No Grind, No Gold

I'm trying to focus on work.

Right now, though, I'm having trouble staying awake.

That's rough, even for me.

It's definitely a Monday, though there are some highlights, at least.

I realized, as my nco vented (probably a little too loudly, in retrospect) about some disrespectful tendencies our provider has, that there are people- more than I'd noticed- who let less than outstanding leadership get to them worse than I do. That's a pretty decent boost to my ego, as I'm still coming out of my PTSD-fog.

I'm still not sure it can be appropriately called PTSD, because of the length of time and age it began at, but I have no other name for it.

It's been hard not to believe I am less than others because of my weakness in controlling my emotions and reactions. I am- slowly- beginning to see that, well, frankly, shit happens.

I have started realizing that real people are going to forgive my freak outs and carry on with it like nothing happened, and love me none the less for it.

A quote my friend Kore repeats a lot 'Real recognize real, and the rest just fade away.'

Rachel was fake, as much as I hate to admit it. I loved her as a sister, regardless, but she wasn't ever the person she tried to be, and she was never capable of total honesty. It startled me how much she reminded me of my mother, and more so in retrospect. I learned a lesson from her, though, and there were some good memories. I've moved on.

Truth is, there have been many fakes in my life, but I'm learning- quickly- to seperate myself from people who just 'don't feel right'. I can only do so much on my own.

I am proud of how far I have come, and hope I will continue to grow in this direction without any more slippage.

I found myself disconnecting from back home again this last weekend. It's hard to be homesick. I realized recently that I will have to work much harder than I'd anticipated to balance my relationship and my life here. I miss and love Ryan very much, but that makes it that much harder to be away from him. I try to keep him up to speed on everything going on in my life, but mostly that feels like telling a lot of 'you had to be there' stories in succesion. This is going to take some planning. Once I find out if my new commander wants me to stay here on this post or transfer up north, I will start trying to live a little more permanantly and get the internet and a VOIP phone. Speaking of which, I will put that on the list of things to do on payday.

I am sitting here listening to an mp3 Ryan sent me of him and his band Bloody Marble Collective. My favorite song they played was Professor's Magical Beginnings, which is the one I'm listening to. I remember sitting and watching them play when I thought I'd never have a shot with him, and, once, falling asleep on the couch in the band room, until Ryan woke me up. I loved listening to them play- all very talented musicians. Eric still amazes me- I never thought that much voice could come out of such a skinny dude. He had a great voice, though. Naturally, Ryan was the rock star persona, though, and tended to be the show off. He told me recently he brought me there because he knew I had a thing for him, and knew that would only aggravate the feelings. He's such an ass sometimes.

I would have done the same thing, and I'm relatively sure the way I dressed was my way of doing the same thing to him. Now I'm stuck with him. Look what I did. *sigh* :-)