Day 27

be still my racing mind, let me sleep.
if you only knew the pain you've been putting me through, you might slow yourself down, catch your breath, and rest next to my weathered body. i have been tossing and turning in my bed placed in the corner of my tent; like a sad military march, left, right, left, right, keep in step. I can hear the low roar of corporal west's snores. in like a storm and out like a hurricane. they vibrate my bed as i shift my weight from my right back onto my left.
i can't sleep, sleep is after all the cousin of death; a relative i am not looking forward to meet anytime soon. so i keep my eyes wide open, fixated on the wave like ripples in tent above my head.
it's in this moment, with west's nightly roars that i realize that i'm sleeping amongst lions, trained killers, and mad men. i don't feel like one of them, and yet they accept me into their pride. do they not see my heart on my sleeve, the zipper on my back revealing my white wool? i am a fraud. i want nothing of war or courage. i want nothing of stories and combat. surely they must know this is a costume i put on daily and an act i've been rehearsing frequently with such urgency. are they really that blind to common sense and signals? perhaps, secretly they know my deceit and still allow me to stay. maybe they feel that lions are not sanctified unless pictured beside a lamb. does my presence make them feel like they are not what they clearly are? are we all trading something here? a piece of me for a piece of them.
i feel like at any moment i will reach behind my back to pull this costume from my body, to reveal to my brothers in arms that i am nothing like them, but the zipper will no longer be there, gone, or missing, who knows. i will be one of them. something to be damned. but who should be damned to die? who stands on stilts above all and condemns man? what is wrong can be right, and so the righteous can just as easily be in the wrong. evil is a word and words are only as good as their meanings, but meanings are subjective and can be swayed and twisted to suit the desires of anyone.
am i evil? what have i become? am i a thug, a hired gun sent to fight, not to think or reason or feel but rather to do? am i a mere vessel used to hurt innocent people for the betterment of progress, government, industry, and the need to seek and destroy that which we do not understand? i see more contractors than i do soldiers, i see more long faces then i see smiles. are we saving anyone or simply burying ourselves in self righteous nationalism?
we could be doing so much better if not for the talking heads and hands in back pockets, the smiling faces with their diamond eyes, oily skin, and dollar sign teeth.
and the world doesnt care, we the people sleep so soundly, safe in the knowledge that lions roam and do the bidding of the rats, vultures, and thieves; while the third world gasps for breathes as it's stomach wrenches with hunger pains.