Everyone has nightmares, right?

And when they never turn off, it gets bad, fast.

Night sweats. Waking in a panic. Sleep deprivation. An odd noise sends terror up your spine and says “fight or run” to no danger at all. Trembling.

A drink will fix it, and doesn’t. It can’t. How about all of that when on line at the grocer? Driving… at work or relaxing?

It’s the scene that plays behind the eyes that try to see reality, when the internal movie blares. Squinting, to look beyond the images that play on a never resolving loop that wracks the heart again and again unable to change the pain to a different resolution.

Yahoo News reports: “Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.”

What I did, what I failed to do. The hollow ring of hopes unanswered and the pain of unchangeable outcomes. It’s all so human, all so familiar. The degrees are the difference we all have a little,… a friend we wronged, a pet we feel we failed. That thing that happened we relive again and again till it stops or doesn’t no rhyme. No reason. Extrapolate the pains out to a math factor of intolerable as a degree. We have not found a cure for the horror of war, the things that men have seen. We only know the source. One more honest and good reason for peace. War continues to live in the minds that made it.

Our men fight wars we haven’t been behind much. The country fought them anyway. When veterans came home from Vietnam, the country was still hot with division then too.

In college, my education was shared with men who were a few years older than everyone and they were sad. They came to school with purpose though and as they had trouble staying focused, some failed or dropped out. None of these guys seemed like they enjoyed any aspect of the war but they had been drafted and they performed as required. Befriending a few, they always seemed round pegs now squeezing poorly into square slots.

We treat our vets as a living embodiment of how we felt about the wars they were sent to fight. It’s unfair. They are our brothers, fathers and husbands, uncles. Moms and daughters as well. When the wars are never on our land, it’s hard to reconcile and understand. It’s difficult also, to come home where war is simply not understood unless you too are military. You become that. Not something you did at one time, war was something made and people are the makers.

I see photos, memes about war in Ukraine. Slava Ukrani, glory to Ukraine!

A war of defense. A war not questioned in Ukraine. Unquestionably heroes all. Is there less twisted of a mind when the war is thought to be righteous by all? When the war makers are held more tightly? Do they squirm less inside? Is that the fix we medically missed?

Recalling also the second world war not so long gone when old me was small and still at home. Mother opened the door several times to crumpled looking overcoats with men in there someplace, looking for work, for kindness. More than once there was a warm meal and a glass of milk in exchange for a few bundles to be moved or some such exchange. Then off, never to be seen again.

If ever there was a journalist that could tell the news from the front…how’s the war really going? Tell us what’s it’s like. It is from the tip of the spear we need to hear. Not the one with the mic, the one with the camo. When the most highly trained, the most decorated, the one who has seen so much takes a moment to say, to plead,… we use a label? PTSD and feel we’re done. Yeah, we’re ok, wink. We get it. HE has that thing that makes him out of control. No, dear darlings. Collectively we are out of control and he is the proof.

He was the best and the brightest. He thought this through. It is his message.

Our best and brightest. They usually also have a receptive and caring heart. They are the best in every way- or not? Proud patriots come with big you know whats. No not guns, hearts. They are trained to kill and protect, but also to teach and learn from other cultures they teach to fight for themselves and take care of their communities. The caring well trained man, Mathew Livelsberger staged a message to the public. He acknowledged the inability of the public to hear anything unless a super splashy spectacle was made so he authored one.

The act of self immolation, a suicide fire, as protest or more specifically to gain attention to your cause in a final act. Crazy desperation is one sides story of explanation. A hero’s message is another coin side. The act itself has history. Not an act done casually or for fancy, it’s a staged event by a most serious person in their final act.

“Thich Quang Duc was a Buddhist monk protesting in South Vietnam, when his image captivated the world. Malcolm Browne won the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963 photographing Duc committing an act of self-immolation, burning to death.”

Like ISIS can be American made now, so can a Buddhists protest platform become ours. It has before.

“Morrison (December 29, 1933 – November 2, 1965) was an American anti-war activist. On November 2, 1965, Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War, leading to his death.”

Desperate to save lives from suicide, we say the moment can pass. No one needs to die, it’s said. Someone should take the call.

This is the call we need to take, the one from Mathew. It’s a clear message.

He indicates we are doing it to ourselves. He indicates who’s hands are at the wheel. Not everyone has understood the real truth about Trump and his associates. The echo chamber has been strong and protected. A new reality is replacing a now cracked version.

Here is the Yahoo article that refers to the fallen soldier’s phone with his sentiments, which was accessed in the cloud.

And lastly, the ballet Apollo, about the god Apollo, a good fellow to conjure. “Apollo had many powers, but the power to heal, power to prophesize, and the power to make music were among his most important. He was also a great archer.”

Here, Jacque D’Amboise and Suzanne Farrell of NYCB, in Apollo a ballet by George Balanchine.

And the 1963 version of the full ballet. Same dancers in an earlier time.

Thanks for being here. I wouldn’t be here without you.

❤️