Maybe I’m a fool for posting this drunk after a night of wild turkey.  But I think this should be posted while still drunk.  I’ll probably clean it up in a post tomorrow.

The Vietnam vet has become somethign of a running gag, “You weren’t there man!”.  WEll, I just walked home alone after a night of drinking.  The roads were empty.  I was so god damned lonely on the walk home.  I walked the streets looking like any drunk college kid.  But I wan’t in Moscow, Idaho.  I was in Fallujah walking alone in the dark on base.  I was there at camp cupcake, al asad crying, knowing the war was over for me forever and being sad it was gone.  There were nights I spent alone in Okinawa.  But there, in Oki, in Iraq, in the Phillipinnes, I at least felt like others could grok me.  I coud fool myself into thinking there was a mission.  A goal.

In Moscow I’m a man alone.  Relaly, really alone.  And I guess it sounds like I contradict myself, but I’m not alone.  There are wartime Marines who feel the same every night, 20-30 years removed from service.  There are wartime Marines, peacetime Marines all feeling the same.  There is no such thing as a real peacetime Marine.  For some, being a peacetime Marine is the hardest, becaucse they didn’t get the war.  They didnt’ get to fight a lava monster or on a chess board.  YOU don’t know what it’s like to NOT get a kill.  YOU don’t know what it’s like to get a kill.  YOU don’t get us.  And when we come home that leaves us very very alone.  That feeling doesn’t abate.

What’s the answer?  I don’t know?  Maybe it’s taht warhorses should fight until they die.  Maybe there’s peace in death.  Maybe that’s peace n the halls fo valhalla.  Mabe the only peace is in the middle of f istfight.  Maybe it’s shouting cadence at passing cars.  I don’t know.

Many men carry a woman’s picture in their helmet.  I didn’t.  I carried a woman’s picture in my flak jacket flap, next to my heart.  That woman left me for another man.  I won’t trust another woman.  Mabe that makes me a bad person.  A sexist.  A misogynist.  I don’t know.  I just know that I’m alone.  I was lonely at war.  I was lonely deployed.  But here, stateside, I’m actually alone.  There’s a difference betwen being lonely, and being alone.  And you don’t know.  “you weren’t there man!” 😉  I’m not the only guy that feels this way.  There are thousands of us across the country.