Army dreamers

 

"B.F.P.O....

...army dreamers...

...mammy's hero..."

Our little army boy

Is coming home from B.F.P.O.

I've a bunch of purple flowers

To decorate a mammy's hero.

Mourning in the aerodrome,

The weather warmer, he is colder.

Four men in uniform

To carry home my little soldier.

"What could he do?

Should have been a rock star."

But he didn't have the money for a guitar.

"What could he do?

Should have been a politician."

But he never had a proper education.

"What could he do?

Should have been a father."

But he never even made it to his twenties.

What a waste --

Army dreamers.

Oh what a waste of

Army dreamers...

Yesterday, on the way, I broke down in tears listening to this song. 250km the day prior, 185 that day: I had spent three hours with few pauses in-between, driving. I went on the highway but it fucked with my nervous system so badly I had to take the side roads. Not a bad thing, I like them, specifically national roads which are my favourite to drive on, and on which I tend to accidentally speed a little. 

I was stopped 75km away from my destination. Was too tired to continue for a while. I phoned my advisor to let her know that despite trying with all my might to get there in time, I couldn't make it to the appointment. Not long after, I was overcome by this feeling of tiredness, feeling my shoulders and back still as rock-hard as usual. I do stop noticing them every now and then. But it doesn't change that they are never relaxed.

It hit me right after that I had been living in a war zone. I was feeling just like someone who lived through repeated, unpredictable bombings, the feeling you may die at any moment, that you're never safe no matter how hard you try.

I put on this song. When I left that last city, it was playing. The tears in my eyes were almost preventing me from seeing well. The weather was warm, but I was colder. A beautiful sun. Should've been a happy day. But I was returning to the place where I died. In my mind's eye, I saw myself standing over a coffin, and I knew who was inside. It was me. My younger self that had not made it. A parallel version of me that did not escape and probably hung herself between the day of the move, or perhaps even before, and today. Or perhaps my younger self, the one who actually moved to dad's when she was sixteen, and probably degraded tremendously there. Either way, it was me inside that coffin, and I did not have to open it to understand.

It's not my mammy mourning in this song. It's myself, mourning the little soldier I was. Aka's heroine. And I still am. I guess I went up quite a few ranks, but the war never ended for me. Ever. I don't know if it ever will. 

What could I do? At the time I had nothing. I was just a teenage girl, then a 20-something that had been so burned out and traumatized. Should've been a straight A student: but I never had the bandwidth because I was carrying myself all alone. Should've entered the military: but I was always too sensitive and everyone always told me I was too weak for doing so. Should've been a brilliant adult, but I never had the chance to truly be young. 

It's such a strange kind of grief to grieve for all those parts of you lost to time, to violence, to loneliness in the face of events that would have broken anyone else. It never stops. It's always with you. It's a strange kind of grief to just feel like your life started too early, skipped a step because it had to, and now you're left here, incomplete, forever missing a crucial part of you and people may be able to sense it. That you're damaged goods, irreparably so, and that you're a lifer: sentenced to run a lifetime on a broken leg that is impossible to heal. Oh yes. I'm serving a life sentence. In every sense of the word. All I can do is try and make it a little less of an endurance test. 

Oh what a waste of army dreamers...

yeah. I feel like I'm one of those army dreamers.