Thoughts

Although I am not good with words, I feel like writing. Here we are, September 11th, 2005. Four years after that devastating day when we as American’s were attacked on our own land by cowards and lost thousands of innocent people. And we saw a nation come together in the wake of a tragedy, and a new breed of heroes came about. Both firefighters and police alike gave there lives for something that seems very simple, because most watch it through a T.V. Saving a life, in the middle of chaos, and giving your own, easy to see, easy to write, but not easy to do. During a moment of silence today, when we rose our Colors in Al Asad Iraq, this was all passing through my mind. I will never forget that day, neither will anyone that existed during it. I was honored to be able to take a moment of silence, in Iraq for all the victims, then I looked around and and took my own personal moment for all the Marines I saw around me serving with me in this war, the one that began on that day. Most of them barely 20, and some not even 19, men and women, who knew exactley where they were gonna go, and still signed their life away, VOLUNTARILY. I thought about what brought me here, in 2001 I was a 18 year old punk, who did not have a care in the world, no respect for authority, nonetheless, for anything. I was careless on a one way road to nowhere, was not thankful for anything. Then at work on that day I heard the news stating the attacks in New York, it was merely reported as a plane hitting one of the towers, and eventually turned into alot more than just that. We took a smoke break, then Lee came and let us clean up and head home to watch the news. When it got soaked in, it freaked me out, and noone really knew what to make of it, we were all freaked.

In the coming weeks after, I started to realize how much of a loser I really was, and how much I had taken for granted in my life, I had everything a kid coulda wanted, and a good head, but I pissed it away, and barley made it out of school. I was in a 1 bedroom roach infested apartment, lived like a slob, and came to the conclusion there was no way out, I could not afford school, neither could my parents. So after alot of thought, and some advice, I took a walk to the recruiting station, and straight to the Marines office, I decided if I do it, take the hardest road, to not only teach myself a lesson in life, but to prove I wanted to change. I got laughed at, I was quite overweight, took me 6 months to drop about 70 pounds, just to get shipped to boot camp. And change I did, I had an attitude at first, but it got knocked out of me quick, in about 1 second to be exact. I made it through, 30 more pounds lighter, and a whole new outlook.
read more