Memorial Day

Here's a small tip that will serve you well when reading the Anita Blake books or LKH's blogs: she has a massive ladyboner for the military and/or special law enforcement agencies.
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Wait, no... no no no no. She doesn't sexualize soldiers or FBI agents or anything. She just really, really wants to be them... or at least the male ones.
See, in LKH's world they are rough, tough, always-on-alert towers of manliness who will shoot you dead if you stand up too fast, and are contemptuous of everybody who isn't as manly as them. Oh, and half of them are serial killers. But of course, they're all impressed by Anita and her manly manliness and her phallic weapons.
So I wonder what we can expect for Memorial Day. Hmm, perhaps LKH trying to equate herself to the soldiers who risk their lives because she wants to be as rough, tough and manly as they are?
Happy Memorial Day, everyone, but this message is especially for those who have served in our armed forces.
I think they would prefer a mixed box of donuts. Just a hunch.
Thank for your service whether it is in the past, or the present. If you are all having a great day of barbecuing, or sports, family reunions, whatever makes you happy then take my thanks and go back to your day.
... and this blog would have been just fine if she had stopped there. Unfortunately, LKH has not learned the fine art of just saying something brief and then shutting up.
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The rest of this blog is those of us who aren’t having that great day.
 "Those of us"? Um, who is she referring to?
She better not be referring to herself as part of the veterans' "us."
Hell, why would SHE not be having a good day? She's never been a soldier, her husband never was, and to my knowledge she isn't close to anyone who has either died in war or been severely affected by it.
So who is SHE to have a bad Memorial Day? Eat the damn hot dogs and shut up.
You can walk off the battlefield bleeding, but fixable.
You have never been on a battlefield, and most of the bleeding you suffer is self-inflicted.
Also, she seems to be unaware of this, but there are plenty of soldiers who go on to live happy, well-adjusted, angst-free lives. My grandfather served in the worst war in human history, and he was one of the cheeriest people you'll ever meet.
The wound heals, maybe you have a scar, maybe not even that, but you survive. You survived, and part of you is happy to have survived.
STOP.
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LKH, listen carefully. You have never been a soldier. You have never been in the places they are deployed. You have never seen their injuries. You have never heard their issues. I seriously doubt you could even watch The Hurt Locker without wimping out.
Seriously, STOP PRETENDING you have even the vaguest idea what the mental and/or physical wounds of soldiers are like. The biggest trauma of your life is that your mother died when you were young, which is not comparable or recent. I am not saying it isn't something that would have a massive effect on a person, but that old wound should have scabbed over, dried up and turned into a tidy scar by now.
Embrace that part of you that enjoys life, celebrate it!
And then write a blog about how tormented and emo you are.
But it’s okay that theres that other part that feels, why did I survive?
Apparently to irritate people with pretentious monologues. Why does EVERYTHING this woman mentions have to have some Deep Self-Pitying Wounded-Woman-Walking Message?
And pray tell, what exactly does she think she "survived"? The death of a parent? Plenty of people have that happen without comparing themselves to people who live, are maimed and die for the sake of others. A divorce? Again, lots of people. People being critical of your vampire porn? AGAIN, LOTS OF PEOPLE.
Why did I crawl out of the mess and stink and the chaos?
What mess, stink or chaos? You are a writer of bad porn living in suburbia, who has never been a soldier, a cop, or anyone else who has to "crawl" out of a bad situation. Hell, she gets spooked just shopping for cupcakes in an upscale shopping district!
I kinda suspect that LKH is a lot like Kristen Stewart: she really wishes that something bad had happened to her in the near past so she could act like a martyr about something that didn't happen FORTY-FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO.
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Why did I make it and my friend, my brother, my sister . . . Why didn’t they make it out?
This sounds more dramatic until you realize she has no brothers or sisters, and her friendships tend to be fast and shallow.
Why couldn’t I save them, too?
Because they don't exist?
Why didn’t the person who saved me, save them? Why me? Why not them?
This Deep Life Question brought to you from LKH's ass, where all her knowledge of other people's pain and trauma comes from.
And seriously, none of this applies to her. As I mentioned, the one big trauma of her life is that her mother died when she was young. She really doesn't seem to even remember much of her mother's LIFE, just her death and how it impacted LKH. Since then, she has lived a pretty pleasant life.
