Living through the Excellence Filter ain't easy...

One spring evening in 2006, I sat in my virtual house in a world called "There.com" talking to my virtual dad, the very wonderful man that everyone knows as Stungthumbz. After knowing him for close to ten years now, I really do look to him as a father-figure and I have learned to never doubt him. The wisdom he has shared with me over the years has been priceless and he is bar-none the greatest father ever created. When I was down, the bomb had gone off, my ex hit the door and I had been abandoned, Papa Stung was there for me. He authored one of the two recommendation letters that got me into UNLV that I am grateful to him every day for.  In turn I have honored his faith in me by bringing up my GPA to a 3.8 and once again being placed on the Dean's List Honors for another semester of straight A's.

But, I'll never forget that spring evening for the rest of my life.  I was still in the decompression stages of recovery from the six months of hyper-accelerated aging I did while sitting on the Fall 2005 Members Advisory Board or "MAB". I even have the mug to prove it.

My MAB Mug. Every time I lift it to my lips,
I think of the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

As usual, and what had become the norm during my six months of what I can only term as 'that special place in hell they always warn you about', he was sitting as my counselor trying to ease my anguish as I sat completely aghast at how poorly human beings like to treat each other all too often.  When I asked him how grown adults could turn an online world into no more than a virtual high school, he chuckled, probably amazed at the naivete with which I have always seemed to look at the world.

That night I was especially perplexed. You see, in a virtual worlds sense, I was born into a very rich heritage. One that springs from the greatest and best-selling adventure games of the 20th Century, Myst. Before I go another step though, one of the reasons why Myst was such a hit is because it is pure, unrefined, unfiltered, MENSA-level bio-digital jazz. I mean Myst takes spatial problem solving to a whole new level that, believe it or not, has taught me how to see things spatially and through it have become a very, VERY good real-world spatial problem solver. It's a trip when you use what I call "D'ni Logic" in the real world to solve a problem within two seconds of looking at it that someone else with an engineer's or mechanic's mind can't quite solve after they've spent two hours on it.  Actually, it's pretty freakin' trippy when they look at you and say, "How the hell did you do that?" and you bashfully reply, "D'ni Logic?" only to have them walk away and throw their hands in the air cursing, "MYST! Again!" Hey, I can't help it, it's how I think!

Now you have to understand, after playing Myst and it's sequels, Riven, Exile, Myst IV: Revelation and Myst V: End of Ages, then diving directly into the accompanying canon made up of the three Myst novels, The Book of Aitrus, The Book of Ti'ana and the Book of D'ni, finally compiled into one asThe Myst Reader, you would have learned that the authors, Rand and Robyn Miller were the children of a pastor (I believe he was a Methodist minister). However, what they did in retrospect with Myst was brilliant, they to blended old stories and common sense universal truths from the bible with a unique viewpoint that completely divorced the religious underpinnings, then rolled it in the Roman Empire, resulting in a rich, cultural memoir with outstanding ethics without the fire, brimstone, "sins" and punishments that we expect from religion as a whole. The whole franchise literally sprang to life as a living, breathing guide of the Seven Virtues, bringing joy and a humble pride for the reader or the player to excise from themselves the moral ills illustrated in the storyline. Rand and Robyn had, in their genius, made the Seven Deadly Sins the true antagonists of the story giving each very hard, gut-wrenching moment that much more depth and impact, hence glorifying the virtues in a way that you not only recognized them, but you wanted everyone else to see that they radiated from you in every way.

For a girl like me, the entirety of the Myst Universe or what some call the D'niverse, was a sight for sore eyes. As I've written many times before, Myst came into my life very unexpectedly.  After a summer of boredom in Montreal where I just kept eating after game title after game title, the ex brought it home for me, hoping it would sate my appetite for a time-sink. It sure as to hell did! But, not long after he gave me Myst, a series of commercials began to play on the television:

When I heard Peter Gabriel's "Burn You Up, Burn You Down" and saw what I would find out later was the age of Teledahn and its mushroom-filled wonderfulness, my jaw dropped. After delving into the story of Atrus and his sons Sirrus and Achenar via the very dated graphics in Myst, I drooled at the thought of getting my hands on a brand new edition of the franchise.  If Myst in it's antiquated form was that compelling and that hard, I thought that the latest edition would probably be downright noodle baking. And, it was. When I got Uru: Ages Beyond Myst on Christmas Day 2003, I squealed with delight, not caring about what  else was under the tree. After a minor glitch of having to get a new graphics card, I was right about the whole noodle baking thing...it took me almost a week to get through what is known as "The Cleft."

Admittedly, I was behind the curve in learning my D'ni. The other players around me were old veterans of the franchise, heck when I first met Ace, even he said he had played Myst. But the people around me? Oh ho ho! They could read the numbers, some of them could even read the glyphs that after almost 10 years of seeing it all the time, I still can't do. The Numbers? Heavens yes, I can go one to 25, even doodling them in my notebooks in class, but the letters? Oh hell no. Too damn hard. I've already got English, German and French whizzing around in my head like angry hornets, to put D'ni in there? Oh forget it! That's why I have the folks over at the D'ni Linguisic Fellowship, or DLF, for my translation needs, or I can just put up the RAWA signal that looks like this:

This is the RAWA signal, only to be used in dire lore or linguistic emergencies.

If set out properly, the RAWA signal will sometimes spawn a nice man named Richard that (if I've set out the correct pizza bait) will swoop down and translate a word or two for me.

Okay, I'll let it out of the bag, RAWA is also known as Richard A. Watson, who is just all that and a plate of cookies.  He's actually the guy who probably has more stacks of books in his house than I do because he's the guy who mashed together English, Hebrew and Sumarian to create the D'ni language in which any Cavern dweller worth their salt will at least know "Shorah B'shemtee" which roughly means "Peace to you all." On top of that, he's at the heart of the lore for the Myst Universe, a lot of it coming from his head.  So you KNOW he's on my top 5 list of people I want to meet before I die because I have to thank him for a whole, whole lot of good things that what he's taught me through Uru that I've paid forward to so many people.

Besides the fabulous RAWA, there's Rand Miller, the source of all things Myst and I'm sorry, but I gotta say it, Rand is hot. He just is. Like Chris Metzen from Blizz, Rand belongs on the hotties list in like a thousand different ways, not just because of his handsome mug. My fave is when he went through his long hair phase a couple of years ago and he hugged my Aunt Dana. I fainted in my seat when I saw the photo, that lucky bug!  Sorry Auntie Dana, but I'm posting the pic. When I saw this photo on her Facebook feed, I just said, "OMG, that is SO right on."

Auntie Dana being hugged by Rand Miller.  Had I been her, I would have fainted dead away.

Anyhow, I could go on about all of the fabulous people inside the Myst Universe, but I'm getting off track.  HEY, someone's got to steer the boat around here!

So, going through Uru, and I really think everyone should, if you are ready to hear the message, you're going to get a big one. It's all about living without pride. It's all about setting aside greed. It's all about giving more than you take and contributing to something larger than yourself. If you're ready, it will teach you the art of the selfless. If you sit down and actually set aside your doubt, put down all of your assumptions and prideful leanings and just listen to the story, read all of the journals and really, and I mean REALLY breathe it in, it will change your life for the better in so many ways I can't describe it.

All I know is, when I go into Cavern, it's sacred. Two years ago, I wrote what it was like for me to spend some time in Cavern, and you know, it's still the same for me.  When you go in, it's like church, you don't cuss in there. EVER. If I caught someone swearing it up in front of Kerath's Arch or The Great Tree, I'd slap their head off their neck, you know the one I'm talking about, where you're blabbing it up and your mother or father comes up behind you and slaps you in the back of the head, glaring at you, going "Straighten up," as if you just swore in front of a pack of nuns.

Back in the day though, Cavern was completely sacrosanct. It was one of those things you were grateful was there. I mean the truth of the matter is that Uru was like the fourth or fifth virtual world to ever exist, now there are hundreds and oh man, it had more bugs than a bait shop.  If you didn't run into a bug at least 10 times a day you were lucky!  Heck, if you didn't crash to desktop or have some foul thing happen to you, it was damn near a miracle.  OH, but then if you tried to get in to Gahreesen with a crappy computer? You were going to spend near on to a whole day trying to get it loaded because it still is the HUGE king Daddy of the ages with more mouse holes in that place than a block of swiss cheese.  You could definitely tell they had Gahreesen on the slate to be one hell of a transportation hub.  I could go on for days, but Prolog was something else that I still sit back amazed that while yeah, the Myst community has a few know-it-all boneheads running around, (who doesn't), it was the most perfect place I had ever experienced.

But the most remarkable thing about being in Cavern back in its glory days is that there was not one single "griefer" in the lot.  Now, this serves my point (which I swear I am getting to) because in most online worlds, oh I'd say around 99 percent of them, have a malicious sub-set of sub-human animals called "griefers."  They're the ones who run around and can't help but drop their fly and tinkle all over things, other people and overall just be annoying so-and-so's that you want to shove off of a cliff without their relto books. (Oh, for those of you who haven't gone and played Uru yet: If you fall off a cliff or do anything that will kill you, your avatar will do what's called a "panic link", grabbing their relto book (which you ALWAYS have on your person), which links them to their home called "relto" thereby saving your life. So basically, you can't die. But without a relto book?  SPLAT.)

But, someone fumbled the ball, screwed the pooch, stepped on their whatevers or a combination of all three which resulted in a January day in 2004 that most Uruites, D'nizens, or whatever you want to call me and my people, were left devistated. Ubisoft, who was the publisher for Uru, decided to pull funding and by extension pull the plug on the whole thing.

Now when you've spent the amount of time my cavern family and I did in that world and were so synched to the message of Myst, how well did you think that message went over?  Yep, you've got it, like a dang rock.  Oooh, people were ticked.  10,000 of us left in the cold by the snap of someone's fingers. A whole community left to be blown in 100 different directions as we mourned the loss of our beloved world.

Some folks were smart, in the time before the big blackout, they sent out emissaries to all sorts of different worlds, praying we'd find one that would fulfill our needs.  Most emissaries came back with the choice between Second Life or There.com.  Being that Second Life had more socially "questionable" areas and a screwy interface, it left some folks with only one choice. There.  The rest? They took off to Second Life to enjoy avatars walking around like they had sticks planted up their rears and men actually saying out loud that they are dancing on their balls.  I kid you not.  But either way our family went, it splintered us in half.

Now, you have to realize that the gearshift between a wholly photo-realistic world and a cartoon-based one takes one heck of a bit of swallowing to take. Going from having five fully-articulating fingers to basically a "crab claw" consisting of a thumb, index finger and three fused together fingers was a stretch.  But with how intuitive the avatars were, breathing, nodding, even down to tapping their toes, it made it a bit easier swallowing the transition.

However, not everyone transitioned smoothly, and I'll be the very first one to put up their hand and admit that I didn't.  But it wasn't for the superficial look of the world at all.  It was, and I guess I'm a tad bit unique in this regard, purely due to ethical concerns. Okay yes, I looked at the crab claws I had inherited and went "WTF is this?  Who's idea of a sick idea joke is this? Three fingers?  Really?" But what I would find out later made the crab claw issue into no more than a minor blip on my radar screen.  What I found was whole groups of Uruites and D'nizens pushed back to the fringes of civilization; harassed, griefed, belittled and pushed away from everyone else until they finally colonized on an island far away from the rest of the inhabitants of the world. But, without a map, it makes it a little harder to realize how far they had been pushed.

With a map, it's a little easier to understand my frustration.
Map courtesy of Google Maps and There.com

Yep, now you're seeing the picture. The people who got harassed, belittled and treated like complete outsiders were driven relentlessly from the main island, past one more, all the way out to the very fringes of the world at the time. And on a little island that you can't even see with the naked eye on that map above the furthest point of that map, a small group founded Uru Island.  Oh, and if you dared to interact with the "natives" of that world and showed that you were from Uru?  You were branded an invader, an outsider, when everyone that came to our world were welcomed like long-lost family.  Now, I would be very wrong to say that ALL of the native inhabitants of There treated us that way, but the ones who didn't comprise a minuscule number.  Like Doc Celia says, we were a diaspora, a people without a home.  Every time we tried to make one, we were quickly bullied out of the way.

Now, you saw one of my hot button words in there, didn't you? Bullied. Worse than having the plug pulled, the last thing I had it in my heart to deal with were a pack of bullies and thugs. After seeing their attitudes and what they called a "world", I quickly surmised that they had intellects, by my estimation, the equivalent of the crab claws that they revered and called "hands", half-formed at best. You know me, I try my best not to be snobbish or say one thing is better than another. Every day I look high and low to make sure that I see the nutritional value in everyone I encounter.  From the furthest reaches of Comet Island to Saja, Tyr and beyond, the only true nutritional value I found in There was housed within the hearts and homes of people from Uru.

