FTL-32…Faster Than Life.

*Before…

Part of my brain is in wounded animal mode and Belinda helps my synch my OBC to the system and it’s a little strange, no it’s a lot strange knowing that I’m going to be seriously monitored with my sleep and breathing and neural activity and all sorts of things that have to do with taking mental trauma and shock.

It’s very big brotherly in a way and at the same time there’s something to be definitely said about having a sort of safety net where if I’m nightmaring bad that someone will know and either let someone know or even have the option of engaging me with stims and waking me up from it.

I settle in to the room/sleep pod that I’ve been given and it’s warm and cushiony and even that adjusts to my comfort levels through the OBC link and I’m soon drifting off as the gravity lessens and there’s soothing music being slid into my awareness through the cyber link.

I didn’t know that I could feel that exhausted on the inside.

Well a different kind of exhausted.

Before my change I was more than exhausted at being someone that I never really was.

At least that part is better.

*And Now…

Being in recovery is one of the hardest things to do in my life.

Home was…Well it was spartan, emotionally spartan and you either did as everyone else and sort of went along with the script that society gave you or your were on the outside.

And that’s different than on the outside that I am now.

But home…people, my family especially my family were cold people.

You had to be of value, be something of worth to the family which usually entailed doing your job and not complaining and never really being different or really being bothersome enough to be emotionally needy.

They didn’t quite hate you but if you couldn’t pull of this fake and content genial together thing well they found you bothersome.

And bothersome wasn’t really worth anyone’s time, you were expected to get through things, not be constantly going through things.

My family never talked about anything.

So in therapy and recovery I really didn’t have the tools to get things inside of me out.

Some things are nice I like the zero-grav float, with the music and the sub sonic pulse.

It just sounds…womb like and it’s supposed to be like that sort of soothing and everything.

It actually works on a really primal level.

And I like art therapy too as it turns out. I’m not a great drawer or sketcher past doing something technical but I like painting, most of it’s digital but we actually do some with actual paint which surprisingly not like any painting compound that I’ve seen really.

Like you’re making a picture with texture? Like it has mass…I know that technically it does have scientific mass but this is something I’m not even good at describing.

And I swear sometimes things come out at me from the painted swirls like the Tekkers and their bugs.

I guess it goes hand in hand with the nightmares.

Those are bad…The smell of blood lingers with me like it somehow got into my palate through my nose so that I can taste it but not taste it.

Waking up from being huddled up and under fire from the rail guns I can still smell the blood in the cabin. I can still feel the velocity wakes from the rounds that missed me, an effect that I completely blanked on during the action.

I wake up shaking and curled in a ball in my pod.

And the taste is there slight, sort of coppery, sort of not, and this odd sort of salt.

And then there’s being monitored.

I actually don’t notice it at all until we start having session where Belinda will bring up my dreams. And it’s all right there recorded live and in fully terror.

See in a universe where you can plug into a Sim world or reality they can reconstruct your brainwaves into images of what you’re free thinking.

It’s I hear a lot harder to nearly impossible to do when one’s awake or resisting.

But it’s still very unsettling seeing my horrors laid bare.

And seeing people I care about in there in the shuttle with me sometimes and getting killed.

Having everyone dying except me.

And I know I’m missing days and shifts and training and that family guilt of do it, be useful, and be useful or else there’s no use for you.

That bubbles up.

My not being able to save the people that I was with in both those situations bubbles up.

If I survived, I managed to save my useless ass.

They why couldn’t I save them, save more of them.

Lots of crying.

And they don’t judge me for it.

I’m not the only cadet here and I’m not the only actual member of the ship’s crew here either.

Heck it’s not even from these encounters for some of them.

Belinda says… “People are screwed up, we live with so much stuff that so many of us have been told it’s normal to just deal with.”

I nodded while we were in session and sipped my tea. “I feel just so responsible.”

She nodded. “From what you’ve been telling me of your upbringing you were raised to be responsible, to do and keep doing.”

I frown in my mug. “My father’s been long of the opinion that if you’re not doing something, not doing something that’s worthwhile then you’re a living waste of time.”

She asked. “What was worthwhile? You have no contact with him or the rest of your family since you joined up.”

