My Life in a nut shell

[zanias]

Have you ever been deployed? Heh, well I guess I would call it a deployment. For some of us in the military a deployment can meen absolute hell. For me, it was 6 months. I spent 6 months in a country I didn't even know existed, and yet never had a chance to know or understand. I was in a bubble. The lonely fish in it's bowl swimming around looking at the world outside of itself and its cage.

I had time there. Plenty of it. I thought, evaluated, analyzed myself. My friends... my family... I was fortunate enough to call them but for what? I call home and it's the same story with my dad. Always fighting with the woman he's been with for the better part of 7 years now. The constant he's out, and yet never leaves. I call my brother only to be greated by "Oh just sitting here playing 11" as if I never left. It's always been the same with them. Numbed by what they're dealing with, with what they go through on their day to day life.

I've fallin into that same rut that my brother lives in today. I've spent my life playing video games. A life in a fantasy where I didn't have to deal with anyone. I was afraid. I shackled myself to an existance where I would never have to get close to anyone. Always hearing that we were out... always hearing that we were going to move somewhere else. I didn't want to get close to people. What would it mean to have any relationship with anyone just to move away?

It's a sick game that woman plays with my dad. A constand strain at your will, and so I chained myself to what I knew best in hope that it would make it easier living there. I hid in my room, played video games, and pretended that everything was going smoothly. I went through highschool, always trying to be proactive and friendly, but never getting too close to anyone.

I finally do something to get out of this rut. I join the Air Force. I needed an out, a way to get away from that place. All of it. Watched as all my other friends in high school were doing the same thing as everyone else does in that place. Stuck with dead end jobs, going no where, and spending 6 years in college with no clue of what they want or where they want to go.

I was proud. I was going out there, doing something different. My training made me feal confident about myself. Made me happy. I connected with the fellow trainees during that time in a way that I can't explain, only to move onto new training, with new people. Finally finding myself in Washington, with no one that I knew since joining the Air Force I started to fall into the same old pattern. The only thing that I had known to do with myself. I hid away in my room, playing my games, keeping myself locked away from everyone else.

It was second nature to me. sure I've gone out, partied a bit with everyone in the dorms here. But I never connected with anyone until I deployed.

I pulled on those chains. Pulled on them... Strained them... So hard that I thought they would snap. I've been back for 2 months now and see that those chains still hold me back. But there's the rub. The chains hold me to who I am, or who I was. A Lonely kid sitting in his room playing his games afraid to get too close for fear that it will all be gone. But there's the thing. This isn't going away. Sure, I might move, my friends here might move. But we all see each other, deployed, or passing through our stations wherever we are. It's a small world out there. I've

I've come to realize after spending 12 years hiding... In my clam shell... A hermitage of a life behind a wall of video games, computers, and friends who were never really friends, that I'm ready to come out of that shell. Break the chains holding me to a numb existance watching this screen watch me as I waste my time away. I'm ready to move on and do something with my life. Meet people and connect with them. Know that no matter what the cercumstances are that I'll still have good friends out there. But How can I do anything when I don't really even know what I want? I have no direction to take in my life, only options. So many options that I can't even begin to think of them all and it scares me. Pushes me back into that shell. It's too big, and I know I'm just going to let it all slip by if I don't make a change and take that first step.