It was actually quite tragic. They were given this beautiful world, and instead of inviting people in to ensure its survival, they treated most newcomers like nothing more than shit beneath their shoes! Their welcoming islands were great examples of it. The moment you logged in, you were faced with swears, innuendo and conversation of a quality I consider "intellectually offensive." (and remember, I love a good redneck joke just like anyone else. Hell, I can tell raunchy stories with the best of them.)  I'm sorry, but it's the truth.  The last thing I want to see is a female avatar named "xox__Bitsy__xox" telling people rancid jokes or watching her beg for in-world currency by dancing in as nude of a way as the system allowed, bikini bottoms and a bust-only covering tanktop. Welcoming areas, good or bad are supposed to induce the consumer to SPEND their money in world, not to look at "Bitsy" and her foul mouthed friends while they were learning how to walk and following the incessant dinging of the interface as they learned the controls in which they could navigate the world.

But, thanks to a whole lot of folks whose cavern blood runs deep and true, they made There a lot more palatable than being left to its general "membership".  It was then I had insult added to injury.  Not only was I driving an avatar that didn't remotely resemble what I was used to, but when I tried my hand at creating in-world objects, I did it the old-fashioned Uru way, you walk up and ask to see if there are any resources you can look up to learn more. Oh boy, did I regret that one.  Upon learning that I was from Uru, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was "retarded", unable to learn and that I should go find the nearest rope and try pissing up it. Yep, that was my experience.  Lovely, huh?  But, you know me, I've been through worse. So, being as my cavern blood runs deep, I set myself up with Photoshop (hey what was my AA in Graphic Design for if I wasn't going to use it?) and scoured the Internet for some tutorials about online worlds asset creation. I started out just like everyone, I sucked. But with my good old-fashioned Uru-borne perseverance, I used my spatial problem solving skills and started to become better.  And better.  And better. Now decidedly, not the best, but what I made was wearable.

By then, it was early 2005 and we all headed off for the There real-life gathering in San Mateo, CA.  There amongst some "natives" I found my family.  Stung, Kitte, Kaylea, Doc Celia, Tae, Mejan, Petal, Squee, Soosi, June and a whole list of Uruites that I think showed up for each other more than they did for the Therians. (I know I did.)

Uruites in a foreign land.

All during the gathering, I argued for diversity. While going through the interesting process of learning asset creation I found that most individuals gravitated towards a single skin color rather than embracing the diversity of their actual roots.  Now remember, I'm from Uru whose letters spell "You are You" so to not abide and embrace one's own individuality was beyond me. After being in that online world for a year, one question eluded me: Why did I have to be some skintone because all of the clothes were made for just one? Ugh, caramel skintone, still six years later is the bane of my existence, second only to pridefulness. That's right, since the overwhelming population of the world preferred "carmel" skintone, all of the world's asset creators created clothing built specifically for that tone with little to no deviation. It had resulted into nothing more than a monochrome nightmare where myself and others pondered why it was we were being forced into a mold that we had absolutely no interest in conforming to.

I'll never deny for a day that I'm a maverick. I don't believe in conforming for conformity's sake.  Oh who am I kidding?  You've been along for the ride this far, so you tell me, how well do I take to being a lemming?  That's right, you'll probably find a cold day in hell before I ever become one! I figure there is a vast difference between belonging to a family and being a lemming. Lemmings just follow for the sake of the fact that the cliff is where everyone else is going.  A member of a family is a unique individual that has a mind of their own. Big difference.

So with my maverick mentality in tow, I spent an entire four days arguing the merits of diversity versus mind-numbing lemmingness. You know what?  King Lemming went and hid while I passionately argued things. (I still intimidate the crap out of him. LOL.) And while I enjoyed San Francisco, I came back with a heavy heart, knowing that unless Uru, by some miracle, came back, I was trapped in a world where it was okay to be a lemming. I stayed for only one reason, that's where my family was.

By that fall, I had been placed on the 2005 Fall Members Advisory Board where my duty was to be a conduit by which feedback went from the membership to the bosses at There's offices. We were supposedly there to make sure that the wants and needs of the membership were heard.  I had become a senator of sorts and oh was my docket full.  Besides a hundred million developer issues from the member content creation program, to landmark disputes to you name it, we had to handle them.  However, it seemed as the only folks really hitting the pavement to do their jobs was guess who?

Yeah, I had a really good time being on the scene watching other people rip each other apart over so much as the location of a portable housing zone. Or people who thought it was perfectly fine to use a world landmark as a, well hell, I'm just going to say it, somewhere to demonstrate not only their lack of taste but their immense lack of common sense and their pure lack of the remotest amount of manners or common courtesy. Over the course of six months, UoT battles notwithstanding, I had seen the worst of the human animal.

You know Bitsy at the starting area the year or so previous should have tipped me off, but nope, I hung in there for my family.  By the time my MAB term was over, I had become a rabid, snarling pit bull sitting at Stungthumbz feet, because between teaching students two hours every Saturday, the MAB every Thursday evening, and being shot at right, left and center for being an Uruite, my patience had finally seen its limits.

So here we are, right back where we started.  Me, Stung, my house and my overwhelming question, "Why were these people so ignorant?  Why is it that if there is no one in the physical vicinity to beat the crap out of them, do human beings insist on being such jerks on the Internet? Why were they so unwelcoming? Why weren't they like us from Uru?"

It was then that Stung laughed a little, like he always seems to do even years later, and said:

"Uru, and by extension the Myst Universe as a whole, is a sort of Excellence Filter. If you can survive all of the puzzles then go through what we have: open, closed, then opened again, then closed, then opened once again and so on; and still have a sense of humor to joyfully exclaim 'It's not a bug, it's a feature!', that's strength that is only found when you have stuck with it as long as we have. What we've been through has washed away those whose faith waned, it strengthened and rewarded the tenacity of those who did not give up, and along the way, it's brought out the worst in a few, but the very best in so many more. Those that remain are the ones who have been made better and stronger, more excellent, for the experience."

By a sheer freak occurrence, guess what happened six months later? Uru opened up again. Squealing with delight, I peddled my butt back home so fast it made people's heads swim. We invited people over, but as the very hysterical TCT Talk segment on the podcast said, "There was one girl who couldn't figure her way off of relto," which put us all into stitches it was so very pathetic, even when I thought of myself struggling in the Cleft all those years ago, was still damn funny because simply, she didn't even try to find answers or click on things, she just expected everything to be explained to her.

Six months later, Uru closed again.

Then it reopened again a little bit after that, but here's the kicker, the week Uru opened back up for the third time, guess who closed their doors?

There.

By all accounts for There to close in the same week Uru re-opened, to quote Doc Celia as she said on the podcast, "It was a damn miracle." Now, all of those prideful folks who had scoffed at us and pushed us to the far end of the world (as evidenced by the map and Doc Celia's book) were the ones who came to us looking for a home. Where they had never experienced what it was like for their world to go belly up, the same experience we have known all too often, they finally felt the crunch of losing what was dearest to them. Have I mentioned that pride kills?


As I watched and laughed a lot, sure enough, the excellence filter kicked in huge. Only downside? There are now griefers in cavern as whole new fan-made ages open up in MOULa or MystOnline: Uru Live Again.

But this brings me back to one simple fact. When we lost everything, we worked hard to stay together and keep our heritage. We didn't shrug it off, we held it close like a candle lighting the way in the darkness.

What I find so peculiar about all of this is that there are some people who are visibly interested in our world, others who couldn't give a darn, but when two fellas named Adrian and Patrick undertook the adventure of trying to bring our rich heritage to everyone via the silver screen, they forgot one thing...we're all called to the cavern for our own unique reasons.  Like we say in cavern, "Only Yeesha really knows why."  When you stand up and declare your love for the Myst Universe, like it or not, you're going to do your time in the the Excellence Filter; and out of experience I will tell you, it sure as to hell ain't easy.  It will chew you up, spit you out and put you back into it's mouth to be chewed up and spit out again. It is meant to do that.

Best line I know to describe the Excellence Filter is from Frank Herbert's Dune where they say, "Arrakis was made to train the faithful."  Same goes for any part of the Myst universe.  You have NO idea how many times I've said, "Uru was created to train the faithful." Only Yahvo knows how right I am about that.

But the overwhelming truth that lies amongst all of my experiences from Uru to There to World of Warcraft and beyond is that my Myst heritage sticks with me not because I'm sticking word-for-word to the canon, but because I adhere to its spirit and the base tenets described within it. How do we know to give more than we take? How did we learn how not to be prideful?  While the story of Aitrus, Catherine and Veovis is breathtaking, D'ni is more than just those three or Ghen or Sirrus or Achenar, even little Yeesha.  D'ni lives within the throng of explorers learning the backstory in the books of the Palace Alcove, it lives within the new explorer that found themselves on relto and fought their way to figure out how to get to Gahreesen and get their KI.

The whole point for Rand to get a Myst Movie made is to put butts in the seats and re-ignite interest in the franchise. He can't do that by telling an intricate story that you have to be a fan to get.  The biggest thing, whether the movie takes place on Myst Island, Releeshahn, Tehrahnee, Amateria, Stoneship, Age Five or on Ae'gura, it's the D'ni Technology, the damn fine roots and branches of Terokh Jeruth that the film "Thor" made all kinds of room for us to explore, that will motivate people to come and explore the ages and the wonderful backstory that we know and cherish on their own.

I feel real sorry for Adrian and Patrick, I really do.  But as I've said a thousand times, living in the Myst Universe is like getting lost at the world's coolest MENSA convention. But here, I'll pose the question to you: how much of the audience do you actually think would qualify for MENSA? Fellas, they're lemmings, they buy up their iWhatever and text themselves into an early grave.  How do you think the complex story of the fall would fare on ears that are nowhere near ready to hear the message? Remember, these are the folks who buy up pridefulness wholesale on their favorite reality shows and sate their greedy needs to one up their neighbors by placing themselves further in debt.

You have to approach bringing the Myst universe to everyone like you would any other complicated thing in the real world. It's like what Doc Cat did at the beginning of the semester in my Personal Growth class: she laughed it off and made light of it for one reason, and it's the same reason that idiot girl got stuck on her relto, people don't want to work for it, they don't want to be schooled, they want everything to be given to them on a silver platter. Once you get them in, then you hit them with the big guns.

So what, let Hollywood ignite the audience's imaginations by showing the city, by letting people see for themselves what it's like to watch someone actually link through a linking book. For heaven's sake, let them see the digging machines and our letters and numbers. Let them look at the cavern for the first time in a way that they can digest it.  That way, when they're ready, they'll be able to tackle our wonderful world with the respect it deserves.

You know, the Cavern has never been without drama, whether it was because of the storyline or the people who live there on a daily basis. The main thing to remember is that cavern blood is going to run deep no matter what you do. So, let it flow and let's see what we get back.

Personally, I place my faith in Rand, Robyn and Ryan with a dash of RAWA on the side. You know, lots of people cried like stuck pigs when Uru came out, hollering and screaming it wasn't right and so on...now where are they?

In cavern.

Living through the Excellence Filter ain't easy, but I'll tell you this, I'll take my Myst heritage to the bank any day of the week because it's damn good stuff.

Oh and by the way, if you were wondering about those little Therians?  Don't worry, they've got their world back, the only thing they don't and will never have back?

Me.

My cavern blood runs deep and true because I'm Myst-bred and Cavern Proud. So when that Myst movie comes out, I'm going to slap down my money to see it THEN judge it on its merits. The only thing I really want it to do is inspire the public to love the Myst Universe as much as I do and to care for its proud heritage so its' valuable lessons will be paid forward for generations to come.

Looking UP.

I know this is familiar to you. It has to be.

Humor me for a moment. Take a minute and really look around you. Don't take for granted that you know what is there...

Go ahead, you can do it. Put down the phone. Drop the iPad and back away slowly. Pull your head up from whatever technology you are using and...

L O O K    A R O U N D.

I think I just heard the male thirty-something in the back squeal like a girl and run for cover. Yes, that blinding globe shining in the sky is called the SUN. I know it's strange and I understand that you may not understand what those bizarre creatures walking around on two legs are...those are called PEOPLE. No, they're not fantasy, they are real, and they don't necessarily look like their avatars! If you listen closely, guess what? They SPEAK and they do it in complete sentences longer than 140 characters! Don't panic! It's okay! Your hearing is fine! They have voices!

