I am starting out with this:

I lost my give a crap.  I lost my care, my drive, my desire to do what is right.  All I want to do is what makes me feel good.  What makes my family life better.  Why?  Because civilians for the most part are snakes.  They slither around your feet expecting something from you and then all of a sudden they strike and take your feet right out from underneath you.  They don’t care that that you put your life on the line for them.   They don’t care that you wrote a check that said: my body, my limbs, my fingers, toes, and my life if need be.  The civilian population does not care.

“GET OVER IT!”

People expect to see the old me.  Fuck.  I want to see the old me.  I want to be able to laugh and joke…  I want to be able to care about the stupid mindless shit that you all are droning on and on and on and on and on and on and on about.  But I don’t.  I am lost.

I am lost in this ever-mindless game of corridors and mirrors.  I go up one ladder, and I come back down a chute longer than the ladder.  I cry out for help, but the only one that is there for me, is me and one other.  Strength has broken down into fear.  Fear has changed into fight.  There is no flight, or retreat.  Never will I retreat.  Never will I surrender.  I have been held down to the expectations of a former self.  I believe in more than that.  People do not answer with the right answers.  They give textbook answers that are laughable at best.  Screw your psycho-babble!  There is deeper meaning in words that don’t get expressed, but actions show what I am – who I am – and what I am capable of.

You do not get to judge me.

I will answer to the only One for what I have done.  For the things that I have seen.  For the things that I have thought in word and in deed.  You (civilians) have criticized for too long.  Only three percent has ever stood up for YOUR rights.  Damned our rights, and called us baby killers, and fascists.  While we were over there (wherever there may be), you changed the rules on us.  You made it impossible for us to do our job.  You made us wish for Fort Leavenworth.  You tied our hands and made it dangerous.  Then we get home and you tell us that what we did was wrong.

I am telling you now:

“Fuck your wrong!”  I was there for my brothers on the left and right of me.  We moved forward when it was time.  We came home to a shit storm.  The fight was easy.  The adapting back to you is hard.  Breathing your “cool” air is stagnant, and filled with disdain and distrust for the fighter. However; we will still come out ahead of you.  We are not willing to give up our rights.  You have thrown away civil liberties to try to stop atrocities from happening in your world.  Mark my word.

Mark it.

Your world is going to crumble.  There is nothing that you are going to be able to do about it because you are too afraid to take the necessary steps that are required for you to survive.  You will have no one to hold you up other than your coddling mothers, that are going to be in worse shape than you because they are too afraid to walk into the night.  We are the night.  The enemy does not have rules.  They care about one thing.  Your destruction.  You will be wrought with the tireless expanse of rules and regulations that you have put up to stop people from being the evil that is lurking in the night, but you forgot that once it happens they don’t care about your rules.  They care about the rules of their salvation: which is your destruction.

Destruction.

You have nothing.  You have never been destroyed.  Your world will only ever catch a glimpse of what it is like to be that person that fell because of your rules.  I will sit back and protect what is mine, and give you guidance on how to protect yours, but you will be on your own.  You will then be crying for the lost that we have cried for, but instead of stopping we moved forward.  We moved forward and kept going.  You will not be able to do that because you have tied your hands to the movement that states all violence is wrong.  Because you hold to your ideology of peace and inner-sanctimonious bull-dribble you will be worthless in a fight.  Then where is your “old” self?

I am going to finish with this.

I don’t care about your rules of engagement.  I don’t care about your way of life.  I care about who is important to me.  You may or may not be one of those people that I care about, but I can guarantee that there is at least one of us three percenters (III%’s) that do care about you enough to stand up for what is right.  Our oath of enlistment has no expiration date.  It has no tone of arrogance; only the pride that comes along with knowing that if you took this oath you are part of the solution.  The labels that people want to give us for being what we needed to be when we did what we had to do; I don’t care about.  Neither do my brothers.  My brothers may not be blood, but combat is thicker than blood, it is thirstier than your Saturday night bar friends.  It is… what it is.

I lost my give-a-damn when you failed to see the new me.  No longer the boy that went to “play” Army, but the Soldier that came back hardened and jaded because you (civilians) don’t understand.  You saw a soldier on television once, he came back, well-adjusted, back to the person that he used to be…  then he became a drunk and then killed himself.  This is not all of us, but this is a fact: twenty-two veterans a day are committing suicide. Why? Because they (Veterans) lost their give-a-damn.  You civilians want to sit back and play games with our heads to try to “bring us back.”

Bring us back.

What a laughable concept.  This is not the Matrix.  You cannot just be plugged back in.  This is real world.  Decisions have consequences.  Your actions are not my fault.  You cannot label us as something because we are different than before.  Because we have surpassed your stage of life in a manner of months, weeks, or even minutes.  I have transcended.

Transcendence.

You are nothing to me.  Media.  You only describe to me what I don’t want to see.  What are some of the good things that “we” have done.  What have you seen that is positive.  Nothing.  You focus your lenses through a veil of blood.  Turn with me if you will to the rose colored lenses.  Where life is life, and you are not a whore.  Turn to the side of the truth where people are living.  You only see depravity.  I see it too, but I see it because you (media) are turning it into this.  You wonder why we Veterans do not trust you.  You wait for the opportunity to destroy our patriotism. And you wonder why we hate you.

There is only one color in combat arms.  That is the color of brotherhood.  My give a crap is busted, but not for them.  I care about what they are going through because I care about what I am.  Broken.  Not broken in the sense that you think of when you see broken.  I am broken because the media has made me broken.  I am strong.

Strength and honor.

Duty and respect.

Honesty and selfless-service.

Leadership and loyalty.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”  Psalm 23

Until next time:

PEACE