J's Turn

Another necessary introduction is the only other person I've known nearly as long as Margo. My bright star since spring of '95, he has opened doors in my soul I had long since forgotten, and others I had nailed shut from the inside. We met when we were both in the US Army (it really does stand for Yes My Rotten Ass Signed Up, backward), and stuck together during thick, and thicker. Who would not fall in love, strolling around the Monterey Peninsula, enjoying the midnight fog, smelling cypress trees, salty air, and taffy? Life was perfect.

When my injury in basic training was misdiagnosed over and over again, and I was getting slowly more crippled both in body and mind, he held me, talked me down from the ledges, and when all else failed, he drove me around in the rain all night, in a car going nowhere and full of beautiful music. He was there when Dr. Mengele, disguised as a pain clinician at the Darnall Army Hospital at Ft Hood, TX, tried to play chiropractor with her elbow in my back, severing spinal nerves that ultimately led to respiratory seizures and trips to the emergency room...

He used to dress me sometimes when I could barely move, to get to formation in the mornings, and would curse the officers who would still make me go to the field. He held my hand, and my body, while other doctors used medieval torture devices that poked needles throughout my spine, while I writhed face down in the chair, so they could find the nerves that weren't connected. He was my therapist, my cheerleader, chauffeur, nutritionist, physician, priest... he heard things come out of my mouth that would make sailors and porn stars run crying -- and even when some of that acid was shot in his direction, he stayed. I was confused, breaking, unravelling... un-becoming.

My ETS date came up before my medical board finalized, and I was offered the chance to re-up in order to finish the process, and what do you think I said? Thank you, drive through! And proceeded to run up credit cards on alternative therapies that he would find anywhere, and everywhere for me... until holy cow, I was able to stand for several hours a day! Then lo and behold, I was working full time, and going back full time to get my Bachelor's. And then it was his turn to face some demons, and for me to be supportive. Today you would hardly know anything was that wrong with me, except for the mental scars, and the chasm between our damaged personalities that in late 2006 ended us as a couple.

Now before you go thinking this is too tragic for Shakespeare, know that we split before it was too late... before we ended up hating each other, and losing all that rich personal and emotional history. Like in the movie (dammit, which one...) where Susan Sarandon's character says that we all have to have a witness to our lives... we are that for each other. We have lived together off and on since, not that it has always been smooth. He is one of the kindest-hearted, sentimental people I know, who is sometimes too sensitive for this world, and its suffering, even though he doesn't always know how to express those feelings.

Now maybe you have some idea why, with a connection deeper than this surface life, when I hear some distant family member or aloof friend utter disparaging words regarding us continuing this indefinable relationship, I have just two words for them.

And if I've done any justice here, you will know exactly what they are.

Yep, you got it!