Holy cow. What an amazing world we live in, where people actually speak instead of giving you a precis of their mindset in 140 characters or less and have conversations that aren't based on what the person before them said on Facebook!

I know it's strange, but just stick with me.

Now, I understand what a foreign concept I am putting forward, but don't panic, you're ok, I'm right here with you. Just sit back, relax, take a breath, look around and actually count the number of people around you who are actually looking UP. I know it's a stretch to actually make you participate in the Z-Space, but just hang on, you're going to be okay.

As you're looking around and counting, I don't care if they're looking at the ceiling, the fluffy white clouds in the blue sky above them, the stars overhead at night...look around and count how many people actually are looking UP in relation to how many you see looking down at their mobile device.

Freaky, isn't it?

If you just swore at the "holy cow" epicness of what you just saw, it's ok, I do it all the time. The cartoon above does nothing but service my point because here comes the gut check:

Ask yourself, "How many times have I seen that?"

Then push further.

Ask yourself, "How many times have I done that to someone?"

I just saw that cringe...don't worry, your secret is safe with me.  But I'll ask you this simple question, isn't it about time you fixed that?

Don't you hate it when you feel like you've been left behind to dine alone, your dinner partner a mere technological ghost occupying the seat across from you? Don't you just hate it when the mobile device your partner is holding feels like it is more important than you are? I know I do.

Tell me if any of these sound familiar:

My date has been abducted by Siri:  How often have you looked at your significant other, after you've finally scheduled some "us" time, only to find that they've traipsed off with that slut Siri as she uses her wiles and sexy interface to whisk them off to other places? Don't you just hate it when she happily ushers them to Facebookia or Twitterville in the middle of the restaurant you're sitting in, resulting in you only getting an "Mmmhmmm" as any sort of response?

The MomCam: How about the parents from the Silent and Baby Boom generations who have discovered the wonders of technology, resulting in their overwhelming need to share your 4-year-old naked ass on a bearskin rug with the whole world via Facebook or Twitter? Here's worse, when your dinner partner flips their phone around to show you said photo going, "Awwww! How cute!" as you resist the urge to dive beneath the restaurant table in embarrassment thinking "Oh gee, thanks Mom." What is bothersome here is that Moms and Dads from those generations will not likely understand how "FOREVER" the Internet really is.  Once it's out in cyberspace, it's out there forever.  Now just think about YOUR kids and how your happy sharing of all sorts of photos on Facebook will impact their dating lives...

"It's Urgent": I know you've experienced this one because it's a classic. It's where your partner just has to make sure that they take care of the needs of their family, work or friends before they get to you, but you're the one sitting next to them in the here and now, having to tell the restaurant's server that you'll need another minute with the menu (while your mind is already made up, you're just waiting for the person across the table to stop texting and rejoin you).

"The Double Dip": Worst one yet is what I term as the "Double Dip", the significant other who just can't quite seem to stop texting with their ex while they're out on a "date night" with you. That one I'm sure has resulted in quite the few arguments.

Yes, that's right, it's no small wonder why the world is looking down...after all, you naked on a bearskin rug is just so conversation-worthy. By the way, so is the photo of you barfing your guts up after a weekend bender...tasty. Your need to tweet that you're so disappointed with the results of Dancing with the Stars or American Idol that you have to send it out right now? That is so worth neglecting your other half? Oh yes, what the Internet offers us through our personal devices is so much more important than the here and now...or the person sitting next to you...*eyeroll*

Note: Any type of texting or manipulating of personal technology while with a fellow human being directly results in you being thought of as a "rude jackass." Unless it's GPS directions to your destination, you're screwed if you're playing with your phone instead of giving your partner the attention that they deserve.

Actually, I started noticing "neglect due to technology" when I first started back to school at UNLV. Three years ago I was carrying around this really crappy little phone, a white Pantech C150, with which I had no clue what a "text message" was. I had heard of "texting" (thanks to me finding the 30 pages of text messages between my ex and the BHFB), and getting e-mail by phone, but you could say I definitely wasn't on the leading edge of feeling the need to live life vicariously through technology.

I personally like tangible experiences and actually HEARING people speak and engaging in conversation, but I'm crazy like that.

Think your iWhatever is cool? Oh yeah, back in 2009 I was stylin' the T-9 really hard, so when my new-found friends at school would start burning up the keys on their fancy-schmantzy smartphones, I knew I was behind the curve. As I saw message after message pop up in rapid succession finally resulting in the question "R U There?", my shoulders would droop because it took me 10 minutes to tap a reply that said, "Yes." But then again, I also had this very nasty habit...I made it a point to look up at the sky every day and when my friends would text message me, I would reply in complete sentences with correctly spelled words and no abbreviations. While strolling across campus to get to my next class, I watched the majority of my fellow students running into things, or being face down in their smartphones, as I enjoyed the sunny skies, the warmth of the sun on my skin and *gasp* actually speaking to people.

You have to understand where I'm coming from when I say that I make it a point to look up at the sky every day. Remember, I lived for seven years tied inextricably to my computer. It was my only way of communicating with people because I was trapped for three of those years in a foreign country with no friends. Mama Kitte, Aunties Susan, Essjay, Kooky, Neems, Mystdee and Twi, Soosi, June, Tae, Doc Arte, Papa Stung, KayKay, even KP...they were the kind souls who were my friends, but they lived in a digital universe where the only way I could speak to them was through technology. For the remaining four years of my marriage, all of them helped me cope with my world that had shrank to half of what it was and that I was terrified to re-engage.

When I put the cartoon I started the post with onto my Facebook page, my Aunt Mystdee said, "BTW, the girl in the picture so looks like you Sheri! Compare her to your profile pic and it's like they totally used you as a model," then Aunt Susan said, "Oh wow Sheri that does look like you!!" and I do agree with both of them, but here's where it gets frightening: The guy in the cartoon? He looks just like my ex-husband. When I put the caption, "I have SO been here." it was because every evening at dinner, my ex-husband and I would sit just like the two characters in the cartoon.

Every evening without fail, whether we would be having dinner out or staying in when we cooked at home, the entire meal would be him looking at his phone while I tried to make polite conversation. When I would ask him what was so interesting, he would say, "It's just work." Well, we all know what was really going on...and I'm not going to revisit it (if you want to, you go right ahead, that's why there is a post list on the side, just go back to 2009 and start reading).

Much less to say, when my ex-husband hit the door, I realized that the world was a much larger place and I had no choice, I had to get back out in it. I actually stepped out of my home office and found out that the world that I had been cut off from still existed, that people still communicated face to face, but there was an added twist, everyone was carrying a smartphone.

So there I was, back at school sitting in Doc T's Comp II class, sitting astonished that most students were face down in their phones! Always giving a polite nod and a smile, none of them really spoke to each other, they just politely hunkered down and text messaged. I became perplexed. Why weren't they looking up? What was so incredibly fascinating that they HAD to text back right away? What was on those phones that was so vital that they had to be face down in it almost 100 percent of the time?

I asked a few of my fellow students and they said, "Well, I'm just trying to keep up" and "Text messaging rocks because you don't have to give a response right away, you can take your time to think of a response or answer when you have time or when you're ready."

Just to further my understanding on the phenomenon, I took time to sit in front of Wright Hall, right across from the Student Union and Pida Plaza on campus, and watch students as they buzzed from building to building. A good majority of the time, if they weren't walking with a friend or navigating the walkways with their skateboards, what did I find? Students face down in their technology. So much for not feeling a sense of urgency, if a text came through, they were on it faster than anything I had ever seen! But to put the cherry on the cake, I guess they like all of their drama hand-held because they sure seem riveted to whatever was coming through those phones.  Not in three years worth of watching these young people have I ever seen a single one look UP!

Don't get me wrong, I understand that in our very technology saturated world that the instant information/gratification is highly addictive. I also understand that some people might think that looking up at a sky that's just filled with clouds is completely useless, that there is "nothing there", whether they mean it as 'there is nothing to interact with' or 'nothing to see'. I beg to differ on that point. Air, clouds, the sun...um, they all have a purpose, if for nothing else than to take a moment to breathe it in and relax....but I'm crazy like that.

But then after watching the students with their technology-influenced habits, I started to feel really bad for my professors and it gave me a unique understanding of why I have such a good rapport with them.

You see, I'm not like most students. I don't have a laptop. I carry an actual paper-filled spiral notebook and I fill it with handwritten notes every single semester. When a professor speaks, I look at them and when they say something important, they see me look down and write down what they just said, then I look back up again to give them my complete attention and take in everything that they are trying to teach me.

But I'm not the norm on campus. Most students carry their laptops with them, and to my dismay I was forced to watch, last semester in particular, as a young woman in my Media Law class (who sat one row in front of me), as she would take notes for class in Word, but the moment she was done typing her notes, her interface would go over to Pinterest, and I would be forced to have to tear my attention between what she was "pinning" and what my professor was trying to say. But Pinterest was the least of my worries, because that young woman's screen flashed non-stop, hopping between Facebook, online shopping (she has a real thing for shoes), Pinterest, then maybe write another note or two from class, work on assignments from other classes and ultimately distract me from what the lesson in class was for that day. It was unavoidable because her screen was literally three feet away and directly in line of sight of my professor and the large screen that contained his lesson. My urge to tap her in the back of the head and holler "Stop that!" or "Pay attention!" was almost irresistible.

But there's my point bubbling back up to the surface again, but I'll add some gravy to it just for some added, extra oomph: In focus groups for NSAC, Gen-C told us point blank that the reason that they post all that they do to Facebook and/or Twitter is because of the acceptance they feel because of the responses they get, whether it is a comment, a "Like" or a "Retweet." Acceptance is a pretty powerful narcotic and with social media taking over our lives at an alarming rate, it's not surprising that we see more and more couples not putting in the work to make their partner (or friends or family) feel accepted. Actually, when someone is messing with their phone in front of the person they are sharing an activity with, it actually rejects the person sitting across from them. After that, the next stop is neglect.

When it gets to neglect, that's where I'm going to have to put my foot down. If you've reached that point, I'm begging you, put your mobile device down. Don't reject and neglect someone you love for the sake of your phone! It's not fair! If they are forced to compete with technology for your attention, that's seriously messed up and ultimately wrong.

As Barnard Hughes sarcastically said in the film Tron: "Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop."

Technology is there to help us, not to hinder us.  But, we're all susceptible to its' seductive wiles.  The question is, what are we willing to do to fight against and stop neglecting each other because of it?

Unless it's aiding in the conversation, your mobile device should be in your purse, pocket or somewhere else when you're with a fellow human being.

So, here's my question for you. How willing are you to put down your phone, tablet or other personal technology to give the person next to you some attention? Let's go further, how about putting it down to give yourself some attention (other than servicing your ego through social media)? How about putting down the mobile device and petting your dog or cat?

Social media is just there to re-connect you, not to be your only means of communication. If you feel that the only way that you can speak to your other half and share your day is via text, you may want to readjust your approach or take a stern look at your communication habits.

Do you know that a lot of arguments start because of text messages that are misconstrued because the person who receives the message can't hear the tone in which it is delivered? So are the words on a page...and y'all wonder why I sometimes take a bit of time between posts.

One other thing: If you are the person that is feeling the need to ask your other half if you could tape their phone to your head, share my post with them, I don't mind a bit.  I always publish "Thank You" notes.

Have a great day everyone, and please...just for me...

LOOK UP.

Spring 2012 Semester Wrap-Up

Here we are again, the end of another semester and 12 credit hours closer to graduation. For those of you who are counting, I've now completed (I think) 72 credit hours at UNLV. From Nevada School Law back in Fall of '09 to Media Law in Spring of '12, I've covered a gamut of topics. Here's the cool thing though...I've finished my core requirements for my major - IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications). With the semester completed, I've only got 35 credit hours to go - a whopping 3 semesters - then I'm done.  Unless I want my masters (which Ace insists I should do).

What a semester!  For Spring of '12 I did: Media Ethics with the incomparable Mary Hausch; then I ventured just across the hallway to Prof M. for Ad Copywriting; grabbed my bookbag and a quick smoke to jaunt over to see one of my home-state success stories, the fantastic Dr. B for Media Law (also known as First Amendment and Media) in Beam Hall, then finally I trotted my happy backside all the way back over to Greenspun Hall for my campaigns class with Scorsese (also known as my NSAC class).

