I'll live.
I've got exactly an hour to get from my apartment off east campus to the old science building on west campus. I'll be lucky if I make it.
First day of class. Can't be late.
I should be feeling rushed and just this side of a panic attack, if the condition of the undergrads around me are any indication. But I'm not.
I'm not anything. I don't hate it here. Hate would involve feeling something. And lately, there isn't much going on with that by way of feelings.
Or maybe I've been trying to ignore the sense of alienation that hammers home the message you don't belong here with every beat of my heart.
I thought I'd be used to it by now. That maybe I would have found my place. But the college student remains a strange breed to me. These are not my people and this is not my space.
Half of them are wearing headphones. The other half are giggling with friends and looking around like they expect their parents to jump out from behind a bush or something. There's talk about a broken nail during a frat party from last night right behind me. Or maybe it was a broken condom. Which is actually a lot more serious but somehow, ends up discussed with the same level of intensity as the broken nail.
Really intense problems here. But I don't say anything. