Choke Hold

We’ve spent the last hour talking through emotions, Tom and I.  We’ve talked through the events of last night, where another apartment was rented for the sole purpose of another one night party.  This is a regular occurrence.  We’ve talked through all the feelings that nobody else can understand, not even friends who have spent three weeks in Ukraine adopting.  We’ve talked about what has helped and what has hurt us.  We’ve talked about how it might be when we get home and still cannot impart what’s happened, even face to face.  We’ve talked about our darkest moments.    

 We were tired enough to sleep through a normal party.  Music, voices I can ignore.  This was a something altogether different.  One guy was on some kind of drug that allowed him to sustain a maniacal, evil laughter for six solid hours.  It was paranormal.  Among those sounds, were others too inappropriate to describe.  We stuffed earphones connected to white noise devices at maximum volume, to no effect.  By 4:30 we hit a breaking point, both of us.  It was at that time that I turned on the computer to try to silence the violent thoughts we were struggling through.  But it opened the door for more ill thought out advice from well meaning people.

We cannot describe how we are being stretched and depleted.  You would have to go watch a movie that has you on the edge of your seat, gripped, crying, foregoing sleep and sustain that position for 21 days to have the slightest clue why we are unable to keep up appearances for the comfort of other people who are reading from the comforts of their own home, in their own country, with their own possessions.  Platitudes are not helping us.  Telling us what we’re doing wrong, how we could do it right, how you would do it differently is not helping us.

This scene from the movie Warrior might aid an insufficient imagination.  We feel like the brother who is losing the fight.  Please don’t respond with “You’re not losing the fight.”  We FEEL like the brother who is losing the fight.  We are fighting something that we love.  Not just fighting for something we love. We are FIGHTING something that we LOVE.  We have sustained dislocated joints, broken bones and torn muscles.  Our Father is watching but not preventing.  Our loved ones are NOT inside the ring with us, but helpless bystanders.  We can't break the choke hold.  We are exhausted and pinned.

Our brothers will hold us despite the sweat and the blood that is pouring off of us.  Our brothers will say nothing more than I’m sorry, I’m sorry, It’s okay, I love you.  You may be in the crowd cheering, but we can’t hear you right now through the pain.  We can only hear the ones that are holding us up and whispering in our ears.  We can only hear our brothers.