So I have been incommunicado from my site for the last month.  For those of you who might have been wondering where I went…  I took a short vacation from the war, seeing as how I’ve been holding my post for nearly the last two years straight without a break except for the occasional trip into town or during my stay with Magdalene House in Red Deer, and trying to reset my life.  While foreign and domestic policy might be absolutely fascinating, it also serves to remind me just how fricking broke I am.

In the meantime and in between time on the global stage…  well, things are just getting worse, really.  As previously noted, the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians are working together cooperatively to create new trade deals to sidestep their respective sanctions.  The BRICS Nations have been very busy over the past month as well, solidifying themselves across the board, and the ASEAN nations are working in lockstep.  It seems that the trade deal that Canada quietly worked out with China in 2012 which was only announced last year is close to becoming finalized.  And overall, to me at least, it appears as though Canada and the USA are essentially that kid who didn’t get invited to the popular girl’s birthday party with the rest of the class…..

Oh well.

On the Federal level in Canada, we are currently looking down the barrel of an election year, with the campaigners flinging mud so thick that it’s really rather difficult to tell what anyone’s platform on anything really is.  The Mefloquine issue – which I’ll be honest, there has yet to be a politician who has even whispered the word – has largely been ignored while the nation frets about the new spy bills the Conservatives are attempting to push through in record time and the whole issue with ISIS/Daesch – while ignoring the fact that our economy is well…  let’s just say that about a month or two ago, NATO Council of Canada felt the need to remind us that “The economy sucks and it’s not getting any better”.

On a completely different side note…  I am so tired of reading on a daily basis “Stop living in the past”.  I don’t live in the past; I live in my writing and in music and poetry and in dance.  My PTSD has never been about living in the past.  It’s largely been a matter of waking up one day to discover that the life that I had and knew was built on something less stable than a house of cards and that all of the relationships that I had then were suspect.  Going through serious trauma, losing everything you thought you were defined by, and all the relationships that make up your world in less than a year will do things to you.  PTSD isn’t about living in the past; it’s about trying to figure out how your past led you to your future and what the hell do you do with that information while you’re dealing with everything else you have to cope with, like taxes and beauracrats and debt.  It’s about being able to pull glass out of a car crash victim without blinking, but jumping out of your skin when your cell phone rings.  It’s about not reacting to everything and everyone, and still carving out a life for yourself.  It’s about being treated like an invalid one minute and a superhero the next… when goddamn it, you’re only a person trying to get by.  it is about dragging my ass out of bed every day whether or not I want to or not, asking myself “Is today going to be the day that he makes good on his threats?” and forcing myself to do physio.  It is being a mile from home and having the nerves in my busted up left side go numb and falling on my face.  It is trying to negotiate a world that has no room for creative minds in the body of martial artists.