When I've seen men screaming for God to have mercy, they shouldn't need to ask why I can't sleep at night.
When I've seen humanity become a faded term locked away in a cage, they shouldn't need to ask why I jump at sudden loud noises.
Please don't ask why I won't laugh in conversations where everyone else is smiling. Don't ask what I'm thinking about if I've gone quiet. Please don't ask what's wrong when I suddenly yell. Please don't feel disappointed when I decline to join in activities I would normally love.
I don't see what sort of God could let this happen, and I stopped believing in the goodness of humans a long time ago. We are monsters, can't anyone see that? We'll do anything to get what we want.
I should feel guilty after hurting someone, not reach for more ammunition. I should see another human at the end of the weapon, not a target. I've been trained to have no moral code. And when I hear about a brutal death in the newspaper, I don't feel shocked.
I feel nothing at all.
We can do nothing. We are weapons of mass destruction, ordered to kill and obeying. When did it become right to kill just because we were told to? Because I know I'll obey every single time, and I hate that.
God is great, is he? When my time comes will he applaud my medals and dirty old uniform? Will he congratulate me on my good shooting skills? And what of my victims? Condemned to live in Heaven or Hell with their murderer.
We are all victims, we are all murderers. A whole generation of people turned against each other for what?
I hate myself. I used to scoff at those self-obsessed monologues on hating what you've become, but it's different when it's you.
It made sense at the time. The cold trigger right under your hand. People all around you screaming and fighting and dying. The whole world separates into black and red, and you just want to make the noise stop make it all stop shut up shut up please just shut up.
So you shoot the screaming away. Shoot until the noise stops. Until it's quiet.
Now I look in a mirror and I see myself shooting down man after man like it's a game. See myself celebrating my own survival. It's disgusting.
Did I mourn any of those men? Did I know any of their names? Did I care? Did I know if they had a family to support or if they were forced to fight? If they were going home the next week?
No.
How could I be so stupid? How could any of us? Blindly following instructions for my country. Ha, for my country. What does my country care for all the men trapped in asylums now because of what they've seen? For the men that can no longer love their wives because they just do not feel any more.
I don't want to be a hero. Heroes save people, they don't destroy them.
But I know we'll do it again, any of us. If we're ordered to forget reason, we'll do so readily. We'll go out and curse God and kill people time and time again. We'll hate the people we're told to because they are told to hate us.
I can think but it does not matter. I do not listen to myself because everything I think is futile.
Do you hate me now? Do you hate me now you know? Well, it doesn't matter to me anyhow. Nothing matters. I am numb, like stone.
I won't feel. I won't care. I won't do anything at all but wait until I'm sent back to fight.
After all, it's for my country.
-Yep, just thought I'd give you all some major depression after listening to several fairly disturbing songs about war.