All semester long, every Monday and Wednesday, I had very long days.  I started at 10 a.m. with Mary, not stopping until well after 5 p.m. most days because of the time demands of being a part of UNLV's 2012 NSAC team. Food was scarce, the course load heavy, the topics not easy, but at the end of the day, here I am in my very messy apartment getting ready to do my best impersonation of a backhoe to get myself straightened out again.

Media Ethics

As I'm sure you've noticed and gone "WHOA!" yes, I actually just mentioned one of my professors by name.  That's of course because I asked her ahead of time. As you know, I usually keep most of my professors and most people I write about to pseudonyms, protecting them as best I can.  Heck, even my boyfriend "Ace" is a pseudonym because I want to protect him.  When I told Mary that I was going to be writing my semester wrap-up, I told her about my use of pseudonyms and she just said, "Use my name."  I'm so very glad she did because I have to gush about spending time in Mary's Journalism 305 "Media Ethics" class.

For the last three years going to class in Greenspun Hall, I had only heard tidbits and rumor about the Legendary Mary Hausch. Every day I would walk into the building and it was almost like the very mortar between the bricks that held the building together were whispering her name. Everywhere I turned the students raved about her and every day I would hear students talk about her; what they had learned, what they had talked about with her, what influence she held.  Before I even set one foot in her classroom, it was ingrained into my DNA that the woman was a legend and modern-day royalty inside Greenspun Hall.

When the fall semester wrapped, I had already signed up for her Ethics class.  Knowing that I was going to spend a semester with her, I held my breath absolutely petrified with fear as I dared to introduce myself to her.  As I entered the room, I felt like I had walked into the court of Elizabeth I or into the presence of Marcus Aurelius because you can literally feel the air of gravitas that surrounds her, commanding loyalty and respect.  As I approached, I felt like I should have bowed or had some sort of formal salute for her because she's that imminent of an authority. If you were in my shoes, you would have been shaking too. I mean good gods, the woman was the managing editor for the Review Journal! That's like being a minor league baseball player that has dreamt of being a Yankee since childhood, then getting to stand in the same room and being allowed to shake hands with George Steinbrenner! If you've ever been in a room with someone that important, you know how fast you take a knee with how it humbles you. I remember stammering out an introduction and her looking at me like I was half crazy, but in all, I was glad I did it.

After spending a semester with her, I now understand why I have never heard one single student say one ill word about the Great Mary. More importantly, I now know why I felt the need to bow my head and take a knee when I met her.  Holy lordy, the woman is just all that and a plate of cookies.  I can definitely say I want to be like her when I grow up.  Seriously, she is my #1 pick as a female role-model.  She's strong, funny, brilliant, beautiful, wise, and she can absolutely make you stand at attention and learn.  I've had a lot of teachers in my lifetime who have made visible impacts on me, but Mary stands in a league all of her own.  If there were anyone I'd build a shrine to, it would be her because she has the most effective way of accepting everyone, putting them at ease, but then at the same time she'll make you stand up for your beliefs, make good decisions and teach you how to hold your ground. But with Mary, it's not just words, you can feel what you are learning in your bones and you have no choice but to rejoice as it happily becomes part of your DNA.

Every Monday morning this semester, you could see me booking it to get to Mary's class on time because what she teaches, you do not want to miss. But, y'all know me, I'm a walking tardy, so getting to class on-time was a struggle after being up late reading for Media Law, writing ads, researching for NSAC and of course, writing about all of my adventures along the way.  All of it decided to play havoc with me getting to Mary's classroom on time.

For the last three years, y'all have heard me do nothing but rant about people losing their common sense, not acting the best way they can and the merits of being different.  As you've read and cringed with me, most people view being "different" or thinking for ourselves as a bad thing.  Not with Mary.  Mary celebrates being "different" and she also teaches people how to use their common sense to the best of their abilities because having ethics means (at least to me) that you engage your brain and use some pretty common sense rules when it comes to not only writing and being a journalist, but in life as well. She has the greatest teaching style I've ever seen because whether we were discussing ethics in advertising or checkbook journalism, even down to source-reporter relationships, it was never just about the job - it was about being the best person you could be in the process.

The best part of it all is that every Monday and Wednesday morning, she made us laugh.  We practically rolled on the floor laughing at some of the really "no-brainer" ethics decisions that people out in the real world just fell flat on. Then there were other days where her wit would absolutely just leave us in stitches when she'd look at a case study and go "Really?" Y'all know how I always say, "If you're laughing, you're learning"? Well Mary puts it into practice full force.  I felt like I was in the "Dead Ethicists Society" with the Great Robin.  I laughed and learned soooooo much!  Oh, I so want her to adopt me so I can be under her constant influence.

The only truly hard part of the semester for me was the photojournalism section we had to cover, and what she calls "Dead body day" where we looked at photos published in the media of dead bodies, and to me what was far worse, dead soldiers.  When I looked at the dead soldier pictures, all I could do was think of Ace and how I would never EVER allow a photo of a dead serviceman if I ever ran a newspaper.  Even though my Ace of Hearts is safe, that day, I ran out and called him just to make sure he was okay and knew I was thinking of him.

After spending four months with Mary, I will never look at a news story, photo or anything else in the media the same ever again, not without asking myself, "What is my journalistic purpose?" "Am I maximizing truth telling and minimizing harm?" "Can I tell the story without the photo?" "If the story was about my grandmother, would I do it? Would she be embarrassed by it?" There are tons of other questions to ask myself now and just so I'll make sure I'm being a good girl (and making Mary proud) I have made myself a special folder for my desk that has all of the Ethics Codes that Mary gave me this semester.  I can promise you they'll never be far away from me.

I can say without a doubt that after you spend a semester with Mary Hausch that you come out a better person for it.  After going through it I will, without a doubt, scream it from the rooftops that every single person on the planet needs to spend a semester with Mary because it is an experience that everyone should have, taking four intense months to look deep inside yourself and find out what you are going to do when the storm comes and you're faced with a hard decision to make.  Mary taught me how to distill things down so I don't feel overwhelmed, but instead I feel empowered to make good, informed, ethical decisions.  She didn't only teach me Journalism Ethics, she taught me how to laugh while I'm sticking to my guns and making the hard choices.

And that was how I started my day...talk about a tough act to follow.

Ad Copywriting

After being with Mary to start out the day, I would just do a quick jaunt across the hall for an hour and 15 with Prof. M. for one of the classes I had been looking forward to taking, Ad Copywriting.  You all know how much I love, love, love Luke Sullivan's Hey Whipple Squeeze This: A Guide To Creating Great Advertising so much so that I've read it five times and drool wanting to become an ad copywriter.

After figuring out how I was going to approach being an ethical advertising practitioner for the first hour of my day, it was on to trying to figure out (as I had discussed with my editor while we were discussing putting my book together) how not to be "a bastard at the end of the day" as my profession tries to separate consumers from their money.

For my assignments, I had to choose a pair of companies to write for, one for-profit and one non-profit. My for-profit was of course Nissan because that way I could use my research and my findings from my NSAC class to cement my concepts; then for the non-profit, I chose a Veteran's cause so that way I had research and findings with Ace that I could work from: both very real and very applicable case studies.

To my dismay, 4 out of my 5 writing assignments came back with B's on them.  Me?  The girl who wants to make this her profession get B's?  Well, yeah.  Prof. M. sat down with me and helped me understand where the flaws were in my writing.  How I like to change voice and target a lot...nooo, y'all didn't know that, did you?  But the thing is that she sat down with me and really made sure I understood where and why I was goofing up, making me better in the process.

The one thing that I've told everyone about my ad copywriting class is that Prof. M. taught me the business of advertising. She didn't just let me go off on creative whims or anything else until I was deeply rooted in what the business expected from the copy I wrote, that I had to keep in mind the budget, the audience, practically every small detail to make sure I was hitting everything on all cylinders leaving my copy no choice but to succeed.

In all, I only really have one thing to say about my Ad Copywriting class:  It was like stepping into Godfather II where Hyman Roth looks at Michael Corleone says, "This is the business we've chosen."

First Amendment and the Media

My first shout-out for this one goes to my professor, Dr. B. He's what I consider a "hometown hero" because he's from a small Texas town himself.  Now what you don't know until now is that that same small-town Texas kid went up to Harvard and came back a world-class professor.  How a kid from a tiny Texas town adjusted to the Ivy League is something I'll never be able to wrap my brain around.  Literally, every time I try to put myself in his shoes and think about what it could have possibly been like for him, my mind locks up.  The only thing I have is admiration and an unswerving amount of pride for him.  He did something I don't think I ever could have done.  His trip from Flea-Speck, Texas to Harvard and back again is one that I can only imagine is filled with tales I'd just love to hear.

But, being that he's a Harvard man, you better believe he's one tough cookie considering what he's teaching. This is media law we're talking about and it's filled to the brim with all kinds of things that just make you go, "Do what?"

When I was a kid, when something really dumb would happen and "common sense would done fly out the winda'", my father would never fail in exclaiming, "Do what?!?!?!" Yep, that was a lot of what happened in the cases we looked at in Dr. B's media law class.  From Westboro Baptist Church to all sorts of things, I finally looked at Dr. B on Monday just minutes before the final exam and said, "Sir, it seems to me that every time someone's common sense wins a Darwin Award, we end up reading about it." He just laughed and gave me a "Yep." LOL.

From Libel to everything First Amendment in between, we covered it. From the Marbury v. Madison all the way to Jerry Falwell versus Larry Flynt. I found out what I could say and couldn't say on my blog, even down to the copyright and trademark laws that applied to it. It was four months of court cases and articles about people who had justified means to complain, all the way to people whose common sense 'done flew out the winda'. Man, my brain is still gasping for air from that.

I do have to say though, sitting through a semester with Dr. B was a hoot. I don't know if it's just me, but some of his inflections (how ever much Harvard was just dying to assassinate any and all of his hometown style) gave red flags to me as to what was important and worth digging into further. He was really a nice man that I really enjoyed being around. He made me laugh as well and I tell you what, I'll be digging up more of his articles that he's published in the Washington Post, that's for sure.

NSAC Campaigns Class

Sorry to say, but I'm just going to have to give you a teaser for my NSAC class because it's getting a whole post all of it's very own.  There are so many details and so many adventures just for that one class, I'd be here for the rest of the day on the wrap-up.  Last time I checked, when I go too long, y'all like to skip to the end, so I'm just going to wrap up NSAC by saying we got sixth place overall, fourth in presentation.  I'll go more into the distinction in my next post.

Many Thanks

I'd like to thank Mary for just being her and being such an inspiration.  In my C-PTSD filled world where I thrive on approval from strong female role models, she gave me so much compassion and so much love that I can never thank her enough. Her class being the first on my daily school schedule made me get out of bed, put my feet on the floor and dig in for the ride because I never wanted to miss a single moment with her. She single-handedly kept me from giving up mid-way and gave me the hope and courage to keep going.

Along the way I learned how to write better, I learned how to make my ads fit with the business of advertising, I learned the letter of the law that keeps my profession in check and how to use it should I need it, and I learned that heart is the name of the game and part and parcel of the "business I have chosen."  And I just happened to get inducted into Phi Kappa Phi and Kappa Tau Alpha this semester too.

So, that's it.  12 credit hours more for the pile. It's summer again, so get ready for more on the NSAC, and a shift to more fun topics, namely Ace and I going over to the VA for more PTSD sessions with Jay, movies and the rest of the adventures that keep me young and always an Eternal Sophomore.

Before I forget, I need to give the wrap-up a song of the day...a tune that often played on my car stereo on the way to and from school: Flo Rida's "Good Feelin'"

Amazing...Happy 3rd Birthday Sophomores!

Well, the day came and went and I forgot to observe it, but the Sophomore has officially turned three and we've started year four in the best way possible: With hope.

As most of you know, I didn't start writing about my experiences until I went back to school. Speaking of, I've got a few close-ups to share about the semester along with what you've come to expect, my regular semester wrap-up coming soon.

But in it all, when I realized I had forgotten to mark the third anniversary of my life after marriage, I was looking into Ace's beautiful blue eyes. It was then that I realized that counting the years really didn't matter anymore, that it is my experiences now that are the ones worth counting, not torturing myself that it's been three years since a woman who looks remarkably like a Basset Hound decided to steal my ex-husband...ask my editor, he's seen her picture and gone, "OMG. You're right! She does!" Followed directly by, "He left you for her?" Yes Smith, he did. I guess I have to be grateful for her because if it wasn't for her not caring that my ex-husband was married or that my ex-husband had no sense of self-control and a bad case of seven-year-itch, I wouldn't be where I am now: Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha and on the Dean's List Honors, surrounded by the most brilliant minds I could ever ask to be influenced by.

