Something just didn’t feel right today. Everything was… so dreadful. I woke up this morning at 5 to do the morning run PT. Then I reported for duty at 10. I was 30 minutes late, though, but I was feeling sick to the stomach. The night before I didn’t even go to sleep until 3. I know because I was in bed by 12, but Roberson says that he did laundry during the night and came back at 3. I don’t know what it was. Mostly I know I was upset at the whole no Afghanistan thing. But at the same time I was upset at my step father. He had told my mother about my confrontation Edward. I don’t know what gave him the bright idea to go ahead and do that, but he did. I had called home about 3 days ago and she didn’t sound like she was doing too well. I asked her what’s wrong and asked if she and my brother had gotten into a fight. She had sighed and denied it and told me that I should just come home soon. Well today she just confirmed what I had suspected. My step father had told her about the words we had exchanged. The bad part about it was he didn’t understand either side of it, although I had sent him all the emails Edward and I had written, even the bad ones. Well, if he didn’t understand it, why did he even bother telling mom? God damn, and then he sent me an email saying that he didn’t understand where it all started from, but that when I’m away from home you get stressed out and start to make some wrong decisions and some shit like that. I respect the man for trying, but fuck! Did he really believe I didn’t know that? That I regularly go about disowning all the brothers I have or something? Of course it’s stressful here, that’s why I had to do it, because he was an addition to my burden and I couldn’t handle it. It’s like having whole bunch of boxes of useless stuff, but you only want to throw away one, then what do you do? You throw away the biggest box. I don’t know how else to explain it. Well, maybe take a computer for example. You run out of space on your computer. So you find something that takes up the most room but at the same time you don’t need. That’s what happened. He was taking the most out of my life besides the Army, and between the two of them, he was the only thing I could get rid of. I was doing so much more for that bigger box when I was in no position to do so but I received nothing in return. Well, so my mom and I were talking for about 5 minutes, but it came to when she eventually asked me about what happened. I told her straight out that she doesn’t need to know. I don’t know why I said that, because she’s my mom and all. But if anything I was uncomfortable about explaining those things in Korean. A few things happened. She started telling me things about Edward and me. That all her life that’s something she was always thankful she never had to worry about, and when she heard the news she couldn’t eat for a day. Then she told me that the difference between Edward and I is that Edward doesn’t show his affection, while I, on the other hand, try to. Then she went to explaining on how much he missed me, about the things he did, talking about the packages I sent home and praising my taste in sunglasses despite my mother’s disagreement, talking about me often and some stupid shit like that that didn’t mean too much to me. How he refused to eat meals all day one day and told my grandmother that he and I had gotten into an argument, and how he refused to come out of his room. And she later explained how he was doing bad, physically because he had overworked himself to get to Ranger school and mentally because he never made it through the second day. And she said to me she told him ‘congratulations.’ I was shocked. It was exactly the same thing that she had told me when I had thought we were being demobilized back in May. You never tell anyone congratulations for a failure, especially something you devoted your life to for months, like Ranger school or deployment to Iraq. She tried to explain it to me. That there is a greater divine plan out there for God. That we learn more from our failures than from our successes. That he was in a horrible physical status anyway and should have come back home. That there was some korean guy that went through Ranger school, came out, and went crazy. That everyone else in the extended family was relieved that he had gotten out. That her opinion counts, and that it’s only her opinion, nothing more. Well think about it this way. I spent a semester in Ft. McCoy. I spent 4 months without a purpose. I was never granted leave or pass, meaning I never slept out of the same bunk for 4 months. I walked to chow .5 miles away in 10 degree weather, but that was only half the trouble because you always had to worry about the walk back. And you did that three times a day. You ran 7 miles in the morning after waking up at 4, up and down the freaken hills. The next week you run 9, half a mini marathon. I spent an entire semester doing just that. Nothing but useless shit we were supposed to be done with in 2 weeks, for 4 months. I led 4 months in hell without purpose. An entire semester. Now consider it to have been a real semester at school. What if I had failed and received Fs in all 5 classes I was enrolled in? Would she congratulate me then? That although I had given everything I had, I failed because it was all or nothing? NO! NEVER! THIS IS NO DIFFERENT. Congratu fucking lations? WHAT THE FUCK? It was ironinc that here I found common ground for Edward and me, because he had spent close to 3 months in constant training and was physically unstable. But it was too little too late. The so called ‘enemy of my enemy’ did not become my friend. Because my mom found her common ground with Edward, exactly where I didn’t want her to be. She kept explaining herself to me even though I told her to stop. I don’t know why, but she just kept talking about it, like she has the right to. And in this way she became just like Edward. I learned a few things while stationed here. Of course she had the right to explain herself to me, it’s only a matter of opinion. But when someone else is far away and doesn’t have the luxuries you do, you never try to explain yourself more than you should, especially in a 15 minute phone call you barely make every 3 days. You never always tell the truth. Even if you don’t agree, you have to agree or at least make it seem like it. Because that’s all that matters out here, that someone back home agrees with you. Telling someone that their opinions count and yours doesn’t? You never tell the widow that God has a divine plan, that everyone else is happy about the loss, the failure. You never tell a widow that you don’t agree with them unless they’re thinking about