The Broken Soldier

First things first, ‘labas’ to my Lithuanian friends.  It’s always kind of neat to see who’s reading, and where they’re reading.  “Achyiu.”  I’ll do my best to keep your attention.

I’m in a tremendous amount of pain today.  I had dinner with a buddy of mine.  Dan.  We went to college together.  He’s visiting from New Mexico where he works as an intel analyst for one of the agencies.  I’d love to be on drugs right now, but that love’s at odds with my pre-surgery instructions.  Hell, the only thing I could take is Tylenol.  Regular Tylenol has never really worked for me.  I’m sure the homunculus pulling the levers in my head wouldn’t find RT to be that funny of a joke.  For all the good they’d do I might as well stick them up my ass.  I’m in pain, pain that has made it impossible to get out of bed today for longer than 5 minutes, because I had dinner with a few friends.

This got me thinking about the phone call I got on Friday. Finding my blog, as though with between 500-2,000 hits a month depending on how much writing I’m doing it’s existence is some bloody secret I’ve done my best to conceal from the Army, and wanting to clear the air.  What an odd sense of proportion and prioritization people in the Army have.  As though blogging in real time of my impressions of what’s been happening and what’s not been happening is a matter worth discussing.  Especially when I still need medical care.

Add in that I’m in this boat because of the many bad decisions by those appointed over me, and an unwillingness to expend energies and resources to do much of anything to correct these decisions, other than threatening me and PR control, the lack of proportion and prioritization is astounding to me.  Disgusting is more apt.  I felt my confidence in the Army couldn’t be lower than it was.  I was wrong.

Let’s recap what got me here, though as one person from the Guard put it, “It’s water under the bridge.”  I don’t know.  When I wake up every fucking morning to pain and disability and collection calls because I’m not able to work it’s difficult for me to be as fucking Zen about it.  Dumb ass coerces me to attend training, holding my OCS bid hostage to do it.  He does so against Army Regulations, my contract, and my wishes.  He does so in order to accomplish certain things he was responsible for doing but failed to do.  During this useless training, useless because, contrary to what many in the Army think (using that term in its loosest possible construal), Marines and Army folks aren’t the only fucking members of the military who do field shit, my injuries came because of another stupid and pointless decision: “All 250 of you and your gear out of this room with two doors in 10 seconds.”  What’s the purpose?  What’s the training value?  Oh right, NONE!  Just another needle-dick with relative rank jerking off without regard for what his actions and decisions create for his ‘brothers.’  Osteopath in a bad mood.  Treats me to a heaping helping of insults rather than treating me medically.  Sure.  Why not?  With Feres and manpower concerns, what worry should he have?  Punching symptoms into WebMD is okay right?  The folks in Health Services seem to think so.  They defended this action.  An action that would have gotten any doctor not in uniform sued into the stone age.  DON’T SEEK CARE.  Remember that one?  Means more paperwork if the LoD isn’t approved.  Toon?  What else is there to say that hasn’t been said?

In spite of this, all of it, I’ve acted with restraint.  Those who don’t think so are sorely mistaken.  Soon to be much more sore.  I’m letting Bruce take over.  Completely.  See if he acts with the restraint I have.  See if your sense of proportion isn’t adjusted a bit.