Aerosmith said in the song "Amazing" that "Life's a journey, not a destination." My friends from the Myst Universe can totally understand that sentiment, after all, life in Uru is all about the journey and each journey cloth you touch - the equivalent of remembering the important parts along the way. It is all about learning how deep your cavern blood really flows, living without pride and embracing the art of the selfless. After three years of writing, I can honestly say that I believe that my quest to find life again after marital demise has had it's touch points; and all the while each touch point has had a hand print on each memorable moment, preserved in words that have had their moments of kindness, gentleness, tastefulness and, how ever much I tried to avoid it, the inverse as well. It has definitely shown me that my cavern blood needs to run a lot deeper to make sure I get everything I should from each experience I have.

Year three has seen the very rocky introduction of Ace. I honestly think the man may well qualify for sainthood after being with me, but all during our ups and downs, he's been the rock (albeit sometimes he gets them caught in his shoe) that has really shown me that strength exists in places we don't even consider and that trust combined with preconceived notions don't mix, you just have to take that leap of faith and know that your partner is going to catch you - good, bad or worse. I can't say enough good things about my Ace of Hearts. I really wish someday I could meet his mom and say "Thank you" for him because I don't know what I'd do without him.

We've also seen the ups and downs that go along with PTSD and relationships.  It's not easy being in a relationship to begin with, combine it with an illness like ours and you're in for one hell of an adventure.  It has taught me that we really don't get the most out of our experiences unless we feel that we've dug in and really taken part in them.  Ace took a girl just fine with being a recluse and made her go out into the world.  He's still loving to push me beyond my boundaries, so much so that he's told me (which as you know is very hard for him to do) that he's proud of me and how far I've come in the 10 months I've known him.  I can definitely now say that it's all about the commitment.  You gotta commit.  It's like deciding to go skydiving, you either jump or you chicken out.  From my view in the cheap seats, the jump is well worth it.

So as we say goodbye to number three and start in on the long-awaited number four, I can definitely agree with Aerosmith when they say, "From all of us to all of you out there where ever you are: Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel may be you.  Good night."

And so to celebrate the day, Aerosmith's "Amazing."

Trust Issues

As we all know, all too well by now, that I don't trust easily. That I trust anyone is close to a miracle. After multiple trips to the pyre and PTSD symptoms on top of it, getting me to trust is like trying to hold the sun in your hands, an impossibility.

We all have our little issues I guess. From what I hear, even people without PTSD have trouble trusting. Others have had so many bad things happen to them that well, trust just isn't high on their priority lists.

But, I'll tell you a secret. I got this guy... (and that is such a subtle 9 1/2 Weeks reference) See, he's one of those guys who is so frustrating at times that I want to pull my hair out. Other times he's Mr. Romance, so much so that it makes it hard to believe that he's real. That he could be a hero in a Sherrilyn Kenyon novel is no small stretch. However, when you have someone that frustrating and that wonderful all in one body, that's where we get into tough territory.

You see, the classic Kenyonesque hero is incredibly heroic but at the same time extremely emotionally damaged. Go get one of her books, pick any one of her heroes and they're all basically the same. They each have a very hard, traumatic past which precludes them from really being emotionally touchy-feely on the outside. Underneath though, oh wow, those guys have romance "on lock" and they are faithful as my darling DalPal Lucky. That's why I love her characters so much. They are just riddled to high heaven with trust issues and broken hearts, but it takes the heroine in every novel, from "Bride" who is every bit of a size 16 in the book "Night Play" to the little 5'2", 100 pound pipsqueak "Dangereuse" in "Sins of the Night" to help those guys find what they were missing in the middle of their chests, essentially dispelling their trust issues so they can live happily ever after.

Ok, so back to my guy...I don't even need to tell you do I? I'm sure you can guess by now that I've got my very own dyed-in-the-wool Kenyonesque hero. But with all heroes we have to make sure not to place them on too high of pedestals because it makes it impossible for them to recover should they fall. Oh let's just say it out, if place your guy up too high, you risk forcing him to land with a very loud, resounding "thud." The whole trick with guys that wonderful is not to put them in a no-win scenario. Place them up too high, and that is exactly what you're doing.

Well, since our last trip to "Jay" the therapist, Ace and I have been doing wonderfully. I've been battling my flight reflex, he's been biting his tongue and we've both tried our level best to not trigger each other. But if you know anything about PTSD, you know that triggers are going to happen even if you do your damnedest to avoid them.

It seems all semester long, before going to see Jay and after going to see Jay, I've really been putting in the work. I've been worrying about our triggers, our this, our that, everything else but what I should have been keeping an eye on, namely school and this cluttered excuse of an apartment of mine.

Here's where the loud, resounding "thud" comes in.

Remember, the addict brain knows only one thing, what it is screaming that it wants, nothing else comes into play. Well, the other night, I got triggered hard. It seems as in my attempt to be "committed" I overextended myself to the point I realized I had been neglecting myself and my personal needs. My addict brain had become addicted to being around Ace. I didn't care about anything else, he was the center of the universe. So, when I finally realized that my addict brain had tripped me up again, I got into a fight with him. I had placed him so high up on the pedestal of importance that when I expressed my need to take care of me, I unintentionally forced him to land with a resounding "thud". Poor guy. I feel really bad for him - he's got to deal with me and I'm not easy in the least - especially when I'm triggered.

I had originally planned to spend four days out at Ace's, hanging around the pool and working on my suntan while I studied for my Media Law final. When I saw myself getting distracted and my books not being cracked through day one, I realized I needed to get back to my little cave and really focus. Even though I had everything I would need at my fingertips over at Ace's, my flight reflex kicked in HARD. But you have to realize something, I have been fighting and winning against my flight reflex for close on to a month. When you fight it for that extended period of time, when my PTSD is bad enough to begin with, that's almost an eternity. Sorry to say, I cracked. I couldn't fight any longer and the more I fought, the more constricted I felt which made my flight reflex even stronger. I was triggered beyond being reasonable.

Now remember, I'm used to betrayal, violence and overwhelming "epic suck" in my relationships. To go a solid month without a fight, just wrapped up in bliss was enough to make me so suspicious that the other shoe was about to drop, well guess what, I dropped it for myself, leaving poor Ace in the cold, not fully explaining that I had realized that I needed to hunker down on my books for finals without outside interference.

Well, that ended in a fight. Excuse me while I lean forward and have my forehead hit my desk with a resounding "thud". When Ace and I fight it's not pretty, and it is, as I said in Love, War and PTSD, roughly the equivalent to a nuclear explosion, charring us both. We never know whether or not we're going to stay together after each one. Well, long story short, I had placed him up so high that I felt that I was being neglected, that I wasn't as important as he was.  Basically, I gave him no alternative but to land with a resounding thud when my triggers became more than even he could handle. And as you know, when I get triggered, it triggers him. So not good on so many levels. Believe me, I hate my illness right around now. Oh I so want the bullies I grew up with to pay my therapy bills...

As we all remember all too well, when things went south with my ex, we know where he went, straight to the BHFB (that's the Basset-Hound-Faced-Bitch to those of you who are new). To boot, he would lie to me as to where he was, so after that being the umpteenth relationship that had been like that (remind me sometime, I'll tell you the story of my 28th birthday, that one will make you cry and very grateful for Spago's Creme Bruleé), so of course my suspicions and my gut instinct said that trust was out the window, that I couldn't believe a single thing that came from any man or anyone for that matter.

So, when Ace and I go south like we unfortunately do (hey, it's part and parcel of a triggered couple), after two days I thought he was through with me for good. I thought for sure that he'd be out with his buddies doing 'the gods only know what'. So, I did the most stalkery thing because I wanted validation that I was being screwed over again. I'm so ashamed, but it ends funny... I got into my car thinking "oh, he's not going to be home... he's so going to be out with his buddies... oh, when I get over there, his truck is going to be gone and when I text him he's going to tell me he's at home... I bet he's going to have no issues lying to me..." and so on.

Well, as I pulled up to his house, in the driveway was his diesel-driven steed. My jaw hit the floorboard of my Prius. He was at home! He wasn't out doing the gods only know what! He hadn't lied, he hadn't done anything at all! Actually, he was re-arranging the furniture in his room so I'd like it better!

What I found could have knocked me over with a feather! But before I could fall over in shock, I had to remind myself to ask the simple question,"Why would I be shocked to begin with?!" Of course you already know the answer, this really doesn't have anything to do with him. It all has to do with my emotional baggage and all of the horrible things that other people have done in the past. I just feel so bad. You all know how I hate it when each of us is forced to do battle with things that we didn't cause or do. For me to make Ace go through that, I'm having an overwhelming amount of guilt. Serves me right for my stalkery weakness, I got exactly what I deserved, a smack in the head that said,"Why the hell did you doubt him for an instant? You know that's not right. He's never let you down. He didn't deserve for your resolve to falter."

You see, I've been trying really hard to overcome my trust issues and give Ace the fighting chance he deserves.  I've also learned that if I let go of my expectations and plans, and simply trust him, things turn out better than I could ever dream. So over the course of the last month, I gave myself a little mantra: "Trust Ace and everything will work out fine." However, PTSD sometimes doesn't like to listen to reason, it doesn't hear  you when you're trying to tell it to shut up and just let things roll along. What's worse is that sometimes you don't even know that your illness is what is causing all of the bad things that are happening around you! Intrusive memory likes to remind us to be ready for pain and bring our past traumas right in front of us so that we're not battling what's happening in the present, instead we're fighting a battle from the past that has nothing to do with the here and now.

I really don't like my illness right now and I don't think I really have to like it at all. Right now, it's messing with my relationship and I don't appreciate that very much!  But, like any issue we deal with, it's all about baby steps and it's all about running as fast as my feet can carry me into Jay's office next Tuesday.  Oh, I'm so overdue!  I completed step one, which was to commit.  In the immortal words of Agnes Gooch in Auntie Mame "I lived.  Now I've got to find out what to do now!"

Well at least if I get forgiven for my latest trip into Posttraumatic Stress, I'll be able to say I have a guy who is strikingly similar to Vane, the hero of the Kenyon novel "Night Play": He likes a girl with a bit of meat on her bones.  And I quote from page 267 of the paperback when Vane tells Bride she's beautiful the way she is,"Meat is for the man, bone is for the dog." I'm just grateful Ace is that same way, he loves me just as is and says he'll leave me if I get too skinny.

For the song of the day, a little something I heard in my weak "stalkery" moment - Gavin DeGraw "Not Over You."

90's Nostalgia

Ok, let's put this into context.  Since I can't publish this post until after the competition, I'll date it for you.  It's February 13, Whitney Houston died yesterday and I'm knee deep in research for the NSAC competition.

The last few weeks have been about nothing but finding the one thing that connects Nissan to the Millenials.  We found it.  Everything for the Millennials right now is about the nostalgia that these young people are now experiencing.

In your 20's, you get to look back on all of the fun things that happened in your youth, from the toys you played with and the activities that you participated in (like playing outside) to the boy bands you loved. For me, I had a love for Duran Duran.  I was torn between John Taylor and Nick Rhodes.  As a teenager, nothing said "Rebel" to me more than a boy that had the courage to wear eyeliner and still be a man's man, so I'll just leave my nostalgia trip into my teens right there.

As we all know, as I hit my 20's, I became a hippie revivalist.  I love bell bottoms, Jimi Hendrix, the whole gamut all the way to wanting my own Summer Of Love.  It's a very tangible emotional connection to me because my rebellious nature enjoys their anti-establishment view of things.  Along with that, being a hippie revivalist of the 90's, I was also into the grunge scene from Mother Love Bone to Pearl Jam and Nirvana.  (I still love Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, who doesn't?)

Now comes the comedy, which brings us to my activities for the evening.  I just got done watching videos of the Spice Girls, *NSync, The Backstreet Boys and a few other 90's tween bands.  Ok, someone call the dentist, I think I have cavities and a severe case of sugar shock going on.  By the way, my gaydar totally tripped off when I watched Lance Bass...how anyone couldn't know that kid was gay back then is beyond me, but like I say, I don't care if you're blue, green, aquamarine, gay, straight, whatever, I've got respect and love for you all the same so it doesn't matter if that kid was gay or not, it's just surprising that people didn't figure it out until he came out.

