#gtpat

They wheeled me into the operation room. They hadn’t sedated me, and they weren’t going to. They had only paralyzed me. I would be awake, for all of it.

People weren’t forced to join the military anymore; there was no draft. But they had to get disposable bodies somehow. They called it a “procedure”, they acted like it was going to help. In reality they broke you into little pieces, put your pieces in metal skins and sent you off to wherever they needed you. They told us, “You will only have to give an hour of your time to save the country!” They told us, “No real people will have to get hurt anymore!” They presented it like a miracle. It wasn’t.

I had to be awake for it, mentally at least. Some fancy jargon about brain synapses and conciousness. Not stuff I understand. It was only going to be an hour. Surely I could last an hour? But it didn’t feel like an hour, it felt like days, or weeks, I honestly couldn’t tell. They found pieces of me- in memories and dreams- and took them out, giving them their own life. A six year old me crying about a broken toy: the memory was suddenly gone but I could still hear the crying. Twelve years old, getting my first kiss: gone- but I could still feel the butterflies. One me came from a dream, this one was clad in purple armor, ready to fight sea monsters (it was a weird dream) and then I couldn’t remember it anymore but I could still feel the adrenaline. This went on for a timeless length. Each one getting closer to the me I am now, and the closer to me it got the more painful it became. Until I was in agony, unable to cry out, unable to clench my jaw, unable to shed tears of pain, unable to do anything but lie there.

Then it was over. I wish I could say that was the worst of it but that was just the beginning. After the procedure I thought it was all done with, I gave so much of myself- literally- to protect my country. But then I was deployed. Well, not me, but the other me’s, the-the pieces, or memories, with their metal skins; were deployed. Have you ever been to war? Have you ever known somebody who has? I used to be able to answer no to those questions. But now I don’t only live my life as me, I live as that six year old, that twelve year old, and every other version they took from me. In my dreams I see myself battling and cries from the real people I fight echo in my mind. They carnage and the empty pain that comes with a fallen comrade, all became seared in my real memory. Then it started happening while I was awake, I would suddenly not be at work or school or home anymore; I would be on the battlefield. Although I saw myself moving through my eyes as the other me, the real me would be paralyzed as I was during the procedure. Stuck between two realities, two timelines, two lives but unable to control either one. The longest “episode” , they called them, had lasted an hour. It was terrifying.

Then one of me died. Or was lost. Or stopped working. I don’t know what you want to call it but it wasn’t there anymore. And when it stopped, that version of myself I had been was taken with it. I forgot that part of who I am. And I changed- how can we know who we are or who we want to be unless we know and understand who we used to be? I began to feel lost. Then another one of me stopped and it only got worse. I can’t even remember most of my life now. I don’t know who I was and I don’t know who I am. It’s impossible to live life fractured.

Oct. 1: disinterest

She saw the blood, saw the pain, and heard the screams. And she once it would have mattered to her, once she would have cared. She remembered in the past when she had. And it had been too much. To much pain, to much fear, to much guilt, and too much shame. She remembered the day she stopped caring. She had made a decision that day to stop. Ever since that day she couldn’t feel anything anymore. And no matter how much she tried today; with blood and screams and tears all around her- she could not bring herself to care.