,,,

Just another one of those nights. When you remember that what we call scars really aren't. Scars heal, and you can look at em and say, man that shit hurt, but it don't anymore. It healed. Wounds are what they are; like malaria, something that just keeps coming back, again and again.

I do what I have always done. I put it all back in my pack, and I soldier on. One, two, three, four, I love the Marine Corps. One foot in front of the other, again and again, but you start to wonder where the hell are you actually going? I have taken the broken pieces of all that I am, and tried to make something new, but I am still that same flawed and broken person that I have always been. I am still fighting myself.

Henry Rollins said that you can spend you entire life walking around in the nowhere land of self-doubt, and I can see how that is true, but the fight against it, the constant effort to propel myself forward in spite of them is draining me. I do not wonder if I have the strength to continue. I am stronger than that. I can die with my fingers clutched around the throat of my enemies; kicking and screaming in glorious combat. I can continue. I don't know if it is self doubt to wonder if the cost of the battle is too great, but I find myself wondering that very thing. Am I fighting a battle I can not win; destined to fail? In the end, are the years I spend in pursuit of victory simply going to be part of the cost of that I pay?

I doubt myself everyday. I weigh the cost, and pay the price. Why do I fear mediocrity, and the simple pleasures of what even I would readily admit are the pleasures in life. Family, friends, and the knowledge that they will always be there? Those things that men have found for all of history. I live my life alone; often near desperation. I am very different, I tell myself, and not without good reason, but I am not that different, and a simpler life calls to me as well. I know the cost of my efforts, but I have yet to reap its rewards. To accept that life is failure, to succeed against its draw is success. I think. One, two, three, four, I love the Marine Corps...