take medication just to get through a day, it was viewed as the proof of my insignificance as a person and proof that I had always been the problem in their life.  Conceived unwanted and by love. 

No one was ever going to consider that one invalidated difficulty after another from as young as I can remember was at the root of my inability to Cope now.  I was different, I did not possess the ability to be emotionally numb, and obviously, this talent does not flow from DNA during conception. 

No one considered that my issues may have been due to a lot of post traumatic stress disorders that have plagued me on and off for more than 40 years.  No, they just saw me as weak. Too weak to cope with life on life’s terms, Shit happens. They saw me as too weak to deal with all. I was forced to remain with these people oppressed by the bloodlines that surrounded my existence. Like vultures on prey. It took me another fifteen years to physically and emotionally distance myself from them.

I felt my world crumble that day.  I write, “Emerging from broken soul” because they were wrong. I have moved forward, accepting that this is something I will never get over 

I do not think that the writers meant to suggest that abused children could have done things better so that we were not abused, that is the way that I heard it. I had been raised with the belief that I could have done better and that if I was better or more worthy: I would not have been ignored, dismissed, or even abused in the first place. 

It was as I faced the trauma that I became mentally healthy. It was when I found out that it was what had happened to me that caused me to struggle with life on life’s terms, the healing began.

I am finding understanding and compassion within myself. When I began to comprehend the magnitude of what a plethora of traumas caused me to believe about myself. I then validated that those beliefs were lies told by those who claimed love for me and imposed on my life. They were all evil incarnate.

I have found hope for freedom from depressions and post traumatic stress disorders. This morning was a bad one. I shot out of bed at 2:30 am, the time of death listed on my son’s death certificate. I was drenched in a cold sweat, shivering, angry and extremely thirsty. As I drank mango juice, straight from the carton, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. “Leave me alone”.

They haunt me, so I made coffee and Began to indulge in some Medically prescribed Cannabis. I went to work on some art. Here I am almost eight hours later, having written the thoughts that spew from my brain.

Everyday I am able to change few more of the lies that suck away at my worth and self esteem. 

I am hopeful that I will be able to repair the damage and reclaim my worth and my value. I will not be able put stress behind me until I deal with the damage that traumas have caused. 

I have been severely sleep disturbed due to PTSD now since October 14, 1996. Along the way, it was a serious issue feeling sleep deprived. Here now back out West I have discovered the Siesta. Night terrors do not seem to plague me while sleeping in the middle of the day.

I enjoyed this time with you; maybe I pulled you into my world a little, maybe not. However, remember this I am no longer here to fit into your world. I am here dreaming to build my own new world. Dreams are deceiving, Like faces are to hearts. They are sweet relieving when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.

In the middle of the night miserably awakened by night terror, I found a word “Kinetic and this is where it lead me today. Now royally toasted, no real chores to do, feeling no pain and not sweating the small stuff just for today ♥GG