The deal is ninety-nine percent of the way done. At 2:45 am tomorrow I wake up, take a shower, grab my bag, and I'm off to my navy physicals.
There shouldn't be any reason for me not to pass; it's just my eyesight, teeth, weight, and some drug tests...all of which I should have no problem acing.
If all goes well, come 5 or 6 pm I should be getting on a bus headed to the coast, en route to the navy's training center.
I was hoping I'd have some grandiose essay written before I left, some letters about who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do once I came back. But I don't...so it's 10:26 pm and here I am writing this. I don't even want to force myself to write anything too specific, it's always been a trap for me to set expectations for myself, feel good for doing so, and then fail to live up to them.
I just want this to occur. I want to have to deal with reality, to have to feel what it is like to live day by day.
Evidently, I'm hoping I'll come out a new man, but that's probably committing my sin of choice and yet again hoping that something will bring back the change I feel I need.
Who do I want to be? I'll indulge, since there's no clear path to ending this essay some other way.
The first thought that comes to mind is that I'd like to be a fearless man...but that seems like the easy answer.
Courage is probably the more appropriate character trait.
Though I'd like to come out and be the man who could stare back at death and be completely still, I know that I'll have to force myself into stillness, even though I want to shake my way into the ground; I'll be scared.
And it's not only because of combat that I'll be scared (if my future does have that in its cards), I'll be scared to fail a test in front of my fellow soldiers, I'll be scared of the potential places they'll choose as my unit, I'll be scared of getting stripped naked in front of my fellow recruits and shower, or get tested, I'll be scared of getting up to the pull-up bar, or of seeing monkey bars.
The fact of the matter is that fear will come, and so instead of hoping to somehow be a fearless man, I hope I can be courageous. That when fear does creep on the corner, I'm brave enough to walk towards it and face it. I hope that I'll know and I'll remember that being scared isn't the sin, the sin is letting the fear overcome you.
And so I hope I'll laugh in the showers. I hope I get on those monkey bars until my hands can't take it any longer.
I hope that if I ever have that dark forest in front of me, with nothing but my rifle and my uniform, that I'll pray to God, strap on my boots, and head on in.
I'd like to be able to just be a person. Not to be an identity. I'd like for my daily actions to build up my character, not my words. I'm tempted to say I'd like to keep to myself, but that's simply the lonely darkened warrior fantasy playing in my head. If I speak, let it be so, if I laugh let it be so, if I cheer my fellow men on let it be so, if I choose to have an empty stare, let that be honest.
Let me strip myself of my stories. Let me simply become who the wind directs me to be.
I just hope I regain myself. Regain that feeling that is I who is inside myself. That it is I who live in this body and think with this mind. Too often these days it's felt like I'm staring at myself from the seat furthest back.
Courage to have a new life. Courage to live it. Courage to die for it.
Have a blessed year, my dear friends. Think of me, pray for me.
- Santi