Letters from Soldiers/Veterans
Soldiers/Veterans: Email your letter to granddelusion@gawab.com to be included on this blog and on our “SOLDIERS ARE WAKING UP” page.
From RV, USMC – Iraq War Veteran – 2 Tours
Thank you for everything, and you are going to have to remain patient with me because of all of the stupid stuff I will continue to do. I second guess everything from traveling to putting on a pair of socks. I do not trust a soul (sorry).
I remember coming home and the struggle to get a job. Unemployed days and helicopter-noise sleepless nights. Having holidays and wondering.. WHY? Second guessing every situation, even down to the decision of whether or not to hug my kids as they get on the bus. Secretly making myself late to change time, to avoid a life and death situation that I make believed in my head.
Now I look at the sadness in my sons face, and I know it’s just this war carrying over into his little six year old body. I get him for 4 days a month, and what do I to for 1 of those days? Yell at him because I need to make him stronger for when the war comes here. He draws pictures of me in the Marines, and they are his little works of art, but I don’t like them. We spend quality time, don’t get me wrong, but this is all new adjustment once again. I just love to hold him at night.
My wife has a journal that contains 100 stories of destruction, of me blacking out and destroying our property in a rage (without alcohol involved). My kids are scared of me. My love for them is what got me through the days and nights at war, but something in the process of surviving those days and nights somehow killed our love. My memory feels crippled, and I try to understand the distance between me and people I should love.
Chapter 2: Veterans Day (long question to Americans)
Today I came home to two letters in the mail from the VA. One letter that notified me that I owe for the medication I am receiving to help with anxiety and concentration. The second was a letter notifying me that my education benefits are being cut, starting in August. Now, by this point I am able to laugh it all off, so do not worry. I don’t have much fight left in me, and I don’t mind because I am done fighting anyway. The loneliness has been the only friend to stick with me for this long, so I guess you can call it my best friend. Sense of pride and duty to my country have long faded. I feel safe and content in knowing that I have nothing to lose, and I consider myself lucky for that. I can survive in any situation (If I want to) and I don’t care about your technology or the power and money that you gained while I was fighting your corporate war. You comfortably sleep all night, and I lay wide awake. During the day people ignore me, as I observe them soaking up propaganda from their TVs. I would love to talk about truth, or even about strawberries growing in a garden. The same people’s children are at home, basking in the glory of virtual war on X-box, and it keeps them occupied long enough so they can get their daily dose of lies from their own box.
My last feelings of anger slowly become replaced with questions, I wonder to myself- How safe do the American people feel? Are they too distracted to feel alarmed? Because when the skies start falling here, I’m not so sure all our veterans will get out of bed. We have no jobs or families to protect, and we already know the outcome of war. Plus when it’s all over will anyone even remember? When a Just War does arrive at our door will we know its there? Basically, to sum it all up and put it into words everyone can understand- “I hope y’all can fight.”
The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation. – George Washington
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