I have a recurring dream. I’m falling and I’m useless. Darkness envelopes me, and suddenly I’m shoveling dirt onto a coffin. Inside are my past aspirations. Enlisting in the Navy and going to BUD/S, graduating the Q-Course, my military career, business success in past endeavors. I wonder if I ever will experience what I am chasing. Then, suddenly a feeling of guilt washes over me like a wave in the ocean sucking you down. You stupid fuck, you have everything in the world going for you, and it’s true. I wake up and take stock of the blessings I have in front of me, and I realize I truly am blessed. It wasn’t always that way, and over the next few posts I hope to put things into perspective for those that forget how great things really are.
Ft. Benning Georgia, on a muggy spring day in 2014. You saw the light change. Then you heard it. Green light GO over the screaming of the jet engines. Focus, man up, you’re going to be a Green Beret. I passed off the static line as I was but one in the herd, turned towards the door and jumped. The wind hit me from the side, turning me in the air. Holy shit I was just in there! POP! The chute opened and I began my descent as I watched the plane lazily drift away over the horizon.
Wacka flacka flame one hood ass BEEEP!! the car behind me is laying on the horn, snapping me back to reality from my Wacka Flacka induced daydreams. Its 2015, and I am heading to my apartment after another day of stagnation. Moving through the intersection, I drifted away as fitfully as the wind blowing through the open window. Back to 2014, back to when my whole world would be turned upside down.
Are you sure about this? Yes, yes I am I told the NCOIC. But I was numb inside as I signed the papers. And just like that, everything I had worked for those years was gone, and my identity along with it. I didn’t know it then, but this would become the most painful and best years of my life after I left the Army’s Q- Course.
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