As for the "saving" thing? There is only ONE person that we know of that could have been considered to have "saved" LKH, and that is her late grandmother. Her grandmother could not "save" anyone else instead of her, because she was an only child and I doubt Granny had the superhuman powers to somehow prevent a car wreck. How did Granny "save" her? By devoting her twilight years to raising her granddaughter, instead of letting her rot in the foster care system as many children with dead/absent parents often are.
How was she thanked? Well, pretty much every grievance that LKH hasn't laid at her ex-husband's door is laid at her granny's.
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Honestly, I suspect LKH sort of wishes she HAD been thrown into the foster care system, because then she would have a Tragic Life Story instead of the truly ordinary one she actually has.
If I had an answer I would give it to you, but I don’t know.
... possibly because most of these battles and losses are entirely fictional! sniff Oh Phillip, I... I mean, Anita wasn't able to save you!
I know that sometimes you leave people behind, because you can either drowned with them, or live without them.
Is that the reason she doesn't hang out with her BFFs from a few years back?
Is that the worst guilt?
Or is it the guilt about eating the last Oreo without telling anyone?!
Maybe?
Is that what LKH means when she says "X made it a question"? Because it doesn't sound like it should be a question.
Or is when everyone lives, but they come back in pieces broken beyond the ability to have a normal life, let alone a happy one.
 ... and this one SHOULD be a fucking question. And it's not.
LKH, Nate running out of conditioner is NOT that big a crisis.
And yes, this sort of thing DOES sometimes happen. It is tragic when it happens, and in my humble opinion both our government and our culture treats veterans with a shameful lack of consideration. Sure, we have a day honoring them and we give them ridiculous little pensions if they survive, but have you ever seen how many vets are homeless and/or plagued by mental illness? A LOT OF THEM.
Okay, off my soapbox now.
And again, this is not something LKH has experience with. I cannot say this ENOUGH TIMES.
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And you feel guilty about that too, how dare you have family and happiness when your friend, your brother, your sister, is a ghost of what they could have been. Why are they the walking wounded and you aren’t?
You know, I could MAYBE give another person the benefit of the doubt if they said this. You know, that maybe they DO have a loved one who has suffered so.
But this is LKH. If she knew somebody who had gone to war and been psychologically scarred by it, she would NOT be able to withhold that news. No way. She'd be talking about how she understands this person as no one else does, how they support each other in their pain, etc etc.
The fact that she's talking in vague generalities just says to me, "I am pontificating from my anus."
But here’s the real secret, just because we walked away, bandaged, healed, old scars, doesn’t mean we aren’t still wounded, too.
No. You're not. Every person has experienced their fair share of traumas, but LKH hasn't suffered ANYTHING worthy of comparison to a soldier's experiences.
We walked out of the chaos, we survived, but every day is a choice to keep surviving.
SURVIVING WHAT? The death of a parent FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO? Good grief, she once wrote a blog about how she watched the MOON LANDING shortly before her mother's death! You should not have to "choose" to "keep surviving" about something that happened back when Neil Armstrong was fudging his lines!
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I try never to say "get over it" when it comes to grieving a death, but FERFUKSAKE, get on with your fucking life! This is not a new, fresh trauma!
We survived, the wounds healed, but the haunting of it calls us back again and again, and we know that we choose every day to keep surviving.
There are only so many ways I can keep saying the same thing without sounding like a brain-damaged monkey.
Sometimes just continuing through the memories the sounds, the sensations that wake you from a sound sleep into a cold sweat.
For instance, I am often awoken by the ghastly sound of my grandmother saying, "Laurell, get your butt out of bed. It's time for school!" THE HORROR!
That you have a heartbeat to remember that this person beside you loves you and would never hurt you, and isn’t the nightmare that tried to kill, so you double check that they are your spouse, that your kids are asleep down the hall, and your dogs, your house, you life is intact, and sometimes you can go back to sleep, but sometimes that flash of remembering haunts too hard and you sit up waiting for the dawn, because you don’t trust what awaits you when you close your eyes.
FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. FUCK.
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You know, I'm starting to think that she believes that occasionally writing about giant guns and splattered body parts (in between vampire orgies) is the same thing as being a soldier. Remember, this is the woman who believes that a tiny crazed woman with no special training should be respected as being the Bestest Federal Marshal Ever, including by marshals who actually EARNED the distinction.
