The War Within

We are trained from day one to be warriors.
Yeah, I know what you're saying.
"I've never seen battle."
Don't lie to me.
You have and you know it.
From the first day you put your foot down
and demanded whatever your tiny mind wanted
you declared war on your surroundings
to get what it was that you sought.
And immediately the opposition rose to deny you
and first blood was drawn not by some faceless enemy
that hides in the shadows and strikes without warning
but by your own kin.

They called it discipline.

In one they became both the enemy and the ally. Drill sergeants intended to train you up in the art of being a good person and at the same time the other side that your mind dropped propaganda by planeload in an endless rain as you endured your time as a singular prisoner of war, caged in jails with only two walls.

When we were little they were gods. They protected us, guided us, provided for us. And in return, they asked only the simple tribute: Obey. We revered them. We worshiped them.

But as we grew we began to question them. The pull of autonomy became stronger than the bonds of time. We found ourselves desperately searching to gain allies of our own. We reached out to others like us in an attempt to recruit soldiers and combat medics and meatball surgeons to fight along side us and mend our broken bones and sew up our wounds long enough to send us back out to face the day because we knew inside that a one man army wasn't enough.

We sought others because when we rose up against our oppressors, they crushed us because they were bigger.
And all the while they told us "It's for your own good."

I ask you now...Was it good for you? In your blind attempt to mold me, you damaged something inside.Does that thought make you happy? Now every day I fight not only a war against the world but also one within myself. I'm on two battlefronts at once attempting to keep a straight face and rolling a joke along the ground because some days it's the only thing that keeps me from going insane.

But it's not all bad. Cuz y'see, I'm not fighting a one-man war. I got buddies in the fox hole around me. And it's funny because I know in some ways they got it worse off than I do. And we do our encouragement and we bind each other up and close up the wounds behind computer screens and cell phone texts and those rare moments when eyes meet eyes. Lips touch lips and hands touch skin and suddenly it's okay again.

For a little while.

Yeah we're all warriors. We're what happens when you wake up one morning and decide we're done with life's shit. We survive. We're the people behind the counters praying to whoever's listening to keep our heads and make it out before the shells start dropping on our them. We are the epitome of multi-class.We are warriors and support alike, neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring, forming our bonds and banding together because we're all we have.

And in the end you can't take that from us.