Miss Ashley Pants

When I worked in P.T., I’d try to help patients leave feeling better than they walked in.

When I couldn’t, I’d subconsciously take their sadness home with me. Since I had a lotta pain of my own to deal with, by the day’s end I wasn’t about personal edification, talking to anyone, or helping any additional humans. My reality consisted of feeling badly when I couldn’t help someone and feeling worse when people who had ish far worse (like cancer) handled it far better than I handled my bulging discs and a 9 to 5.

To tune out the mind misery, I’d flip a switch and let the High Def I.Q. reducer wash over me. A funny Faris flick, some standup, and a Workaholics marathon from bed made for an excellent weekend itinerary.

So, it was no surprise to me when I was reading this article about another chick working in P.T. at Belvoir (‘cept she was – ya know – a real doctor) who described the same sentiment – needing to come home, silence the phone, and zone out to canned laughter.

“Compassion fatigue”, she called it.

The chick mentioned helping wounded vets coming back from war who were dealing with PTSD and severe injuries. Then, she recounted meeting this one kid called Kai who liked movies as well. Kai suggested a specific one to her (which she thought it was gonna be an excellent antidote to the compassion fatigue). It ended up being a Nazi tale.

Overall, the article was excellent.

Really excellent – till, of course, I was Rickrolled by this bit:

“…looking all around.”

Holy sniper rifle.

It makes sense though. And I couldn’t come up with any better of a response than she did. When I was younger, I didn’t get why my dad dropped into a mid-distance gaze when we’d talk about war or why he’d wake up in a panic at the cacophony on Independence Day night. We even teased him about his reaction to firecrackers.

Now I feel like a total asshole about that.

Like, as in, I can’t aptly describe what an asshole I feel like. He detailed once, the story of his buddy dismantling projectile style into the foliage above them after an explosion. Because he conveyed the event with such emotional detachment, I couldn’t make sense of it. Now, I sorta can.

I mean, I don’t think you can go through a brain rape like that and come back with intact sanity. It’s inconceivable to me.

There’s this thing that happens in grown men who seem otherwise confident, secure, or even arrogant – if you ask them about what happened at war. They’d sooner talk about their daddy issues on a couch or tell the truth about that time they cheated on their wife than answer and emote honestly after an open-ended question about Vietnam or Fallujah. If you watch, you can see it happening – something perceptibly dies in their eyes as they cross their own cognitive dissonance, discarding all the horrifying imagery that branches tandem to the word “war”.

They are hunting for the plausible but false answers they wish were true.

And that’s what they’ll tell you instead.

In a totally, totally different way, it’s how I imagine astronauts feel returning to Earth (bear with me) – I mean that paradigm earthquake of perspective that rocks your idea of the rock we live on. Be it placid like the cosmos or violent like Vietnam – once you’ve seen a whole ‘nother world, you must realize how meaningless the charade everyone agrees to believe in is.

I guess this is why many soldiers forced to fight a war they don’t believe in it – return full-on patriotic. Once stuck in remote location and subjected to the bowels of inhumanity, camo inculcation hits quick. But it’s probably welcome by that point. As humans, we need to make moral sense of things.

And if causing pain lacks purpose, how can we live with ourselves?

But where baby boomers complied with urges to return and reemerge with the ‘murican dream like a piece of Play Doh, modern soldiers are less likely to shoe away pain so seamlessly. They may not break out the Kleenex, but they’re understandably reluctant to pretend they haven’t just touched down from some parallel universe. They stay connected to it – even if just by relating to the familiar horrors of a Hollywood creation.

You could go to a land where your buddy’s decapitated head remains agonizingly animated. Or you could rocket somewhere that reminds you we’re all forged outta the same fucking stars – not so separate as we think. Either must make you wonder “how can I go back to that make believe life?” Do you return to the fake game? Become a revolutionary? Sit on the sidelines like some pensive sage wallflower?

After observing eternity or depravity alike, the whole political floor show, dazzling idols of Hollywood, and rapidly evolving Idiocracy… it has to be nauseating. Because any such event is an event horizon. You pass. You never truly return.

And you go mad wondering which life is real and which is the dream.

#inowneedmindlesslaughter