illuminatus

Well, after one hell of a shitty night, I guess this just seems appropriate. This time, I promise, I'll make it short. I have class papers to complete.

I've been FINALLY confiding myself to someone. In the past week, I have had two attacks, a bit more than average but whatever. After a bit of a search, I found someone who was available and willing to listen. It took a bit, but I finally let out what was on my mind. Let out a few thoughts, which I will get to in a moment.

The strangest thing though. Since this, I've found myself more comfortable in public. Around people, even new people, I can start to communicate, I actually let myself go a little bit. Now, one night, I let the alcohol nullify the pains. I went to a party and got wasted, but I was completely free of all my normal thoughts. I was laughing, making jokes, talking to people I have never met. The subtle thoughts of combat scenarios and the measure of my mortality were nonexistent for awhile. For one night, a few hours, I was free.

Usually my thoughts continuously circle around the fifteen month period, the same hell. Over and over. Even my dreams have started to surface again, but with the oddest, and scariest twists. It's a common dream, something I'm used to, but that I continue to move through it, like somehow I could change it all. Maybe, if I would have slowed down a minute or two before, or maybe if I had something wrong with my truck, could have stopped the convoy before it happened. It always happens though, every time. A conversation, an argument, an apology. One turn to the right, and I look into the face of one of my fellow soldiers, I see his smirk for a fleeting second before its engulfed in flames and dust. Before it happened.

There is something odd about an explosion, regardless of what kind it is or who caused it or what it's intentions are. Right at the moment of detonation, there is this silence in the air, this level of peace. You feel like everything around you is stopped and suspended in space and time. The laws of physics seems to dissipate, at the dirt on the ground raises and hovers there for a moment. Metal bends like it was just a straw in a glass. In the epicenter, I just know there is a small space in the world that is not consumed by matter. A place of pure space, pure empty. Beautiful. You could look around and see the purity of all that is around you. There's no noise to distract you, nobody blabbering about their dinner, there is no mission at hand, just peace. The perfect calm, just before that world is shattered and overruled by chaos.

By the by, for a quick break, one thing I am tired of is when I tell someone I have PTSD from the war and they go "Oh! I was in a car accident a couple years ago and the airbag broke my nose, so I know how you feel!" First of all, fuck you. I have been there two, had my knee dislocated from riding shotgun as a miata hurdled over a curb, through a barrier, and nose first into a 15 foot ditch. I did not have PTSD from that. Having said that, and this is geared directly to someone who will be reading this, getting into one where your pinned down by something and the vehicle flipped and all kinds of craziness happened, that's understandable. Not some stupid fucking airbag.

Moving on...

I always assumed that most people attempt to view their own mortality, but my question is how many people can actually measure it? Same goes for their worth. What are we, as individuals worth? Most people, I assume, cannot hang a specific amount in that answer. I have found that I can do both. At one point in my life, and this can go for many, my life was worth about a half million dollars. That was my life insurance total, 400K from the army, and a personal 100K policy. Half a million dollars. Not bad, when you stop to think about it. But the mortality? Well, my mortality measurement is actually pretty fuckin small. About an inch. Or maybe a fraction of a second. One inch higher, just one inch, and I would have a ghetto tracheotomy, and my family would have half a million dollars. Or one fraction of a second sooner and I could fit into an infants casket. That's the measure of my mortality. A distance we take for granted everyday, that I take for granted to this day. Or a measure of time that most people cannot even conceive.

These are some of the things I'm starting to let out. There are some people I would like to hear it, many I would prefer to keep them in darkness. they don't really care all that much. Or maybe that's just what I think. I don't know. I'm letting out, I'm ready to open myself up to the world, or to a select group of people in the world. I guess I need this.