Oy veh.  I'm holding on to Eddie Vedder's Doc Marten's for dear life.  I have a severe need to cuddle with a piece of Kurt Cobain flannel as well.  Mid-way through going through the hundreds of vids on YouTube, I had to boot up "Smells like teen spirit" to even get a rational view of the world.  I am absolutely just mortified and repulsed by all of that sugar rah-rah.  Matching suits?  Ok, yeah, The Beatles did it, but oh wow, my 40 year-old body can not handle watching that enormous expanse of mass media induced sugar.  I dare you, go back and watch a few hundred pieces of tween media from the 90's and I swear to you your teeth will hop out of your mouth, look at you and say, "Really?"

I mean, it's bad enough that we're going through Pokemon, but to hear grown men, I'm talking 22-year-old men, swooning over Tommy the Green Power Ranger, it's enough to make me want to vomit.  I cannot believe what is coming out in the focus groups I've been doing.  It makes me want to run screaming like a madwoman into the night going, "NO!  No more!  I can't take it!"  Seriously, I'm beginning to believe their whole lives were sponsored by some toy or some boy band.

But then, oh yes, I had to hear from my sweet darling Amanda (who I love dearly) say, "If *NSync put together a reunion tour, I would BUY THAT TICKET."  When she said that, I nearly keeled over.  Oh, my body internally convulsed and I prayed for the '03 Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial featuring Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By" and remembering sitting on the balcony of The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel surrounded by movie and rock stars, watching The Eagles at the hotel's opening.  By the way, watching The Eagles live totally rocks.  Don Henley on drums for the win.  Ok, for all of you Gen-X'ers who need a bit of help, here's a link to Henley's "Boys of Summer" to ease the sugar shock.

Don't get me wrong, while the other students in my class were mere tweens dreaming of getting their parents to take them to a Spice Girls concert, I was impersonating Baby Spice at the nightclub I was working at, in a dance team skit for "Wannabe."  This was of course followed up by me getting up and doing a solo as Meredith Brook's "Bitch" just to get the sugar sloughed off my body as quickly as possible.  But getting up and doing an edgier song was never enough, I had to follow it up by raving to some of the great electronica of the late 90's.  Oh yeah, when I booted up the Spice Girls tonight, my body involuntarily convulsed with all of that sugar going on.

It's not easy being 40 and going down memory lane with these young people.  I want to keep my mind open, I really do, so I did my best to stuff all that sugar down my gullet without throwing up, but oh man, it was a rough one.

On their list of things they love from their childhoods I could understand, like No Doubt or Third Eye Blind.  Those I could get into, after all, who doesn't love Gwen Stefani?  But things like Pogs, Arthur, The Magic School Bus, Rugrats, Doug and other things just flew over my head.  Sailor Moon?  Really?

I guess I've gotten old, or simply my love of all things "groovy" go over their heads just as much as Tamagotchi goes over mine.  When they said "Tamagotchi" in the focus group, I went "WTF'ie?"  Even after Wikipedia'ing it, to the shame of my technojunky background, I still don't know WTF it is!  LOL

Yeah, their sense of nostalgia is completely different from mine and I'm doing my best to embrace it.  My fave though is my gal Lizzie who, when I asked for soundtrack cuts, gave The Spin Doctors and 4 Non-Blondes.  Bless you Lizzie.  Bless you.

But, I'll cap this off with the commercial idea that sprang from my head after hearing Amanda wanting to buy a ticket to an *NSync reunion show...it's my idea of a perfect Superbowl ad to kick of a campaign.  I'll leave it to you to judge it.

Fade up:
A girl driving an orange *NSync themed Nissan Versa pulls up to a stoplight, girl bops to the sounds of the song "Bye Bye Bye" as the radio blares the song and out the rolled down car windows.
Another car pulls up, this time a black and blue Backstreet Boys themed Nissan Versa pulls up, the sounds of the song "Backstreet's Back" come out of the speakers as the radio blares the song.
Each girl has a small photo of their boy band icon framed and attached to their sun visors.
Each girl lowers the visor, blows a kiss and says a line to the photo, disparaging the band supported by the other car.
An "imaginary" Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys appears in the passenger seat of the Black Versa, looks at the driver and says, "You're not going to let her get away with that, are you?  Show her what it's like to be a part of the Backstreets."
An "imaginary" Justin Timberlake of *NSync appears in the passenger seat of the Orange Versa, looks at the driver and says, "C'mon baby girl, you can take her.  We're *NSync, you and me."
The "imaginary" passengers disappear as the two girls glare menacingly at each other, revving the engines of their cars, getting ready to drag race when the light turns green.
As the light turns green, before the girls can hit the gas, a Nissan Leaf goes flying by both of them with Britney Spears' "Oops, I did it again" blaring out of the stereo.
Logo fades in:
Nissan. Innovation for You.  Innovation for All.
Fade to Black.

I don't get to write that ad for competition because I'm not on the "creative" team.  Oh well, at least I get to write it for my Ad Copy-writing class.  Do you think an ad like that would go viral?  I'd say yes and I'm positive Amanda would hit "share" on Facebook in no time flat.

But that ad will never see the light of day besides to you nice folks.

My semester thus far can be summed up in a single word: Stymied.

Love, War and PTSD

Take just a minute to look up at the header on the page. It says, "Stories of hope, love and recovery, all mixed with a healthy dose of humor." Here's the funny part: Over the last (almost) four years, we have gone through that list literally and I didn't even mean to, it was just a tagline I came up with to give my blog a bit of zip and pizzazz that I thought accurately summed up what I had written to that point in 2010.

I never thought for a moment we'd do the list in that exact order, but sure enough, we have.  We first went through the struggle to find hope; then we stumbled, floundered and unwittingly fell face down into love; now by some miracle we're on to recovery; and to my utter disbelief we did the whole list with laughs along the way. The only part that distresses me is that a lot of people, the second they look at the word "recovery" immediately think of substance abuse, not about marital demise or other illnesses we've been dealing with along the way. Well, we're turning the page and getting more into the Sophomore's version of the "recovery" aspects of life.

Before we get started though, I just have to say that right around now I'm really, really grateful for having the blues over that blue t-shirt, without it I wouldn't be sitting here as happy as I am right now.  The Ace has trumped the Sophomore and oh am I glad. Houston: We've finally landed, authenticity and heart beat the Palms 9.

I've said countless times that it's great to be in a relationship with someone who shares your illness.  I personally love it.  I've come to the point that I've realized how empty my life was until I found someone who truly understands and knows in his heart what is going on in my very broken brain. The bonus is that I'm slowly but surely getting there when it comes to my partner in crime. I think it's the greatest thing on two feet to be with someone who knows EXACTLY what you're going through and will go down swinging for you because they know what's going on.  It's like having a mind reader in-residence.

I'm beginning to think that Ace and I are a great example when it comes to PTSD and relationships. Actually after searching for hours, you'll find that Ace's and my story is one that I don't believe has been seen in print before. I searched endlessly for books, articles, even the smallest story about a couple where both partners live with PTSD and I didn't find a single one, so guess what, we're breaking new ground.  If you find anything like mine and Ace's story anywhere out there, please drop me a line in the comments section and I'll make sure to get a link up about it.

Currently the only things available for couples with PTSD is very one sided, with only one partner having the illness, but not both. I only found "assisting your partner who has PTSD" nothing at all about a couple going through the trials of being together with the illness icing on top. Let's face it, being in a relationship is already hard enough, adding PTSD into the mix from both sides, that's something else entirely; it's a story that every PTSD afflicted couple will identify with. So, "Love, War, and PTSD" is something new that I hope you will enjoy, that I hope will make you think and hopefully will help you understand our illness a little bit better.

Please don't let the lurid pandering of the media only reporting horror stories about PTSD color your understanding of the illness. It's a serious issue to deal with, but we can also look at it with a fresh pair of eyes that allows us to not just label something and follow the lemmings off the cliff in mistaken beliefs, but allow ourselves a moment of understanding so that those of us with PTSD are better understood and embraced by the world. If Ace and I can live individually with our own PTSD then help each other heal, I think that is a story worth telling, if not shouting from the rooftops so the rest of the world can look on and understand that with PTSD comes not only heartbreaking stories, but heartwarming ones as well.

 Before I began writing this post, I went through and did some research.  A few observations are:

• Gen X has a high rate of PTSD because of the overwhelming number of individuals in that generation that were physically, mentally and sexually abused as children.
• C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) isn't widely talked about.
• There are a huge number of couples where both partners are afflicted with PTSD but we rarely hear about them.
• PTSD is villainized in the media when there are truly good, hope-filled stories to be heard about individuals who not only live with the illness but are doing well with therapy that works for them.

At this point, if you're a regular reader, you know that there is a pattern forming here. I've got C-PTSD and Ace has PTSD. Two very traumatized individuals in one relationship and it's given the "you, me and us" paradigm a whole new meaning. That's why the last 10 months of posts have gone up, down, angry, depressed and every emotion in-between.

However, this is where it starts to get really good. Why?  Because Ace took me with him to see his therapist over at the VA. Now, the whole goal of me going with him is that I'm there to assist in his PTSD therapy, but at the same time, guess who it helps as well? Yep. Me. So guess what? I'm going to be documenting how we're doing, opening up a whole new chapter in the life of the Eternal Sophomore.

I had a good, long cry the other night because it seems as I'm not alone anymore. Now if you had been through everything I have from the bullying, abuse, violence and abandonment-filled past that strips away any chance for anyone to get a shred of trust from me, to finally be able to hold someone's hand and NOT feel alone - it's a very "holy crap" moment.  Scary? Yes. Different? Yes. Wonderful? Beyond all of my imagining.

When you have PTSD like Ace and I do, you have to look at the criteria for our illnesses. Go ahead, click the link I gave, it's a whole new world for those who don't suffer from it, so take time and give it a read.

So to review, this is our handy little list.  Both he and I have it and we've also got the added gravy of attachment issues.

1. Stressor
2. Intrusive Recollection
3. Avoidant/Numbing [Behaviors]
4. Hyper-Arousal/Hyper-Vigilance
5. Duration
6. Functional Significance

Now with Ace, his is mainly combat related, but it would be a lie of omission not to relay that he has some of my issues as well.  His therapist needs a pseudonym, so I'm just going to call him "Jay".  He is a sweet guy and it only took him 60 seconds to take a look at how we act together to nail it, looking at us and saying, "A PTSD couple.  Nice." Put bluntly, when we sat down with Jay, he spoke to me for a while and said, "Wow Ace, you do know how to pick 'em.  She's your exact mirror image. This relationship is a match made in heaven. But it's also a match made in hell. She triggers you, you trigger her, and when you guys are pushing each other's buttons, it's going to go south really fast." But then he pulled out the big guns. Ace and I both have acceptance issues. We also have neglect and abandonment issues too. Talk about mirror images?  His issues arise from paternal acceptance while mine are from maternal acceptance.  Oy veh.  You want to talk about two people who's lives thus far have been almost identical?  That's me and Ace. Oh don't even get twisted, he has his own version of the BHFB as well with his cheating wife.  Yeah kids, we've got a match made in pure PTSD-filled heaven.

Then Jay really took me down a peg or two when he brought out a large easel sheet that he and Ace had been working on together  in the weeks previous. There on the page in black and white was my Ace of Hearts, all of his issues and things I know all about, but then Jay went and pulled a fast one on me, he looked me dead in the eyes and asked, "Sheri, how much of this do you think involves you?" I sat dumbfounded thinking, No way, that's all him, and replied, "I'm not sure." Jay looked at me and said, "All of it is about you. That's how much he cares and thinks about you." I felt like I was in Doc Cat's Personal Growth class all over again. Feeling like there was a stake holding me in the chair, my tear ducts decided it was time to irrigate my face because tears involuntarily started to fall.

I guess you would have to understand where I am coming from when I was told that. You have to remember, I have been severely neglected most of my life; in childhood, during my marriage, all of my life has some sort of neglect and abandonment tied to it. A lot of my friends will probably vouch for the fact that I thrive on approval to the point of needing it like some other people need food.  Pathological need for approval and acceptance?  Without a doubt. However, my avoidant tendencies come out and while I strongly disapprove of lemming-like following, I hide the fact that I do want acceptance and approval from my partner because I think it's normal to want that, but I put up an "I don't need you" front as a way of protecting myself. But here's the problem: I have never once in my life felt truly wanted until Jay looked at me and explained to me that Ace's avoidant behavior was because he wanted me in his life, wanted me around him and that I was (and this is the huge, huge deal) important to him, the problem is that his avoidant tendencies make it so he can't talk about it.  Ok stop. I've never been important like that to anyone, at least in no relationship I've ever known. Jay made me understand that Ace truly wants me around but has problems expressing it. I was floored, I teared up and had no idea what to do with it.  Accepted? Needed? Me? No way!

