Smoke and mirrors...

The drive to MEPS (one of many acronyms that has no meaning to me except by association) was a long and quiet one. My recruiter made several attempts to reassure me that I had made the right choice and it would be over before I knew it. His mistake was in thinking that it was basic training I was dreading the most. That I was scared of the pain of nine weeks. He could not make me feel better about the real reason which was I knew that I had made a mistake that would cost me for the rest of my life. I was stepping into the horrific reality that I was bound to an institution that could compel me to do damnable things and I could only choose jail instead. I had signed my name in support of a war machine and I was praying for forgiveness before I even got on the plane for basic. I wouldn't even let myself think about Tom. The mind knows its own limits most times, and I knew I would go insane completely if I let his face remain in my mind. If I sank into his scent still on my clothes. So I threw myself into the real but more managable concerns of my soul.

There was little ceremony when we arrived at MEPS. My recruiter dropped me off at the door and neither of us made any pretense that there had been any significance to the relationship that brought us here. And I was on my own among all the other wandering souls of that place. The powers that be didn't have the decency to get us on our way quickly. I would soon learn that this is the hallmark of the military. We waited from 5 am until about two in the afternoon to simply get on a plane. There was paperwork but not much. Mostly there was a lot of sitting on our asses, making light conversation for distraction. There was one seventeen year old girl, just old enough to join the guard, had a three-year old kid already. There were a lot of mothers there actually. One was thirty-six, just barely young enough to still join the guard, three kids. I thanked God I wasn't leaving behind babies as well as Tom. I couldn't imagine any amount of money or benefits could compensate for missing a year of your child's life. Then again I've never had to try to raise a child on my own. Obviously security was strong enough a reason for Tom and I.

There was another person at the MEPS that I will not soon forget, for better or worse. She was this youngish, sweet looking girl with her youngish, sweet looking husband. He was in the infantry and she was going into the reserves. We discovered pretty quickly that we were both Christians and spent a while talking about Wheaton and her life growing up as a missionary kid. So much in common. It is difficult to talk of her now without revealing my current bitterness with her, but in all fairness I'm trying to convey that I took great comfort in her the first few weeks and most especially the first few days. We did not leave each other's side until the last day of basic and there is a lot to be said for such loyalty. Anyway, I sat with her and her husband and it helped me feel like I was sitting with some bit of family. They were obviously torn about their own decision and somehow it helped to feel like I was comforting them and thereby forgetting my own recent loss. When we eventually flew out of the Shreveport airport, she and I sat next to each other and reminded each other of the miracles that had brought us to our respective husbands, and smiled and relaxed.

We had a several hour layover in Houston, had our last free meal, and I talked to Tom one last time. The next plane would take us to Columbia, South Carolina and the beginning of it all. The terror was helpfully mind-numbing. It occured to me that it felt very much like being buried alive, but at least it was cool and it was dark. I was looking out the portal at the darkening sky while everyone else wisely took the opportunity to sleep, and I saw such beauty it almost woke me from the darkness. It seemed as if we were riding on the very edge between twilight and night and there was a lightning storm in the darkest part of the horizon. The sun still setting behind us as we flew east cast a rose sheer over the darkness and the lightning etched violent paths across the sky.

Recession...

I was gone before I even got in my recruiter's car that last morning. I spent the summer leading up to that day looking at my surroundings as if I was already removed from them. Nacogdoches took on a nostalgic, hazy air as we drove to the store or to the park or to our friends'. Each conversation became a caricature as everything took on monumental significance: this could be the last time I speak to this person, this could be something I will miss soon, this could be the last time I'm not lonely. I would lay awake at night trying to discern Tom's features in the darkness, trying to memorize them for the long nights I foresaw without him. The loneliness already had me completely. I did not believe that anyone understood what was about to happen. Their lives would continue as I saw them that summer, and I would never return. I knew already that the events of the year would return me eventually, but I would never be quite the same as when I left. And everything would happen without their knowledge. I would go off to a place where I could never call or see them and only my belated letters would tell them anything about the revolutions of my self. Yet each day beligerently plodded behind the next, and I began to consider myself a ghost walking among the living. A shadow that didn't know what to follow. And I was scared. I was so scared I didn't want to talk about anything. As if my silence might make the inevitable go away. I don't think Tom and I had ever fought that much before. Every time he wanted to spend time with Buddy or Adam, I would lash out in unrestrained panic. What if he died on the way there? What if I missed a moment that I would want to remember as soon as I was gone? I coveted every moment of that summer with him so severely that I ultimately destroyed most of them. I wanted to consume every second as if it was the last and it became a rotten cesspool of need. I remember getting ribs at Clear Springs on his birthday, and that's perhaps the best night we had until the very last night before I left. We had made the mistake of living with my parents that summer instead of working and so our relationship felt secret in a way that shouldn't have been true. We reverted to highschoolers sneaking behind the parents back. Sex was a desperate and very quiet affair that summer. All I wanted was to spend all our happiness as if it was our last, to reach ultimate levels of intimacy, and to remember. And I saw all of that consistently removed from me. I was silent, I was removed, communication strained at best.

