I went to Kemah today. An old friend was there and he had secured a 50 caliber long rifle. I had never used one before. I was very excited about using it for the first time. My first shot ended up about 6 inches high. My second shot was dead on. That was when I began to appreciate the power of a 50 caliber arm weapon.
By nightfall a couple of other guys from a previous team I had been on arrived. We drank a lot, because that is what guys that have gone to war do when they get together years later. They drink to forget faces, and to remember faces.
I have to remind you again that I was never in the military. But I stood by many men who were. I fought with these men, I killed with these men, and I watched some of those men die within an arm’s reach of me. As we sat together, talking about departed friends and crazy situations I came to a new realization.
Real life isn’t a movie. In real life the survivors don’t wander off in to the sunset with their heads held high. Nope, in real life the survivors jump every time something falls and crashes; real survivors can’t sleep for fear of their nightmares; and real survivors don’t come home a hero.
And in real life, the woman that saved your life avoids you when you finally find her.
You’ve all heard my story about Somalia. It was the only time in my life that I really wanted to die. That was when a voice spoke to me. It wasn’t that voice that always pushed me on to success. That voice had left me a long time ago. No, this voice was a female voice that told me to live.
I did live. And I spent the next 20 something years searching for that woman. About three years ago I found her.
Now if real life was a movie, she would have been in a crisis and I would have been her savior. We would have hit it off, fallen in love and lived happily ever after. But that didn’t happen because real life isn’t a movie.
In my real life, the real life that we all live in today, that woman won’t believe in fate. She can’t imagine being so tired and hurt that you believe in angels. In real life, she thinks you are insane for telling a story about a war in a faraway place and how this mystical angelic voice pulled you out of the jaws of evil. In real life she is more beautiful than any movie can portray, and you have become a beat up and broken down nothing.
In real life there is no magical moment, no amazing glance, and no butterflies in your stomach, no intimate touch, no special kiss, and no sunsets. In real life you don’t connect. In real life she is interested in men that never ran to the war, never fought to save the man next to them, never had explosions and bullets hit the man to your right and to your left yet miss you. In real life she doesn’t care that you hate the fact that you lived while your friends died.
I have many faults. And one of those faults used to be that I lied. But I can’t lie anymore. My story is true. As I was being tortured a voice came to me and told me to live because the voice would need me. The story is real, just like life. The only problem is that the voice doesn’t need or want me.
I lived. And because I lived many others died. Maybe I was delirious. Maybe I should have died; maybe all those other men should have lived; maybe one of those men was the one for the voice.
Lord, I wish life could be like the movies.
When we met she would have believed me. When we met she would have remembered me from her dreams. When we met she would need me. And then we would have ridden off into the sunset together.
I hate real life.
I’ve gotten no signs. I’m walking away now, towards my own sunset. And all I can think is . . .
Why did I live when others died?
And why did that voice save me for all this hell?
Four men drank a ton of tequila tonight. Four men smoked some illegal cigarettes. Four men remembered the faces of dozens of missing friends. Four men talked about why they lived.
And then four men went back to the real world.
So I ask you, and you know who you are . . . . . Why me?
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