A DS PTSD friend posted a link to a song called "Lost Boy" today.  This is a post here about another song with that title that the first reminded me of.  This one's "The Lost Boy,"  by Greg Holden.  It was used as a soundtrack for The Sons of Anarchy.  Kind of my PTSD anthem.  I'll be traveling back from Mexico to the States all day tomorrow, so I just now loaded it onto my iPod to boost me during those airport layovers.

Thinking of how this song was used for the show The Sons of Anarchy, I guess I am a son of anarchy.  Not a biker, but a son of chaos, and not by choice.  Being here in Mexico has been like PTSD exposure therapy for me.  

I avoided Latin America for 15 years because my wife (now ex) didn't like the fact that when she traveled here with me she saw a Latino side of myself.  She didn't speak the language of that side of me so it bothered her.  She broke up with me over that on our trip down here, and wouldn't get back together and marry me unless I promised not to bring my Latino side up again.  I should have known that was wrong, huh?  I thought it was "getting over it" at the time.

I stayed away, and for 15 years never started to deal with my trauma memories from growing up here until 2009.  Finally, that's when my PTSD therapist from the VA said it was time to, time to come back to Latin America and stand on the corner where that car bombing when I was 9 years old took place.  It was hard, but I did 

So I love the song's chorus, because it gave me determination to get through panic attacks and flashbacks and to fight to get my soul back from predators who drained it out of me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBRQJ0na4uU

Chorus:

"I will not be commanded, I will not be controlled, I will not let my future go on without the help of my soul."

I won't let anybody tell me to deny half of myself ever again so they can control me.  I will let my two soul's halves come together, the gringo + the latino, and be made whole.

If anybody's interested, this is how these lines from the song tell my story:

1. "I left my home still as a child"  

Yup, at 17 so I wouldn't get beaten bloody any more, 4 months before my final high school exams

2. "We'll come get you, when it's safe for us to move"

 It never did get safe

3. "So I waited many years/Held back the pain behind my tears"  

I dissociated a lot.  Still do

4. "And in that time I was alone/So many years without my home/I made brothers of a different kind instead"

Growing up on the mission field abandoned & abused by my mentally ill parents, I was raised by the foreigners on the foreign mission field instead.  That's why I'm in Mexico looking to retire there.  My brothers are of this different kind, my half brothers, really, since I turned out to be a half gringo/half latino.  

A half breed to some who look down on me for that.  

Others say the two cancel each other out, and I'm not even a half breed, I'm a zero.  I guess whoever threw acid on my car and slashed my tire in my parking lot this year was making that statement.  

But "I will not be commanded, I will not be controlled, I will not let my future go on/Without the help of my soul"--I will embrace the gringo half of the latino half of my soul together like I did on this trip back to Mexico so they will make me whole.

5. "And in the time I didn't know/Just how hard the wind could blow/Towards disaster, and the things that I would see"

Being in a disastrous carbombing at age 9 was pretty mind blowing

6. "to those born without chances/There's a freedom that everyone deserves"

I wasn't born lucky, but I still deserve freedom, amen to that.

7. "I know there's greed and there's corruption"

My poor mad parents were finally kicked out of the missionary business for that.

8. "I've seen death and mass destruction"

That's why I teach death and dying classes to nurses in a college now

9. "But I'm telling you, and I hope that I'm heard"

DS PTSD folks listen and that gives me hope

10.  "I will not be commanded I will not be controlled I will not let my future go on/Without the help of my soul"

I am Muji, I am not PTSD, I am me, and I will fight to be who I am.

Cool anthem for me.  Others here know about it, too.  Just thought I'd share it again.  It pumped me up with the soul to leave in the morning, leave this vacation's glimpse of my peaceful retirement in Mexico come 3 years from now.

http://www.turismochiapas.gob.mx/sectur/sitio-en-internet-de-marca-chiapas

I learned Spanish for the first time on the street ere hin Mexico when my mad hillbilly parents brought me down and abandoned me to go to missionary language school down here.

This is where I learned to ride a bike from other little kids on the Mexican street.

The Pacific Ocean on Mexico's beach is where I learned to swim.

This now is where as an old man I find my soul.

"I will not let my future go on/Without the help of my soul"

Tomorrow I'll get back to the USA to roll up my sleeves and go back to work.  

Work for my future, with all of my soul.  1 more year out of 3.  I can make it.  It'll be 1 down, 2 to go.  Kidney disease, diabetes, PTSD.  One day at a time, with all of my soul, work for my future.

Like a prayer, I play the song over and over, and I say to myself:

"I will not let my future go on/Without the help of my soul"