Remember how I wrote a while back that Ace doesn't "say", he "does"? Meaning that he'll never say he loves or adores anything, but he'll do everything in the world to show it? To him, talk is cheap and often is a lie; in Ace's world actions speak louder than words. The problem is with me, I need to hear it because that's what I deem important...hell, look at me, I'm a writer! I live my life hammering on my red-hot anvil-like keyboard, smithing out carefully crafted words and phrases - he's Mr. 140 characters or less... see where things like to get muddled up?

At that point I sat there just absolutely blown away, it was at that point that I realized I have never been so very loved. But here's the kicker, Ace wasn't saying it, he was doing it. When that realization hits you and you've never felt that before, oh yeah, it's going to feel like a major gut-check. I couldn't breathe and I most certainly couldn't speak. (Even writing about it makes me tear up.)

Remember, acceptance and approval issues stem from trust. Ace and I both have trust issues that make the Herculean Labors look like child's play. For the last 10 months both Ace's and my acceptance and approval issues (and ultimately trust issues) have wreaked havoc on our relationship (hence Jay's referring to it as the relationship from hell), but what is so bizarre about it is that while my avoidance issues manifest in a strong flight reflex, Ace's avoidance issues manifest themselves in being unable to verbally express his emotions.  It's a bizarre mix that for some reason works.  I think it works because both of us have heart, fortitude and tenacity for miles.  When you've been through all that we have, it only goes to reason that the expression "weaker have perished" comes to mind.  Ace and I are made of some pretty stern stuff (and we're both bull-headed to boot).

As you've been reading over the last 10 months, Ace and I both are filled with avoidant behaviors. One marriage apiece down, both of us are commitment phobic because of the betrayal he and I both have seen and because of that, you can cut the tension between us with a knife at times. But there is one overwhelming fact of it all: over the last 10 months we've both found out that trying to breathe in and out without the other nearby is close to impossible.

For me, breathing in and out without him sucks because our communication as a couple is phenomenal. A lot of couples shy away from working on their relationship because people mistakenly think it's supposed to be easy all the time. Well, it's not. Relationships require love, understanding, emotional maintenance and a whole lot of work. If someone sold you a bill of goods saying your relationship should be easy all the time for the rest of your life, return it to them and yell "LIAR!" in their face. Trust me, look at any fairy tale you read growing up and look at how much trouble the Princess and her Prince Charming had to go through to get to that happy ending you love so much! "Relationships are supposed to be easy," riiiiiight, you just keep on thinking that way and while you're at it, wave at the sandman for me as he whisks you back into your dream world.

You want to talk about two people unafraid to put the "work" in on our relationship? That's me and Ace all the way and I'm proud to say we've been like that from the beginning. (After all, those of us with our illness can find each other in a heartbeat.) We know our symptoms and we're slowly working through knowing each other's triggers (Ace is doing much better at it than I am), it's every day sitting down and making sure that when we unwittingly hit a trigger, we back down or do something to repair the damage.  Don't get me wrong, we trigger each other, we fight, we go up, down, sideways, backwards, temper tantrums, anger issues, rejection issues, stepped on and mangled toes, and somehow at the end of the day we've found that we've ridden them out because even though I tried my best to avoid it, my tenacity and fortitude has found it's match.

We've been through me fighting to accept our relationship with me crying, kicking, screaming and throwing him out the door, but as a testament to his overwhelming strength, Ace wasn't about to give up on me, and we both joke that our relationship has aged in dog years because of it. Put yourself in my shoes for a minute and imagine for one second what that is like for me; after being neglected, abused and abandoned, a man stood in front of me and wouldn't give up and wouldn't let me go, even when my issues would be at their worst, he stood in the eye of the storm and held strong.

That right there should put your stomach in the vicinity of your shoes. It did mine.

After a while because of his unrelenting pursuit of me and our relationship I just gave in to the whole idea because I finally figured out there was no way in hell he was going to let me get away.  I termed it as contracting a fatal illness. I caught him and ya know, that's just the way it is so I figured I should just suck it up and learn how to live with it.

You have to understand, I'm so very proud of my man and I'm proud to be honored by him calling me his girl. Ace is beautiful in every way a person can be beautiful. The blonde hair mixed with dashes of silver, the scruffy chin, the earth-rumbling deep bass of his voice (girls, if you heard him talk, you would swoon), his smile and oh! those blue eyes of his...let's just say that just one of his mischievous looks and that million dollar smile of his will make my knees buckle in a heartbeat. He's just all that AND he has played Myst, and yes my peeps, he gets it and has a fair (very unknowing) portion of cavern blood in his veins! I got an epic win when I met Ace, but with all those good, highly nutritious values of his comes PTSD. Some girls would weep at that, but not me, it makes him that much more adorable to me because "he's one of my people". He's got it, I've got it, it's just a fact of life like the fact he and I both love Dr. Pepper, warm days and ice cream, that the kitchen is a place to be highly organized, have fun, cook and feed each other wonderful things.

Our illnesses, a lot like any other character flaw you might find, both for him and me, likes to sometimes mess us up. Hyper-vigilance can screw up a daily schedule in a heartbeat if one or both partners get scope-locked on something or worse we get so hyper-vigilant we derail ourselves from what we were trying to get accomplished in the first place. Or worse, both of us like to take on too many responsibilities because we can't bear to tell people that we can't do something for them, so we get caught by the toe over doing our best impression of Atlas trying in vain to carry the world on our shoulders. Think about it, we've been denied emotional support and assistance for a good majority of our lives, so for us there is no other option, you get down in the mud and you help, no matter the cost to yourself. Trust me, the word "selfless" is a very, very real term in our relationship. Selfish people don't do well around either of us at all. Selfish people are no more than fodder for drop-kicking around us.

Then on the other hand, you have me and my strong flight reflex.  As you know, every human being has a "fight or flight" response built-in. It's a survival instinct. For me, my childhood was filled with constant humiliations; the kids I grew up with would literally hurt me because they loved seeing me react to it. "Oh we just love the look on your face when we did that to you" was a lot of what I heard back then. Couple that with living alone with a maternal influence that never had a good role model to work from along with an abuse-laden childhood of her own and you've got a little girl in a world of hurt. My instincts were always to hide or run from conflict or a situation that would result in a very painful, humiliating dressing down or extremely verbally-abusive punishment. "If they can't see me, they can't hurt me" was a lot of my rationale back then.

Until Ace came along, no one understood what that felt like even if I would try to explain it, but after a beautiful summer with long hours spent over ice cream, margaritas and a whole lot of daisies, I realized he really did understand what I had been through and it scared me to death. I felt exposed and vulnerable, which as you know, ridicule is not something I handle well, so having any weakness exposed immediately makes me block or run for cover, leaving him with the equivalent of the Roadrunner to his bewildered and confused Wile E. Coyote: a puff of smoke and a vapor trail of where a girl used to be. But then without me knowing it, my flight reflex made him feel rejected and abandoned which triggered him. See where our little vicious cycle started? It's like Jay said, "He triggers you, you trigger him and it all comes down like a house of cards." This is the essence of being in a PTSD relationship.

But, here's the kicker... there are a lot of servicemen coming home to their spouses and not having the benefit of the other partner having the same illness, so it's hard for them to understand. Let's blow it out a little bit bigger and look at the households filled with Gen-X'ers who don't know they have PTSD or C-PTSD going through the same situations with a partner or spouse who has no idea what they are dealing with. That's the point here kids, we've got to recognize what's happening around us. When we're aware, that's half the battle won right there.

And yet with all of my issues triggering his issues and my need to disappear, Ace persisted (which still makes me look for the boxes marked "Acme" in his house) chasing after his Roadrunner-esque partner.

His presence alone with all that he knew taunted and dared me to trust in him. But, of course, I have PTSD, so when I see anything that frightens me or reminds me in the least of my trauma (go back and look at the list again) my survival instincts kick in and my flight reflex kicks in in a major way, putting Ace in the middle of a fight he couldn't win, effectively forcing him to carry baggage he had no business carrying and wondering why I was running away from him as fast as my size eights could carry me.  

But as I said before, Ace isn't about "say", he's about "do". I watched as he kept doing amazing thing after amazing thing, then he'd politely step on himself and trigger me, which then triggered him, equaling a nuclear-sized explosion, charring both of us and resulting in having to put each other in "time out", so by the time we hit Jay's office, the dog was looking at the both of us as if to say, "Knock it off you two or someone's going to be missing their rear end. I might be older than the hills but let me tell you, I can still bite with the best of them." Yep, by the time we started to expect a monthly blow-up, we walked into Jay's office.

When Jay sat and talked to us, it wasn't long before he said, "Look you two, you're both very traumatized individuals, you have every right to feel the way you are feeling, but enough of this back and forth blow-up business.  If you two want this to work, you've got to commit, and I don't mean half-ass here, I mean 'all the way' commit. You two have to learn how to trust each other, if you don't, then you two are just going to keep up this vicious cycle you two have working and guess what, no one is going to end up happy. You either commit or you get out."

As you can imagine, after Jay laid the hammer down and explained exactly why Ace couldn't express his feelings (which by the way are the exact same reasons I run from things) he excused me from the session to dry my eyes and he and Ace could do their one-on-one. I walked out of the Jay's office and man oh man, did I feel like I had been through the wringer. As I walked out into the sunlight, I couldn't breathe. I finally had answers to the bajillion questions that Ace wouldn't answer, that I had time after time felt frustrated that he would duck, dodge, weave around or just plain ignore my requests for information (or validation). I had needed to feel accepted and clearly understand how he felt about me, but his issues prevented that from happening. When Jay explained that all of my needs were being fulfilled but Ace couldn't talk about it because of his issues, I sat in shock. For the first time I honestly felt accepted, but let's add the deal-sealer, I stood there just in awe over the fact that he truly did love me, come hell or high water. I stood there and just wept, and I mean involuntary tears just streaming from my eyes over the absolute shock of it. I'm still digesting the whole idea that someone actually wants me around. That's so foreign of a concept to me that my mind is still reeling from it. I've never felt wanted, ever, and here's this amazing yet troubled man who just thinks I'm the kitten's whiskers. I'm still trying to choke it down and get used to it, but it's different, that's for sure.

You see, Ace is just as beat up as I am. His dad was really (and I mean really) hard on him. I won't even lie, there are days when Ace and I are having trouble (because of our triggers) that I don't like my mother or his father very much at all. It takes all of what I've got and then some not to become volcanically angry that Ace and I had been through so much inside the supposed "safety" of our childhood homes before we went out into the world just to get stomped into the ground some more. However, like any acceptance-needing child, we both look to our offending parent, searching for the acceptance we long for; then when we don't get it, we try to forgive them, then try to understand them to the point that we can get past being angry at them for not accepting us or believing in us. Ace is super forgiving with his father, just like I'm more than forgiving with my mother. My problem is that I want to understand fully how I got to where I'm at, and I have gained all of the necessary information, but as I always say, "An audience won't hear your message until they're ready to understand it." So I keep my chin up and pray that one day that my mother accepting me for who I am isn't the end-all, be-all of human existence, that accepting myself is truly the answer; but I won't lie, it's hard to do when you don't feel it from the one person in the universe that would make all the difference in the world, knowing that even if she'd tell me, I still wouldn't believe her because the whole concept of trust went out the window long ago.

But then I realized something - Ace and I individually had decided, before we even met, that the cycles and the things we've been through had to stop with us. We're not about to perpetrate the same injustices on someone else as we had done to us. Yeah, it takes a lot not to rip someone's head off or scream back every time our triggers get stomped on by the outside, knowing perfectly well our triggers didn't have to be there in the first place. But alas, those triggers might love to persist but that doesn't mean I'm not going down swinging to make it right so I can live a happy life.

But then Ace has his combat issues on top of that with (check the list) "Intrusive Recollection". As I said earlier, Ace doesn't talk about the things that hurt him. He doesn't really talk about anything emotionally involved because it triggers him huge. From what he has told me though, he's seen things from combat that no human should ever see, but as a soldier, that's a part of life in the military. On the day I had the Rice Krispies meltdown in the kitchen, he was having his own little meltdown on the road. He's been to Afghanistan, (I almost feel like saying "What soldier these days hasn't?") and well, as he was driving in from Arizona he got caught in a dust storm.  Between the obscured visibility from all the sand flying around, then seeing the mountains, well, Ace got transported back to Afghanistan in that moment. He had to pull his truck over, get out and walk around because he literally felt like he was right back in the combat zone. His brow covered itself in sweat and he sat shaking from it. When I heard about that later, I was so grateful that he walked in to find me laughing and giggling, giving him the sense of normalcy that is so very important to him.

