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Emotional segregation

I realize, as I slowly try to build a behavioral line for myself, that it is quite possible, through will and habit, to constrain the expression of traumatic residue to certain contexts and times.

People like me, we learn to do 8 to 5, more or less, or 6am to 6pm, or whatever is needed. We mostly seem normal. I am a bit rigid but I have a good sense of humor (on most accounts).

But it is EXHAUSTING acting normal. Once I done playing my role, I want to numb all that tension and grief into oblivion.  The day is act 1. The night is act 2, and this can be repeated across s lifetime.

“He was so quiet”, we hear of the latest mass murderer, or guy who had someone locked in a closet, or whatever. Two lives. Two segmented lives. Act 1 and Act 2, the second hidden.

Often soldiers are like this. Keep them in a container of duty and they function fine. When leave the service though, they may just want to buy a shipping container and 40 acres in back of the back 40, and hide from the world. Some of our best soldiers do this, I am told, by someone in a position to know. The long term accumulation of fear, based on first hand knowledge of what is possible, just adds up and sinks them. Maybe they are happy, but I think happier is the better word, relative to all other options.