I take a sip slowly letting the lemon and herbal flavors bite into the residue of watching that last strand of nightmares. “Work, family specifically for me getting married and fathering children and spending my time teaching them how to work and not be weak.”

“Weak?”

“Recreational sex, non-heterosexual sex…he and lots of others home see no point in it. Games, Sims.”

“Drugs and Alcohol?”

“Actually no, Drugs are used but only when prescribed and are used to make you better, smarter, more focused and alcohol well that’s all bound to being acceptable and tradition and well faith too. My father drinks a lot.”

“Was he abusive?”

“He’d have to care to be abusive.”

“He didn’t care?”

“I think he did in his own twisted sort of way. Home you’re measured constantly with this whole sort of social status thing…decent job, decent education, spouse, kids and then their successes and you’re still expected to do something to succeed.”

“You sound upset.”

I look at her. “I am, home I was a failure because I did enough to get by. The rest of the time I was dealing with being who I am now trapped in the body that god gave me. I was considered a failure in my family and worse too after they found out what was…wrong…with me.”

I’m hurting over that still.

“And they didn’t support this?”

“No…not by a long shot. My family has a long standing bias against The Colonial Union Navy and consider the armed forces the home of the dregs of humanity. Me joining was a slap to their collective faces and our family name. I mean they know I was going in for conversion and they see it as I’m a deviant, I’m a deviant and I never belonged to the family because I chose this over getting adjusted.”

Belinda actually makes a face. “Adjusted…where they re-write your neural pathways so that you aren’t affected by certain conditions…We don’t do that here…most planets actually frown on the procedure as it re-writes who the patient essentially is.”

I drink some more tea and sort of stare into my mug. “They got my sister to do it. She was a lesbian and they were so judgmental and so disappointed with her so intensely that she got adjusted.”

“Is she happy?”

“Yeah…well this version of her is happy and blessed with a whole bunch of children.”

“This bothers you.”

“They pressured her into erasing herself and she’s living a life that she never would have wanted if she’d just been allowed to live her life.”

“And you chose conversion and signing up over adjustment and all of them.”

I nod. “And I’ve been written off; my whole old life just doesn’t exist anymore.”

Belinda says. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Then you can stop living and doing things in this clean break life for them. You don’t have to please your father Erin you can stop unpacking that.”

“Pleasing my father?”

“That overwhelming wave of failure even when you lived, even when you lived and save lives that’s from him. That from being emotionally abused and gaslit to the point of he’s still trying to run and second guess your life.”

“Oh..”

There was more, there was a lot more actually with the survivor’s guilt and my family stuff and then there was some group therapy too with others sharing their messes.

It’s a lot easier to be objective with someone else’s problems than your own.

And it helps, it helps knowing that you’re not alone or even as screwed up as you feel.

And from there I end up getting into more therapy, harder things like going through work Sims.

Going through work Sims where things go wrong.

And fighting the pressure and getting over the pressure of screwing up.

Well not screwing up but having things not be perfect.

Of dealing with losses.

Learning how to see the good in the bad.

After that it was getting back into doing things physically as well as mentally.

Going to the gym and working out and going to PT running and swimming and training in self-defense and the sword again…going to the ranges. And seeing people and talking to my friends and yearmates. That was a huge step going from all that stuff in my head and things from the stuff I’d been through and all my growing up issues…really taking that step sideways to look at my life, my new life and see that it is really a fresh start.

Finding out that they give a shit.

Getting hugs and being held by them when they finally see me again.

Three months.

It’s been three months of really hard therapy and counselling before we’ve been together.

We have one planet stop left on our milk-run through the back colonies to pick up recruits.

And we’ll have shore leave there including me since Belinda thinks that it’ll be a good idea that I get off ship even though the jump after that will be at command.

It feels good to get dressed in my uniform again.

Better than good because it feels like I’m back on track with things and I’m headed out from my bunk to go to my Sense-Nav section and I’m met there by Stillwater who smiles a little bit in that sort of unofficial and fleeting way before she’s all back to business again.

“Cadet Stone, you’re not on shift yet your rotation’s been moved to the next shift.”

“Yes corporal.”

“I’m here to pick you up.”

“Up corporal?”

“You’re coming with me; the commander wants to see you.”

“Yes corporal.”

She points for me to head off and I know where the command decks are but I’ve seldom been there.

And I have no idea why the commander wants to see me.