RA, short for rheumatoid arthritis, is my companion. I didn't ask her to come along for this ride,
didn't invite, imply or deserve her company -- one day she just crashed the
party and she never left. Then she went
totally nuts.
Who is this RA? Well
she is a misguided, confused, and nasty little thing who insists that she is
doing me a favor. She riles up my
internal army, MY own immune system, and gets them to march off to war. She INSISTS there is war. There is no war --
it is all in her head. But she insists and leads her equally confused army off
to battle every god damned day. And now she
thinks that I am the enemy. She is a lot like Hitler, she has a charisma that
instills a fervor in her followers -- they never question her; they never doubt
her; they just rally and roll. They no
longer listen to me, their genetic master. They have forgotten the common
language we spoke for 27 years. She is a
powerful leader and I have utterly lost control of the army. Wasn't this my
party?
There are times it seems they have retreated into the hills
-- sending out only small guerilla forces, engaging in small skirmishes in
random places. They really are insane. I think those times they are just in
training, getting stronger, more organized and more determined. Damn this girl
is messed up. I have tried to talk to
her, reason with her but she is convinced that I am part of a great conspiracy
to rid the world of her. She is
right. For a while I would have been
willing to reason with her -- now I want her dead. Drawn, quartered and offered up to the devil
himself. I have to keep those thoughts to myself though. I must continue to be kind, to be gentle and
to be patient. When I get riled somehow she
knows it. She has spies who send
messages back to camp. She knows there
is a price on her head but I have to make certain she doesn't know that it is
me who wants to collect that bounty. Hell I don’t want the money -- I just want
her dead. The moment she perceives a threat she raises holy hell.
She is mean too and narcissistic; everything has to be about
her. When something else is going on,
when I am down, when I am struggling with some emotion or other physical pain
she has to put on a bigger show. She
hates it when someone else gets the attention.
Again, she must have spies in every region of my body who run back to
her and tell her that she is losing her limelight… She thinks the whole world
is hers anyway and any sort of perceived weakness must be destroyed. So when I am weak she is more hell-bent than
ever. Sick, sick, sick.
What is crazy is I don't know where she got her training! She is a bit like Mendel too -- a mad
scientist. She breeds and produces an army at an uncanny rate. She must be gestating them in jars or
something -- Brave New Fucking World. I
have had to resort to buying my army -- hired guns really and I can't seem to
buy them fast enough to keep pace with her production rate. They do their best
in a land that is not their own -- their heart isn't in it -- it isn't their
land they are defending. Think about,
she has invaded my own land with my own people and turned them against me. My hired
army is very expensive and she knows it.
I don't have the luxury of releasing my army for surprise attacks. They show up, regularly schedule once a month
-- I inject them into my thigh, hoping that they can seek her out and destroy
her.
My army is usually moderately successful. They take out a lot of her forces -- but with
that breeding factory she has she never runs out of soldiers. She never has to go into battle herself
either. She just sits on her throne,
eating Turkish Delight, ordering her minions to do her bidding. I on the other hand am exhausted after 27 years
-- I am in every single skirmish, battle and scrap. I am beat. I grow old; she never ages. There is no end
to this war. She is betting on the come
that I will give up, retreat, bruised and battle-weary. If I do that I give up all my land…and my
land is me. So I have no choice but to fight.
I wish she could see the land she claims to defend is being
destroyed by her. There are regions that
will never recover -- there is just too much damage. The grass will never grow; the waters never
run clear, they are gnarled outcroppings of brutality. Yet as damaged as they
are she still leads battles to those pathetic places and damages them even
more. These places are now filled with brambles of rusty barbed wire, craters
and polluted soup that was once the lubricant of the life that lived there. She
doesn't care.
I write this from a weary camp of soldiers who need to be
fed. We are shivering, our boots are
worn and our supplies are low. The mystery is when I feed them, sometimes her
army seems to get into the soup line too.
When I feed my army, sometimes hers gets stronger. There are certain foods that seem to make them
uber warriors and sometimes I never know what that super-food is until it is
too late. Her army is ever-changing --
mine is the same every month. We do the
best we can. It takes so much time and
money to train my army that advances in strategy are rare and sometimes
dangerous -- if you get an untested army in there you never know what else they
might do. That is a chance I cannot
take. I have lost too much already.
My hope, well there are many, but I guess my primary hope is
that she doesn't damage this land to the point where it is not worth
defending. I have slowed her army but
there is no way to stop them. This war will never, not ever end. It ends when the land dies and with that
would go everything. They never sleep, I don't think she even has to feed
them. They live off the morsels they
snatch from me. I don't know how she
does it. They flourish under the worst of circumstances.
The first thing I feel every morning is the war, the ravages
of now decades of battle. I have to live
each day with the battle but not IN it.
There are times when all I can do is fight -- those times suck. They are times when nothing else seems to matter
but the fighting -- her narcissistic nature loves those times. But each time, I have to deliberately trudge
through the carnage and continue to pretend that other things matter…until they
do.
So it is off to another battle again today. Maybe this one won't be as bad as the
last. Maybe worse -- but it is mine to
fight. My army gets reinforcements
soon. Hopefully that will buy me some
relative peace…they seems to have lost their edge of late but that happens from
time to time. Here's hoping they are
more effective this month. I would hate
to have to change battle strategies again.
I hope she hasn't figured out how to beat this one… I am running out of
options. She never runs out of options
and never has to change her strategy. It
isn't fair but this isn't a gentleman's war.
If there were rules she wouldn't follow them anyway.
Love your battle weary general…
Kyle
No comments:
Post a Comment