Three years ago this month I was packing my shit into that rucksack and screwing down the mental armor I knew that I would need to protect the ridiculous fantasy that I could be free. My hopes had been bolstered by people I regarded as heros well after I had learned that they were all degenerates, drunks, drug addicts, malcontents, etcetera etcetera as they either shot themselves in the head, overdosed on drugs, died from long term alcoholism or, on the hopeful side, receded into caves within themselves to nurse their various addictions, one after the fucking other. It was my fantasy that I would somehow forego this inevitable conclusion.
It was only supposed to be 15 months…
At first I worried how I would make it through the time and now after accidentally doubling it I don’t know if I can make it any other way.
But finally it has become too much for me. I used to be able to take it with a country smile, a dopey and humble uh-oh. Oh well oh well oh well… it’ll all work out in the end…. and all those other excuses to not be furious.
Why couldn’t I just graduate school like they had promised? Why did I owe more than 30,000 dollars when it was supposed to be free? Why did they take my G.I. Bill away? Hadn’t I earned it? Did I not get enough awards or volunteer for enough deployments, beat enough detainees? Do you, the Federal Government, realize the predicament you have created in my life?
I’ll never get that bachelors degree, which is a goddamn shame. My credits will evaporate in another year and I’ll be left with 30K in debt with literally nothing to show for it. I showed a lot of promise, but there isn’t much of a chance that that will shine through the way that I’d hoped it would. Without that fucking degree I am condemned to lifting boxes full of widgets or granola until my fucking arms fall off. All that Kant for nothing except to understand the irony of the caustic relationship between means and ends.
So now I’m praying in Chicago to just get into a community college now that they “fixed” the G.I. Bill. I’m praying that maybe they really did fix it and that I can finally live like a real person here in this country, with money to buy some fucking toilet paper. I should have known better than to pray.
They tell me I’m worth half. Exactly 50%. That is how much of a veteran I am. Half. Half the promise. So I’m supposed to accept this like some kind of android. Just shut down twice as much to compensate for lack of energy. Pay half of my bills? Right…
It seems to me that I am just about half of every fucking thing.
To be quite fucking frank, I feel about half interested in being alive to the extent that about half of the time my mind is occupied with the obsessive thought about the easy road. That one simple decision.
No bills forever. No 30K in debt. No broken promises. No hard feelings. No nothing.
I’d make excuses and apologize for raining on your parade, for saying something nobody wants to hear, and for accepting defeat, but I don’t care much any more about hurting anyones feelings. Nobody has spared me any punches in my life and I’ve lived a good deal of it with my back against the wall already.
The fucking gurus and spiritual healers will talk their shit, say I need to spin a pot or get a goddamn massage or some bullshit. They’ll talk in their big empty way about P.T.S.D. and about who we are and how to deal with us and then they’ll walk backstage and take a big old check because everything’s a fucking racket, right? Buy and sell our problems until it isn’t a problem any more.
Well I don’t need a fucking massage or a councilor or reike or hot rocks or a cathartic fucking experience.
I just want the fucking money I was promised. That is all. It sounds so simple.
I want off of this ride, please. I have had my fill.
The Paper Trail 
Oh Chris! I really do hope everything works out in the end. I feel like I have more to say, but I’m no good with words like you are..You just don’t deserve this. I miss ya!