doing something destructive, and even then you agree first and then disagree. You have to be on their side. This was the same kind of conversatin Edward and I carried out. The whole guitar thing about him telling me I made the wrong purchase, how he managed to make himself look good in front of mere friends in spite of me while never actually apologizing to me. That he was glad Paul was back, although he knew I was barely about to start my tour. That he thinks I should give him my laptop I got for free and get a new one, trying to control little bits of my life when that’s all I was trying to cling on to, when that’s all I have for me. When I called his cellphone every once in a while he either told me to call some other time or another number or literally leave his phone off because he’s running out of monthly limit that he spent on his friends and girls? It’s like getting a call from someone that was climbing the Everest everyday and telling him to dial another number. But I never had that priority in his life. Then he would turn around and tell me to call more often because he likes hearing from me? (IS THIS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE?) Then he takes my computer down, tells me he was trying to ‘save mom money’ and ‘save mom the trouble of transferring the files’ when in actuality he was saving himself the money and the trouble. The whole taking control over an uncertainty over a part of my life I considered imporatant and leaving me in the dark. Do you know how much I was pissed off when I called home for 2 or 3 straight days and no one answered the freaken phone? Then I find out you are having the time of your life camping and visiting New York and Canada? I give you whatever little is certain in your control and then you turn that against me and leave me in the dark without a warning, despite the fact I called at least twice in three days prior to the trip? Then I looked like a fool, having given him money to pay back his loans all the while he was making deposits for the ‘house,’ or something he rather calls, investment. Control. Purpose. Control over purpose. What does a person that has control over their life have to lose by giving up their pride for a split second and say, yes, I agree, you made the right choice? It’s not like I killed anyone. Here in the Middle East we are surrounded by disagreement. And the first thing you can do is say no, let me try to explain myself to you? WHAT DOES IT REALLY TAKE? DO I NEED TO TAKE A BULLET FOR SOMEONE TO SEND ME A LETTER OR SAY THAT THEY UNDERSTAND? Would you keep me on your cell phone bill then? Would you tell me about your trips beforehand then? Would you tell me that you agree with my opinions and decisions then? Or would you tell me congraulations, you just lost the game of staying safe where the variables you have no control over are infinite? Does that sound like my situation in McCoy? Kuwait? GOD DAMN! Please, don’t send me a card if I find myself in a hospital… I have a feeling it will say congratulations. Go ahead and congratulate yourself for a job well done, because that’s what you’re actually doing anyway… but I implore you, not in front of me.
Of course I could still try to explain these things to you. You wouldn’t understand it anyway. I know your opinions count and mine doesn’t, so what is it to you? But listen, this is only because I’m far away, so ‘I’ should try to understand where ‘I’ am coming from and learn to cope with it, instead of the other way around. Thanks for all the fucking support. I couldn’t have asked more from you. Because it meant I was asking more of myself.
I never meant it to be permanent. But I didn’t know how else to establish my two goals (lessening the burden and teaching Edward a thing or two about himself) without disowning him. Of course it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Even now I keep typing ‘my brother’ and have to go back and keep correcting myself and replace it with ‘Edward.’ Considering all our differences, I know we managed well till now. But damn… when I’m deployed in Kuwait and he’s getting drunk in Missouri, that never gives him the right to tell me what to do, telling me he knows a thing or two about ‘military essentials,’ like he’s been there and done that. So I guess my mother was right. He does not show his affection while I try to. Well I got tired real quick of trying.
I guess this was one of the things I was thinking about before falling asleep after 3, among other things about Afghanistan. Anyway, by dreadful I don’t mean just me. Perez wasn’t up to it today, and SFC Mettler just wasn’t her regular self. She had a very high up the day before and today was certainly one of her lower downs. SGT Tyler says it’s because she’s tired of handling the bullshit from HQ. Why can’t things just go the way it’s going when the system works fine and everyone’s happy? 1LT McGrath I believe tried to lighten things up… he smiled more often today than he usually does. But SGT Lopez was down, Contreras was just lingering around, Lambright, he … didn’t really have much to say. Jones was her normal gruntled self, and Whittle didn’t even bother trying to play with me. I guess at this point in time, for some odd reason, a lot of postal people were about to do just that… go postal. That’s why I called home… not because I wanted to hear her excuses about why she had congratulated Edward’s failure in Ranger school, but because I needed someone to talk to, to let me know that there is a sane world out there. That’s what the phone calls are all about. I’m sorry to say but it’s never really about the other person entirely. If anything it’s almost always for myself. And being here in the middle of nowhere, I think that gives me every right to feel that way. When I go back home, I’ll change. But right now I need everything to help me realize that this whole madness is only temporary. Those 15 minute calls are my gateway back to reality. I don’t need to hear someone, even my own mother, explain her reasons for 10 minutes behind what she believed was right. I really didn’t. The worst part about it is that it’s not really her opinion anyway. She won’t apologize for what she was arguing for. She never did and never will.
Now that I know that you know that being away from home without any control causes a lot of stress, can you take a step further and understand and agree with me? Or is that my expectation that is too much to ask? What do I want? I want as much control over what little I have left. And I want you to create an illusion for me, true or not, physical or psychological, that I am in more control than what it seems to be? I didn’t think it took a genius to figure that out.