I'm again in this middle place where I "see" these possible futures for myself, one good one bad, yet I don't know how to choose emotionally. Logically is easy, a no-brainier, but the emotions keep saying "self-destruct mode". For a lot of reasons, the ingrained subliminal message of "never good enough, never smart enough, never strong enough, never worthy" always pops up at random or non-random times to remind me I am inferior and weak. And we all know what the Nazis believed should happen to the so-called-by-them " inferior" people's.

Nazis to me are the epitome of true evil. They would have gassed me by now for being crazy. People who survived them had to be incredibly tough, smart, and almost super-human, yet the message that they got for more ham a decade was "inferior, lesser than, unworthy of being in society, of ownership, of rights" and ultimately "unworthy of life".

How do you reconcile that in your mind. When you know A, the good things about yourself, are true, but you are told that B, the bad things are all true, and that they outweigh all of the good, and that, no matter who you are or how you live your life, your genes themselves, the core of your being, puts you into the class labeled inferior and ultimately marked for death.

One of my young trainer friends is Jewish. We have a very large Jewish community here, and I love living in their shared culture, as much as I love the Arab culture here. He packed up a year ago and moved to ... Germany. It scared me a little. I know, it's the 21st Century, we are only a little more than 6 months away from the 70th anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich, and modern Germany is a stable democracy with very strong civil liberties because of their past. But it scare me and worried me that he would run up against the ghosts of the Nazis and their victims. The thought that 70 some years ago this kid would have been marked for death, along with his entire family and about half the population of my town just floors me. He is the BEST kid, super-smart, super motivated, incredibly hard working, friendly, loving, the kind of kid that makes you feel there is hope for humanity. I would adopt him as my son in a heartbeat if he needed it, but he has two terrific parents and great siblings who love him and support him. His Facebook page is always full of loving comments.

To think that the Nazis would have labeled him as unworthy of life because of his genetic and cultural heritage cuts very close to the bone with me. Persecutory delusion or hypervigilance or whatever, it is how I feel about my own situation, unfairly judged and being cast out as garbage, not because of anything I did, but because of who I am and the label given me.