Knackered Shares the ‘Battle Cry’ with Benzos

   Hey there, Knackered here.  We all share a resounding ‘battle cry’ that is repeated in many posts and replies.  It reiterates the desire of all of us in this hellacious journey we’re on.  And it sums up the end goal for all of us: “We just want our lives back!”

   Having said this an untold number of times myself, I’ve paused a bit to consider the ramifications of just what this might hold for me personally.  And I’ve found myself running a bit off the rails in the process.

   If I was ‘love bombed’ by the Benzo genie right now and gifted with three wishes as to which ‘life’ I would choose to return to, I’d probably find myself in a quandary as to just what to say.

   What can be said of the stages of life I’ve passed through and what sorts of memories would allow me to want to return there?  I believe all of us have passed through many ‘lives’ on the journey to where we currently find  ourselves, but for myself I find my memory fickle.

   My ‘coming of age’ years had great moments, but were in actuality fraught with anxiety over everything from acne to social acceptance by my peers.

   My twenties were a great times as well, but lurking in the background were the early married years, night classes in graduate school, and the nightmare of trying to establish myself in a teaching career.

  Thirties saw us raising two wonderful kids and remodeling an ancient starter home.  Both my wife and I still shudder at our late nights spent painting and tearing out walls while we discussed the latest school reports our kids brought home.

   And so it goes.  Great times, but held hostage by the reality of a mistaken, selective memory.  Sadly, the only thing I can remember with any certainty is that Benzos covered up my anxiety and allowed me to get through a substantial part of this.  They were great until ‘this’ arrived.  Maybe it’s just crappy Karma for something I did in a parallel existence. It’s quite possible, you know.

   Not to be a total downer of our hopes and dreams, let me relate a brief conversation I had during my college days with a friend who had just returned from an all expenses paid trip to Southeast Asia courtesy of the government.  He actually lived to tell about it.

   He told me that the only thing he remembered from his time of crawling through muddy rice paddies was a saying that they all paid homage to.  It went something like this:  “I hate where I am now; I love where I used to be.”  He laughed as he blew cigarette smoke in my face and walked away.

  That leaves me with the only acceptable take away from all this.  In reality, it’s all just about right now.  It’s all we’ve got, folks.  Somehow we’ve got to make the best of it and find some kind of livability in the moments  that we share.