something's wrong

I'm tired. Not "I didn't sleep last night" tired. I'm just simply tired. Of everything. This has nothing to do with my current deployment here, this deployment has, if anything given me alot of time to reflect and think. And I realized that my life since I could remember has been tiring, I hate it too. Not the fact that it's turned out the way it has, but the fact that I feel so guilty in even having the nerve to feel this way, when I know damn well that there's so many people out there with much more harder and unfortunate lives than mine. I've realized that I've been tired for many years now, but I've been hiding it, through new things I pick up to pre-occupy my time; once I get bored I move on. I think that's why I like so many different things, don't like to stay at oneplace to long, like to see and experience new things. Or maybe simply I like to travel. lol. If I had to put a date on when this permanent state of "dunno what it's called" started setting in I would have to put it around the time my mom remarried and we moved from Toronto to Las Vegas, and so on and so on, despite the few little joys in my life from 11 on till now it's been mainly sorrow, I don't wanna give it such an easy excuse and say "that's life" but that may just be it. I'm not normal. I am far from it. But I hide, I've been hiding, not so much as a kid in high school trying to fit in so he acts differently (which I have done), but I've been hiding from myself, and in that process I've ended up forgetting who I really am. I don't know who I am. I never knew what it was like to have a father figure. Maybe that's why I played football, played baseball and maybe even why I joined the army. I remember back in the day in Jr. High seeing my friends wear their junior league (or whatever) t-shirts and I knew that when they played, their dad was in the stands rooting for them. Maybe I joined the army to have that male influence and to end up learning from the older guys and become the best? Maybe it's to make up for the lack of a father in my life? who knows, I'm just tired, I've become a person that I despise, I have alot of anger inside me, and for years I've kept it inside, it will probably stay inside for a long time, but for the last couple of years, on occasion, the anger comes out. I don't like it. I'm tired and alone. Been that way since the move to Vegas. I've emotionally been alone. It's just the way I was raised. My mother wasn't there once she married. So I relied on myself. I want to like to be around people, I want to be a social butterfly, but in the end I am by myself, one part is happy and one part is sad. Happy because I am alone, and am free. Sad because I have no one next to me. (Every ten seconds I keep thinking to myself how sad this is, me blabbing so vainly while my fellow soldiers are dying, innocent people are dying, poor kids go hungry) I want to not have to pretend anymore, I want to find a person that can somehow look me in the eyes without me having to say a word and know me. But I know that if I stop. People will find out the true me and hate me for it. *Scoff, even if I wanted people to know the real, I wont be able to show them; I don't even know real me. I know that I like kids, animals, helping people, cooking,and watching the little idiosyncrasies in life. If I didn't know any better I'd say I still was a kid inside. Maybe that's why I'm such a joker. But then why am I so confrontational, why do I create problems? I wish I could solve that part of my life; it has been with me throughout.

The only person in my life that I think has seen the true me, would have to be one of my best friends, and ex-girlfriend "Nicole" (name changin here...you know who you are) I hid nothing, and she loved me for me, good and bad. I had to go and screw it up. I'll admit right now, even if I had a second chance, I'd screw that up too. She was a one in a million. Perfect on every level that I looked for. But I had to go screw it up and create problems. She is a beautiful girl in my eyes, but to people who's thought I cared about; I was always thinking that they thought she wasnt good enough, I was thinking that maybe I COULD do better, I don't know what I was thinking, but it was wrong, I kept on thinking that it wasnt good enough, that maybe this girl I saw was better, or that girl I saw was better. I can tell you right now it was solely because Every girl I saw that I put that girl on a perfect pedastal, it was un-reality. How can what's real even compare to fantasy? Reality would always lose, and it did, so I cheated, I broke up with her. Get back with her. The whole time, she was always there for me, no matter what. Even when I had tough times, She was there. When it was just me and her, I was calm, elated. But then I had to go ahead and screw that up by hiding again and put up my mask. To what? Impress shallow idiots that I don't even talk to anymore? That's one part of my life I know was 100% my fault, and no one elses.

My whole life I've always put up a facade, cared what others thought of me, too scared to show who I really am. Still am, too used to it. Only now do I realize that it's starting to eat at me, slowly kill me, and I need to stop this, but how? I've been surviving like this for years, I can't change what I've become.

I like movies and book, and I can easily hypothesize why; Escape. Escape from myself. What kind of movies you ask? Romantic Comedies. funny no? That nice tingly feeling you get after watching a flick like Notting Hill? That's what I want to feel everytime I take a breath of air.

In this warzone, I know that when it comes to soldiering, all this has no effect on me. I am intuitive, aware of myself, a superb knack for soldiering skills and combat tactics. That is something that I have studied and learned intensely since joining the army. I am not gung ho insane kill, kill, kill. But I know I am capable, this part of me is neither a facade nor me. It just is.
But you never know, you can never tell how you are going to react until it happens. Maybe I will hug my knees and cry, maybe I will fire wildly and blindly, or maybe I will react the way I was trained and be proud of what I've done.

I'm jumping topics here. It's late, My little window outside of myself is about to close.

We'll be going to a convoy live fire range for a few days, which should definitely be cool. Or I might volunteer to stay back; the poker tournament is on during our lanes our in the field, I have a title to defend y'kno? lol j/k

I'm thinking about taking up photography. I've always had an interest in it, but never had the chance nor money to start up on it. Now's a better time than ever to start huh?To me it's art at its best, through the pictures you take and call your own, it give's others a glimpse to who you really are. I'm most likely gonna buy a Canon EOS D20 DSLR, its a hefty price tag, but I'm gonna give it my all, and see where it takes me in life.

Oh and also, I'm thinkin for my 2 week R&R I would like to go someplace "once in a lifetime" the U.S. Army is paying to fly me anywhere in the world. Right now my tentative plan is to go to Pamplona, Spain for the Running of the Bulls festival then hop over to Ibiza, Spain to relax and enjoy myself. I also seen pictures and read articles about somewhere in Europe there's an annual bigass tomato throwing festival; sometime in August. Any suggestions as to where to go to enjoy something of the likes of what I just mentioned, between the time of March and August? The biggest problem for me right is the fact that I'm having trouble finding travel buddies to go with. Friends from home don't think they can afford it, and friends here have families to go home to. But if any of ya are interested lemme know, and if you pass my test of travel buddy compatablility (test of wha?? what the hell did I just type?) then maybe we can run for our lives down the streets of pamplona next to each other (or at least you running while I fall and get a horn up my ass)

Colin Powell's gone huh? Just a personal note, If he ran for President, Rep. Dem. or Ind. I would vote for him.

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson