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.
