This is just a note about a good writer and a great friend, Woodman419.
Personal Counseling was what he did, and it's what I needed. It was the reason we met, and it was the foundation of our relationship. He was going to help me? We'll see about that. The complication was that I wasn't going to allow someone I didn't know, to get near my brain, much less inside of it.
Circumstances make for unusual friendships, I'll go with that. Maybe Doc and I were not destined to be friends, but the times we had together morphed into something strong enough to endure all of life's faces. We could parlay a dinner in the dark corner of a quiet restaurant, into a world-saving conversation about being in someone else's moccasins for awhile. Like through a grocery store check-out line with 53 cents worth of bread and 55 pennies to pay. That kind of thought makes for a good conversation and a great friendship. Anyway, he helped me get from my PT stress into prioritization of 'what was important'... 'what you can change' ...and so forth, and I helped him understand that, 'life's what it is, so deal with it."
From then on, regardless of where we were or what we were doing, we were brothers, closer than blood. More like kindred spirits, on a mission to the same place. Fortunately, surrendering hopes and dreams was not something either of us would do. I guess you could say, 'not in our DNA', but more commonly in my vernacular, 'failure is not an option'.
Looking back, it was a good thing our conversations led us to prepare for unusual outcomes, because --it happens. I retreated to the prison in my mind, which was built from my own shadows from the past, but was a prison, none-the-less. When I was out of touch, Doc ended up being accused of something he actually did do, and then punished for something he didn't. It was bad. Cost him more than everything. It was a place where I couldn't even find his 'six', much less protect it.
He survived two bad accidents and ended up looking at the bottom of Hell from under it. But, like I said, we never lost the dreams. Stubbornly, Doc held on through some mindset, could have been madness. He always questioned that too much sanity might be madness. At any rate, he eventually realized it wasn't getting better. Then he remembered our talks about survival, and the dreams that could not be forgotten, he didn't. He fashioned a shovel from an unfamiliar voice and started digging until he finally surfaced. Then he knew where the voice came from, because he'd actually heard it all along.
Whew!
It's hard to describe the experience when you climb out of yesterday and through to tomorrow. Like a marathon runner "hitting" the wall. After it, the motions become more fluent and less painful. Explanation is difficult. But in my mind, the spoken or written have trouble staying up with the thinking. I take comfort in the fluidity of thought only to become frustrated by my inadequacy in communication.
Anyway, when Doc broke through, he was leaning on the alter rail at the Church of Pappacito while reflecting on "My Friend The Wind" by Saint Demis Mousos. He looked at me in a way that only true friends understand, and gazed right through me as I wiped a 'thing' from my eye. His words were simple, "Do you know what just happened?" I nodded yes and asked him, "How are you, Doc?" He looked at me the way he had many times before and responded, "Wyatt, I am rolling." I knew he was back and he knew that I knew. It was a pure moment.
We are both grateful to our God for his interference in our attempts to totally screw up our lives. We know He continues to stay with us as we search our way through an existence where willful ignorance and systemic corruption are a norm. Talk about madness. (That blog exists for another day.) Although by different modes of transportation, we continue on the same path, recognizing our need for God and each other.
So... now, he'll start writing again and hopefully give me his version of "The Great Escape." And, after a two year ordeal, he can count on me to be waiting for another 'chance meeting'.
LoneWolf