So it probably isn't too much of a stretch for her to think that having her Sue occasionally shoot somebody and being praised for her manly toughness by fictional soldiers TOTALLY makes her JUST like a real soldier. After all, Anita occasionally pays lip service to having survived some nasty fights and having rarely-mentioned scars, right? Writing her is TOTALLY the same thing as being a real soldier!
With that in mind, exactly WHAT is so frightening for her? As far as I know (and I doubt she could ever resist explaining past tragedies to us), she has never been kidnapped, raped, beaten, abused or even had her house broken into. Is she trying to convince us that a 45-year-old tragedy STILL causes her to wake up in the night and convince herself that her husband wouldn't hurt her?!
What do you do?
Write pretentious blogs about subjects you know nothing about?
I’m contacting my therapist again, because I will survive.
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That said, I'm simply AMAZED that her therapist hasn't gotten a restraining order on her ass. Or maybe by "contact," she means kidnapping them and chaining them to her water heater until they tell her what a wounded speshul snowflake she is.
I will keep surviving, and I will try to explain the survivor’s guilt, the choices not taken, and that feeling of throat closing terror that the smallest sound, the lightest touch, a smell, a moment of seeing something out of place and you’re right back there in the bad place.
FORTY. FIVE. YEARS. I can understand some survivor's guilt in the months following a death, but now she's claiming that she has panic attacks because random, completely ordinary things remind her of her mother's death. FORTY. FIVE. YEARS. LATER.
And you know what? Men and women who have actually been in the military do not NEED you to explain survivor's guilt, self-examination or fear. They've experienced those things in ways you cannot even comprehend.
We don’t remember, we are haunted, as my best friend said today.
"I'm particularly haunted by the time my arm was chewed on after I was attacked by a vampire pedophile! Oh, the traumatic memories of it all! I'M JUST LIKE A SOLDIER!"
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He’s a non-practicing Marine, and ex-cop.
 Does "non-practicing Marine" mean he doesn't go to Marine church?
Ah, I wish. This is LKH's unsubtle way of hinting that she is super-knowledgeable about military matters, because she just KNOWS that a Marine is always a Marine! Except, you know, for all the people (including me) that also have heard that phrase.
What, a Marine is always a Marine, but cops can just quit?
"I totally know all about solder stuff! My BEST FRIEND EVER is a Marine! And an ex-cop! That means I MUST know all about it, because soldiers and cops are NEVER friends with regular people!"
I’ve never worn a uniform this lifetime,
"But I was totally a soldier in all my previous lives! I was the manliest of samurai, the toughest of knights, the most badass of conquistadors! Yet I'm a delicate flower suffering from panic attacks if I see a white van!"
my bad stuff was all as a civilian,
If you've never worn a uniform, then by definition it has all been as a civilian. YOU IDIOT.
but we’ve discovered that it’s given me a unique perspective into the after effects of certain things.
Notice that she doesn't MENTION what that "bad stuff" is. That is because - as I said - she has never even hinted at suffering something abnormally bad in her life, and certainly NOTHING worthy of PTSD or survivor's guilt in her adult life.
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No, LKH. You do not have a "unique" perspective of the after-effects of trauma, let alone the traumas experienced by other people who have experiences that you have never even been on the same CONTINENT as.
PTSD isn’t just for uniforms, and neither is survivors guilt.
No, it isn't. But it isn't for the accidental death of a parent 45 years ago.
We survived, and it’s okay that we did, don’t let the guilt, or the confusion take away the victory of just surviving. Now, our next battle is to thrive, to succeed, to let ourselves be happy. 
... by picking at every tiny criticism or personal problem or ANY way our lives haven't been blissfully perfect EVER, and blowing them up into tragedies the likes of which the Greeks couldn't have come up with.
There are moments when being happy seems harder than any of the rest, doesn’t it?
For me, those moments seem to coincide with reading shitty fiction.
But if we survived all the rest, we can conquer the hardest thing of all, ourselves, the ghosts, and enjoy that we lived.
... until the next time we desperately need attention and sympathy, when suddenly we will be traumatized, wounded doves who need love and attention from everyone.
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Category:Blog Flogs
Category:Laurell K. Hamilton
Category:Authorial Madness