2010: The End & The Beginning
Since getting off a bus shortly after midnight at a dimly lit brick building in the woods just inside the gate of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri on June 24th 2004, I have been counting up the minutes and counting down the level of my sanity to one thing — 2010. 2010 being the year that I will finally be released from my voluntary bout in involuntary federal slavery. Now some of you twats are probably thinking, “You signed up for it,” or possibly “no one forced you to join the military,” and I have one thing to say to you: How about you shut your fucking mouth and join the Army also then. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than listening to the asinine remarks of people who have no idea what they are talking about.
Nearly 6 Years have passed and I am a far different person than I was before. On the positive end I am smarter, more established, worldly, experienced, and ready to accomplish anything that I please to. On the flip side, I am immensely negative, cynical, prone to depression, pessimistic, unable to trust people, and generally seconds away from going completely bat shit insane at any given moment. I have been to the depths of hell my friends, and it is having your socks and underwear counted for the 3rd time in a month by someone higher ranked than you who graduated high school when you hit your three year enlistment anniversary.
I have lost my dignity, my sanity, my family, and nearly every ounce of ‘me’ that there was left. Alas, here I am. 5 1/2 years in with only 5 1/2 more months remaining and the same skill I developed to save myself from the day to day prevents me from being able to even get marginally excited about my soon-to-be liberation — forgetting it all. I can hardly remember anything from the past 6 years but blinding hate and rage. I have taught myself for survival that I must block it out. Block every single act of stupidity, moment of pure idiocy, and migraine inducing display of complete disregard for common sense and the well-being of others under a misguided banner of “caring for soldiers,” so that I may be able to wake up the next morning and go right back into the thick of it as if yesterday never happened. I wish I would have kept a daily journal. I wish I could have wrote the story of “serving my country,” but I can hardly remember last month let alone 5 or 6 years ago. I wish I could have looked back on these years with pride instead of disgust.
After only 5 1/2 more months I will be driving off an Army post for the last time. “2010 is the year I’ll be free,” was my mantra. Said over and over to myself with no more belief that it would ever happen than belief that I will one day be on the moon. Psychologically I’ve been in prison this entire time. The naive and bright eyed child that was my mind beat and degraded daily by the guards. You begin to lose sight of reality. The absence of pain is so long gone that the existence of pain is your new reality. It may sound unbelievable to you whom have never experienced it, but the thought of ever being released from this gauntlet of the mind has been a fact that was completely unfathomable — until recently. A day finally came that I was quite sure would never come before I most certainly jumped off a cliff to silence the noise or shot blood out of my ears in an uncontrollable fit of rage. January 1, 2010. As the calendar turned so did my thoughts to the future.
2010 is here. 2010 will be the end of it all. 2010. The End.
Soon I will embark on the beginning of the rest of my life. My real life. The life that has apparently been waiting for me. I’ve paid my dues and walked through the fires, and hopefully it’s time. Time to move on with my life and remember the past as if it was some horrible and depressing movie that I once saw. I am so ready for a change. A change for the better than won’t make me further hate my own life. A change to start the next chapter of my life. The chapter where I win and they do not. The part where I can make my own way; where I am in charge again. I am ready for it to begin.
2010 is here. 2010 will be the beginning of it all. 2010. Begin.
