burger king style

When I think about the past two and a half months, my immediate feeling is "what a waste". What a waste of time, of manpower, of energy. What a fucking waste of life. In that whole time I could have been at home accomplishing so much, spending time with people I love, doing the things I do best, getting on with my life, feeling comfortable.

I think that it's true it would have been a waste...if I had just passively droned through a stagnant, bland, absolutely uneventful 2.5 months. If for the past two and a half months I had just lived for the sake of living each day, gone to sleep at night just to wake up the next morning, then it would have been a total waste.

My life these past few months were full of conflict, disloyalty, and back-stabbing. It was filled with oppression, selfishness, and unfairness (I was about to say "injustice" but that seems too serious of a term for my petty little microcosm). Every day I was consumed with anger and frustration. We watched as scumbags got away with doing stupid-ass shit, and sat helplessly by as people who deserved (now that is an interesting word...) to be rewarded were fucked over instead. We were bullied, we were taken advantage of. And the awesome part is, the more actively I spoke up for what I believed in, the more I became accountable for everything fucked up that happened. Every time I refused to sit back and watch unfairness go unchecked, I was the one ending up with the shaft.

I say that it wasn't a total waste of time, these past few months. I received nothing that I wanted, I got nothing that I looked forward to. I didn't have anything my way.

It wasn't a waste because I watched as misery and loneliness threatened to drown my sense of hope and inspiration. For the first time in my life I found out what it meant to feel sorry for myself.

I watched myself become bitter and selfish. I felt the love for my Marines dwindle. I became familiar with hopelessness and the temptation to give up.

I felt myself becoming a person I didn't know I could become. I realized that stress actually can get to me.

It wasn't a waste of time, becaused I lived life and saw that it wasn't perfect. And I became reacquainted with my humanness.