It is ironic in retrospect that the two of my family members that I cared so little to talk to wanted so badly to talk to me that summer. David used my mother to pass messages such as "She's sold her soul to the devil", hoping I guess that such damnation might convince me to get out of my contract with Satan. It was surprising he thought that those tactics would do anything except encourage me to be more resolved. Then there was Rick. The person that everybody loves to hate. He makes it so easy for all of us to feel such delicious righteous anger. He's an asshole to my beloved aunt and to her kids and to everyone else for that matter. The Mr. Knowitall that drives everyone insane with his arrogance and brutal force. It doesn't matter when he's right, everyone in the family simply by silent resolution takes whatever side he doesn't. So it makes it exceedingly hard for me to admit here that he was right in this one thing. I was conveniently busy or out of the house every time he called to disuade me, so I only had my mother's spiteful recounting of whatever he had had to say. Until the last week. I had finally realized for myself that joining probably was a big mistake and that I couldn't imagine leaving now that I was about to. Tom was at Adam's and I was angry that I was losing yet one more night (though I never made good use of our nights anyway) and that I needed so badly to talk to him this night especially. I was fantasizing about calling my recruiter and telling him to fuck off and then immediately feeling the agony of all our dreams lost. Everything we were hoping for had become entwined with me going through with this. Tom could go back to school for something he actually wanted to do. I could perform and make a lot of money in the process. We could have children. Loans would be repaid. Everything. All I had to do was leave and not know when I would come back. So I had no choice but to jump in the car and head for the backroads looking for wisdom. Unfortunately I had taken my cell phone with me, all in hopes that Tom would want to come home soon and share in my dead-end agony. Instead, Rick called. I had answered without looking at the number, assuming that he did not have this number, not remembering that Karen had got it at some point the last year. So I answered, and he immediately began to dissect what resolve I had left. He didn't know that I was close to quitting, and he wouldn't hear me say it. I had too much pride to allow Rick, of all people, to feel like he had the power to sway me. I had made my decision and his call made it just that much more impossible for me to walk away. I wonder if he heard the tears in my voice or the weakness. I only spoke a few non-commital phrases and just enough to get him off the phone, and he is not the most perceptive person. I'm sure if he had heard me crumbling he would have kept me on the phone until I was completely wrecked. I escaped by telling him I was driving and couldn't talk to him any longer, which he had no choice but to accept. And I haven't talked to him since. I had the windows down and was crying uncontrollably when something happened that I can't help but think of as portentous. It had just rained and there were quite a few creatures wandering about on the country road I was on. I was driving carefully even while near hysterics, but a frog jumped onto the road and directly in front of my tire before I could even slow down. I can still remember precisely how the snapping of his tiny bones sounded and it has become connected in my mind with a sort of prophecy of my year.

Finally, the last day arrived. God, I can barely think of it now without crying. My parents took us to Rita's for my last meal and I sobbed right there in public. I couldn't bear to see them looking at me the same way I had been looking at them: as if this was the last we would ever see of each other. I couldn't hold onto the minutes slipping by so quickly, and I wept for all that was already lost. That night, Tom and I tried to make the best of it. On impulse we went to the store late that night and bought ice cream to eat while we watched Forest Gump. It seemed so appropriate, and it was. I thought of that night countless times over the next few months. Halfway through the movie, we stopped and made love. Imagine the desperation of two people caught in the moments before their determined deaths; that is close to how we felt that night holding each other. I delayed sleep as long as I could manage, knowing that the hours of sleep would feel like mere seconds and then I would be leaving. We had to meet my ride at the 3am, and I awoke knowing for certain finally that I could not go through with it. I cried in Tom's arms and begged him to pray for me. And he held me and whispered to God to help me be strong and to remember that love surrounded me. I cried even as we made love one last time, and then we were in the car and I could not turn back. I could not retrieve all the moments that I had wasted over the summer now that I knew how they should be used. They were gone forever, and I felt as if I would soon be. There was nothing I could do but weep. We got to the gas station where we were meeting the recruiter sooner than I imagined possible. I hugged my parents and then I hugged Tom with a desperation that frightened me. He held me and I felt him crying too. It was the last moment I knew I could walk away, and yet somehow I released Tom (something I have a difficult time forgiving myself for now knowing the pain of this past year) and I walked to the waiting car and I got in. And I stopped crying. No one else would see me cry until I could safely be weak again.