Just starting my writting career.Please forgive my mistakes and errors.I love this site and am looking forward to getting better with time and ofcourse constructive analysis.
It would seem that I am ment to fall into a category called oblivion. A warrior without a home. A king without a crown. A soldier that cannot give more to a cause that he’s always believed in. I may not support these wars that we find ourselves, but I still love this country enough to serve her and if need be die for her. This country has been so good to me. No words can describe the life I’ve lead and what I’ve become as a result of my service in 2004 to her need for security.
I signed up in 2001 after a high school experience gone wrong. I discovered that the student that desires to stand out might as well wear a shirt that says “please ,notice that I’m different and make me a victim.” So that we can get to the point in the early morning instead of waiting till the end of the day for the tourture of youth to start. Long story short I went from a Catholic private school to my local public school and naturally I was a step off the pace of what it takes to get along. I thought I would just be me. I assumed that people still respected the power of individualism and what it means to separate from the herd. Didn’t happen. Instead I learned how to defend my honor and stand up for the right to be a black man with a brain who occasionally challenges the status quo in the name of being original. In defending this honor I learned how to give and take with people that want to see you fail. I would in the end get confronted by the people I hoped would want to see me succeed. I mean I could never understand why we cannibalized our own. Why raising my hand dammed me in the eyes of some.
I woke up after a beating the night before,looking into a mirror and wondering why I let this happen to myself. Why I wasn’t where I should be in this life and where that place was if not in my neighborhood. Where can a young man with a ton of fierce energy be his best based solely on his own talent. This was the refection in the year 2000 that led me to a love of country. A belief that I could better than where I was and above the petty jealousy that came with daring to be different. I wanted to embrace a warrior spirit that years of fatherlessness anxiety had held down and beatin for years. I found this need had wings, and desperately desired to take off in any direction the wind blew in.
Downtown, in that cramped recruiting station, I stared at photos of many that had come before me with the same desire. To spread the wings and fly into something bigger than yourself. Paper work signed, MEPS station finished, sworn in to be the best that I could be in defense of her dignity. From all enemies both foreign and domestic I swore to protect her as she had protected me all these years. The events of 2001 would call me to task in 2004. Weeks at Fort Knox in Echo Company 1-46 would be followed by weeks at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. After years of rifle qualifications that I saw as my only weakness, and successful PT tests that pushed me all the way to my honored Spec.4 status I was a machine. Now I belonged to her, and where ever her will needed me, I would certainly go. She reached me by FEDEX one morning, and asked me to leave everything I knew to defend her honor and so I did. Saying good bye to my mother broke my heart for the first time in a long time. Knowing that I had to be brave when I was so terrified was over whelming. Saying good bye to my girlfriend, hearing her say she would stand by me and knowing in the back of my mind that she would never last the duration of my tour. I expressed my love to her that evening knowing she would never wait 14 months for the love of a young man that may not be the same person he was when he said good bye. Those things where in the past.
The adventure I sought was coming. The chance to leave to cage of small town living among even smaller minds. The chance to spread those wings and do what I had trained so long for. The FTX’s and PT patches helped get me on that plane, but the love of something greater made me a soldier. It was time to return to her what so many before me had died for. The right to live as a free nation without fear of a element that we all thought hated us because we were so beautifully free. Her honor had been assaulted in 2001, and now it was our turn to avenge her dignity. In support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 3 I did just that with extreme prejudice. I would kill for her dignity, and watch young men fall emotionally and physically because that’s what she required of us. Blood spills on both sides of a ideological argument that was now a war of wills. They had their beliefs, and we had ours. None of us won and all of us lost.
I gave everything to her cause including my soul and innocence of youth. She accepted and we both assumed we could move on together. As if we hadn’t seem what happened over those 14 months. She would later admit to me that the cause for which I killed wasn’t fully what I believed it to be. She admitted that the men I fought off may not have been the ones that struck her in the face so hard in 2001. I was hurt by her honesty. I was hurt at the sacrifice for her dignity under what now was a very false premise. How could she have betrayed me when I loved her so. I turned to poisons to medicate my soul. The sweet bliss of a foggy plant that society said I shouldn’t have enjoyed as much as I did, but I loved its bliss. I served my beloved county for several months after I hurt men for her desire. She found out that I enjoyed the bliss of a plant that she did not approve of, and rejected me from the moment she had proof.
I had be released from my service to her and told myself I was better off without having to serve her more. I miss my service to her every day since we separated. I dream how proud her citizens had been of me when I retunred. The way she smelled and felt was all I thought about while I killed for her in that foreign land. Now, she wanted nothing to do with me and of course I understood why. I just desired a second chance now. To serve her again while I’m young enough to do my best. I don’t want to kill anymore for her, but I have no choice. She will not take me back in other forms of service. Not because im not the best she’s ever raised, but because of the bliss of a plant. A plant that took me away from what I had done for her honor. She doesn’t understand how deceived I felt in defending her from men that never attacked her. The only way I can serve her again is to trust that she won’t ask me to take action without just cause again. I have to trust her. Why won’t she trust me again. I am a warrior without a cause now, she is queen again, and I am a king without a crown.