Community

I’ll be leaving Afghanistan and heading home to my family fairly soon; while I’m excited about seeing my family (pets included) and friends, I’m going to miss some things here.  While there are obvious cons to living on a FOB in the middle of Afghanistan, there are pros as well.  One of the good things about living on a base is the community.  Here we are a giant community where we know all of our neighbors; we hang out and smoke and talk, drink tea and coffee, go shopping and eat meals together.  Everything is in walking distance and there are always people around doing something.  Several people recently moved out of my building and the whole place feels completely different.  We went from 30 people to 9 in our building and it’s a different atmosphere.  This type of community is totally different than when I’m at home on a farm where nothing is in walking distance.  Living on forward bases for the last couple of years has been nice, while I will certainly enjoy the peace and quiet of the farm I know I will miss being in a place where I can just walk outside and see the gym, store, restaurant (chow hall), church, and a myriad of other places to gather.  I think this type of community is what comes naturally to most people, the feeling of being a part of something.  It’s a wonderful feeling to have when you are so far away from family; it’s going to be one of the few things about Afghanistan I will actually miss.  I will go back to living on a farm and loving every minute of it, the woods and wide open space are probably my best environments, but every time I get in my truck to go to the store or visit friends part of me will be missing the community here.  

Weakness

Sometimes you can be surrounded by all the people in the world and still be alone.  It’s a byproduct of keeping everything inside.  It’s not easy to let all your crazy out at once and some things are just better off if you shove them down deep inside and try to figure them out at a later date.  It’s not the popular opinion today but being a man still means certain things in society whether we want it to or not (which I do).  No matter what the ladies are reading in the magazines these days they still want a man to be strong.  Women still want a man who can change a tire and doesn’t cry at the drop of a hat.  I think it goes both ways too; women keep certain things locked away for the sake of us men not thinking they’re an emotional wreck.  I still firmly believe that a man should be strong and independent, have certain “manly” skills like changing a tire and grilling the perfect steak.  I think men should open doors and pick up the check.  I also believe that people have to keep some things bottled up; the problem is when you never open up at all.  I have a big problem with this myself, I tend to keep the big things buried deep inside and it makes me flip out about little things.  I still carry around stuff from years ago and haven’t ever let it out.  I simply don’t know how to let it go and at inopportune times these things will rear their ugly heads and begin shaping my current state of emotion.  I’m not as bad as I used to be but from time to time I jump at sudden loud noises and I’ll shake for a few minutes afterwards.  I don’t really tell people why, I just deal with it, bottle it, and shove it back down where it came from.  I still have bad dreams from time to time and because I don’t think anyone wants to hear it (because I think it’s a bit silly) I wake up a little shaken, look around, and then shove it back down.  It’s a part of our nature we will most likely never let go of.  It’s a way of protecting ourselves from what we think society will see as a weakness.  How easy is it to truly open up, most of us have at some point or another in our lives been given a reason not to trust.  There are things we learn growing up that define the way we look at weakness and that in turn causes us to decide what we hide from the world.  Insecurity, paranoia, self-image, everyone deals with these issues.  We may deal with them in a different way but we still deal with them on a daily basis.  We act a certain way and reveal only so much of ourselves because we don’t want to be looked at as different.  The military has been working very hard the last few years to change this image but it’s an image that started thousands of years ago and won’t go away easily.  Sometimes it might just be easier to bury things than to deal with them but how do you know what or when?  I’ve been to literally dozens of funerals for friends and family and have not cried at a single one.  It’s not because I’m so strong, it’s because I didn’t want to.  I’m not made of stone, I just learned growing up (from tv, movies, and people around me) that men don’t cry.  The problem is keeping too much bottled up can be very lonely, you can be surrounded by people and still feel alone because you are the only one around who knows what is going on in your head.  As much as I’d like to be an emotional wreck some days I just think it’s too important that I know how to make great barbecue, shoot a gun, and drive a tractor.  Incidentally those are all things that get me to relax and forget the world even exists and that’s the key.  You don’t have to open up to everyone about everything; you just need to have an outlet.  Everyone needs a quiet hobby you can do all by yourself that makes you forget about everything but what you’re doing.   

Regret and Guilt

Fun fact, nobody ever tells you about the regret when you’re trying to become a better person.  It’s strange really, things that you had thought were long forgotten sneak in and remind you of things you did that you wish you hadn’t, or that you had done differently.  Regret and guilt are necessary though.  There is no need to become a better person without them and using those feelings as a lesson or a tool is one of the ways you have to improve yourself.  The whole process of trying to improve yourself is that there is something you don’t like.  When trying to be a better person it’s almost always associated with guilt or regret.  They seem like bad words but they’re really just a sign that you might be evolving as a social being.  The tricky thing is to not allow yourself to get bogged down by it.  You have to keep looking forward and moving forward.  Make apologies when and where they are necessary but most of all just try to remember that things you have done or the person you were is the past.   The person you will be is guided by those regrets, the memories of the missteps or the steps not taken.  I have found that I spend what seems like half my waking time dealing with regrets about the past.  I am constantly second guessing myself about decisions I just made or am about to make.  Even in my sleep my dreams will often times remind me of things I wish I had done differently.  If I didn’t truly believe that it was a tool to help me remember to be a better person I would just go mad.  I had a very short period where I was really depressed because it seemed like I just couldn’t stop thinking about who I had been and wondering if it was the reason I had gone through troubles.  I wondered if I had done enough in my life to make up for my past.  I spent years just trying to do things that I thought might be able to balance the scales but then I began to wonder if just being a good person was enough.  You have to believe that you are a good person though or you’ll never feel like you’ve made up for the past.  That’s the tricky part about regret and guilt.  You need them, you have to use them, you just can’t let them linger or they make you crazy.  If you don’t believe you’re a good person you’ll never stop trying to fix the past and then the entire future will slip by.  Just spend every day trying to move forward in the best way possible.