Normalcy is actually very important to both of us. We need to feel very safe and normal for us to get through the day in one piece. I've got my own "Intrusive Recollection" problems as well, and wow, to talk about those is a whole other kettle of fish and this will be the second post I'll avoid talking about it. (Yeah, yeah, I know...avoidance...) However, I'll go this far...there are lots of days where I can still hear the taunts and sneers of the bullies that tormented me, the evil smirk on the boy Anti-Christ's face that signaled his satisfaction and great joy that he had once again tormented and humiliated me in front of all of those children. There are still television shows and music I can't listen to from the 80's that will do the same thing to me that the dust storm on the road from Arizona did to Ace. Let me tell you, it's not an easy thing to go through because you can literally see, hear and smell that exact traumatic moment, down to the last detail. I can even remember colors and patterns on clothing. It's not pleasant and it literally makes me nauseous. There have even been a few times where I've thrown up because I can't take the sensory overload of re-living a traumatic moment like that. "Intrusive recollection" can and will bring you to your knees if you let it, other times you can't help it, you're just screwed until you can get to feeling normal again.

The most important thing that Ace and I work on every single day is to make sure that when we have moments of intrusive recollection that we automatically take that moment and turn it into something positive, effectively re-writing our responses to the particular stimuli that triggered the intrusive memory, but I won't lie, it's hard, hard work to get through it. When Ace is with me and I'm going through it, I look into his ice-blue eyes, take a big, deep breath and recite my mantra in my head, "How old are you? 40. Where are you? Las Vegas. Are you safe? Yes. Can they hurt you any more? No." Then I coach myself through breathing in and out thinking, "That's it sweet girl, just breathe. Just slow down, look around and figure out where you are.  You can do it, I know you can. Don't cry. Chin up. Come on, you can do it!" Then I hold on to Ace's hand and he never fails to wrap me up in his arms so I can get a nice sized bear hug from him and feel protected. After a few minutes I start to feel better as my world of here and now comes rushing back into existence, transporting me back to the present. I'm just so glad to know I'm not alone when it happens and that I can and will do the same for Ace when it happens to him.

Part of Ace's problems lie in "deprogramming". I can't speak for any other soldier I know, but I do know that Ace's PTSD becomes evident because he's having trouble adjusting back to the regular world that you and I know and take for granted. Remember, when he (or any soldier for that matter) gets trained, they go through some pretty horrific stuff. The only example I have experience with (that Ace has been willing to talk about) is the whole "combat nap" paradigm. You see, those guys have to be ready at a moment's notice to defend themselves because they never know what's going to come around the next corner, much less over the next hill, so they're trained to be extra-vigilant. Remember, what's coming around that next corner or over the next hill has a chance of literally trying to kill them, so their senses are super sharp and they're hyper-vigilant almost 24 hours a day. Check the symptoms list again, that's the Hyper-Arousal/Hyper-Vigilance thing.

The sad part about hyper-vigilance is that once those fellas are programmed that way, it's really hard to come back from. When you've been trained to be hyper-vigilant on purpose because you're going into a combat zone, I'm convinced that it really messes up how those fellas sleep for the rest of their lives. When I'm hyper-vigilant, forget all about sleep, it's not happening, but Ace, that poor, sweet, darling man...I'm always amazed if he gets more than two or three hours at a stretch of sleep. Every time he falls asleep, I give a huge sigh of relief, look at him and think to myself, "He sleeps" and I'm grateful for it, hoping and praying that for once he sleeps a full eight hours, but alas, I never get my wish, he's usually up every three or four hours, he'll cruise around the house, make sure all the doors are locked then crawl back into bed. It breaks my heart every time his sleep is interrupted.

But let's ice the cake. When I was doing my paper for my media ethics class entitled, "The Media, The Military and PTSD", we talked about why fellas like Ace are so tuned up all the time. He said, "PTSD sufferers struggle harder with lesser tolerance because they’re at an elevated level of functioning. Where everyone else gets their eight hours of sleep per night, we don’t. We’re constantly on guard because that is how we are trained.” He continued, “Everyone else gets to relax, so when they wake up in the morning, they are at a low level of stress. On a scale of ten, they wake up at a 'three', when we wake up, we’re already at 'seven', I’ve never once seen the media report anything like that, and they wonder why we’re so keyed up.”

The one thing I've learned in the last 10 months is that while all I need is silence to sleep well, Ace can't really sleep well unless he can hear crickets chirping or some other ambient interruptable noise. I need to explain the whole "interruptable noise" thing. Ace explained it like this,"When you're asleep outside you know that the crickets, frogs and other animals will be scared off if someone is walking around nearby; it also enables you to hear a noise when it disrupts the sounds the animals make." Meaning that he can sleep knowing that the crickets and frogs are singing, it tells him that he's safe. Then there's Lucky. If Lucky barks it's a sheer miracle (you know how I love that dog), but if he's asleep in the room with Ace and he barks, guess what, he just told Ace something isn't right and Ace pops out of bed like a pop tart flying out of a toaster. But Ace's favorite thing to go to sleep to is the sound of frogs. He's a frog fanatic and I don't blame him, we've spent hours going over pictures of Poison Arrow frogs because he and I both love them and want a wall sized terrarium filled with them so we're both lulled to sleep by the singing of frogs.

But let's talk about hyper-vigilance in my world before we delve back into Ace's. I think mine might be easier to understand and a little bit more relatable. I gave you the Wikipedia definition there, so take a moment to familiarize yourself with it. Odds are, you've experienced a mild form of hyper-vigilance, but it's really different when you suffer from PTSD.

Let's look at me for a minute. Let's talk about the bullying once again. Imagine, just for a moment, that you are surrounded by constant threats. Kids pushing you, kids threatening you, kids belittling you, then having authority figures threaten and belittle you as well. It's all forms of attacks on your person. So after a while, your body goes into survival mode and you're trying anything in your power to protect yourself just to simply survive. While you're going through it, there is no "safe" place, no safe harbor, just endless torment. Now, prolong that sensation over days, weeks, months then years. All of a sudden it's not just about survival, it becomes something you do automatically and when even the slightest feeling of attack or persecution hits you...BANG...you've just been triggered and you go into the state of just protecting yourself.  Nothing anyone can say can get you down out of that, you have to ride it out and find some way to make yourself feel safe. Hence, that's where my strong flight reflex comes in. If I feel attacked, I'm going to immediately want to go home and hole up with my 34-year-old teddy bear because that's what I've done for the last 34 years to feel safe and in control. Yep, I live like that every day. Not pleasant, is it? On the other hand, Ace's reflex is that he gets frustrated and angry, and I mean really angry. Then he clams up. He expresses no emotion but this roiling anger over the fact he can't change the situation he's in.

Now, let's go back to Ace again. Not only does he have the same type of history I do, but then let's add on bullets flying through the air at him in a combat zone. If you're like me, you are thinking that that man needs major hugs and a protective blanket of love wrapped around him permanently. However, it doesn't work like that. Ace isn't a touchy-feely guy when it comes to him interacting with the world and when that trigger goes off for him, oy veh, I want to run for cover, but it's like Jay said, "You've got to commit." So I do everything to hold my flight reflex in check and remind him that it's not as bad as he thinks it is, just like when my trigger kicks in and he has to do the same for me. The one great differentiating factor between the two of us is that his anger issues are very surface. Last night I had to quote the movie Twister when he had been triggered and his anger was raging, I giggled (which always makes him feel better) and said, "Someone should warn them about your temper." At that point, I kind of feel helpless, but I can only imagine how helpless he feels when I get like that too.

Anger is a staple in our world.  It is. Look at today. It's tax season and nothing will set Ace on edge like dealing with things like doing his taxes. He's got some issues there and they're not for me to touch (yet) but I sat and watched as he became so angry over just about everything, and I looked at him and said, "Hey, it's not as bad as you think it is." When the papers went flying across the table and I was watching him lose it, I remembered Jay and said out loud, "You can be as angry as you want to be, but I'm committed! Now we're going to get through this, just like we get through everything else. If I don't get to fly, you can do me the favor of not getting so upset. I'm smiling...so how about giving me one in return." After that he cooled off a bit, he hugged me and said, "You shouldn't have seen me get upset. I'm sorry, you shouldn't have been here for that." I just rolled my eyes. For all the bull he's taken from me, a small blow-up like that is nothing I can't handle. I at least owe him that.

I realized long ago, knowing that he had been through anger-management therapy, that Ace was going to get mad now and again. It comes with the caveat that he can sometimes get that irrational kind of angry which I know is not directed at me unless we're having a knock-down, drag-out argument (we've only had two in ten months which I deem as 'not bad').

Most of the time, Ace just gets angry because he knows there are better ways to do things. His big thing that makes him the most angry is hypocrisy and bureaucratic red tape. Oh yeah, those two things will set him off quicker than a fuseless firecracker. One bit of heat and boom! He's off like a rocket, so I know not to touch those things. When he gets mad, I think about the times that I see red and the triggers associated with it. Half the battle is knowing the trigger then the cool-off point, also known as things that get his mind on other more pleasant things.  Usually, I just give a little giggle.  See, I'm covert like that, I figured out that nothing gives him more joy or lights him up faster than when I'm giggling and smiling. He loves my laugh. I have no idea why, but he does. The minute I get onto something that makes me laugh he forgets all about being angry. Trust me, the distraction tactic works because when I'm upset like that, if you plug me into a video game I forget all about what upset me. The minute you can figure out what defuses a trigger, the better off you are. But then again, I know where he's coming from because if I see Ace laughing and smiling, I immediately cool off.

You see, living through love, war and PTSD isn't easy, but the returns on the emotional investment are huge. I have a partner who not only understands me, but I have a unique peek into my man that most other women will never be able to get into theirs. But then again, I don't have one of those football watching, aloof guys either. I have to give Ace kudos, he's very much present in the relationship and thanks to Jay I can see him in better and different lights that help me read Ace's body language, the expressions on his face and know when I can step in and help out.

Individuals with PTSD are very special people. They've been through things that you don't ever want to experience and their spirits have been forged in the hottest of fires. We have been exposed to prolonged trauma and when you think of it that way, it begs to have some bit of lenience because we've seen more hurt and pain than most other people who grew up in a very "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Leave it to Beaver" household or lived their lives without a hint of danger, taking normalcy for granted. We've been beaten, we've been torn up and torn down, yet we survive. Sometimes I like to think of my PTSD as a badge of honor, it means that you can come at me with your best, most malicious shot and I'll probably laugh at you thinking, "Is that all you've got?  Really? Amateur! Keep trying, one day you might get it." LOL. And people wonder why I get upset when I see people do malicious things. The need to slap them into next week and tell them,"The de-wormer is in the pet aisle" is overwhelming. People. They never fail to make me laugh. The ones that make me laugh hardest are the insecure ones that only strike out at others because they feel inferior; when the truth really is that it's all in their perception, that there is really nothing wrong with them besides their Napoleon Complex or their own issues that they need to go work on without making everyone else their emotional baggage bellhop.

PTSD is an illness, we can't get around that, but some days I wish it will be eventually re-named as People That Survived (other people's) Drama. We're tough stuff and we deserve every bit of the acceptance and love that every human being on the planet deserves.

If you know someone with PTSD, please give them a hug for me and remind them that they're not alone. The biggest and best thing you can remember is that your PTSD afflicted friend has been through situations that would make other people crumble. That they are getting up, getting out and being a part of the world is nothing short of a miracle. There are a lot of people who PTSD just takes down for the count, who's illness has taken them to places they would have never gone unless they were so traumatized they couldn't handle it any other way (that's why you see such a huge number of addicts in the PTSD population). It's the ones who have hit the bottom and are fighting to come back strong that are the ones who deserve your love, your patience and most of all, your respect.

One other thing, PTSD does not make us bad, lowest-caste citizens. We are just as productive as anyone else, we just have special needs and special considerations to take into account. Those of us with PTSD are no different than you are, we've just seen and been through traumatic events that you may not ever see in your lifetime. That we're standing is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, our ability to adapt and survive. That I can write and tell you about it is nothing short of pure bravery because I want the world to understand that PTSD doesn't mean "outcast", it means "survivor."

I have C-PTSD and I'm proud to be me. I'm even more proud of Ace. He's seen combat along with everything else and I couldn't be happier than to have a man in my life like him.  He has my illness too and I think he's adorable.

For the song of the day, I'm going to go with one from 1990, Big Audio Dynamite's "Bottom Line"...

When you reach the bottom line, the only thing to do is climb, pick yourself up off the floor, don't know what you're waiting for...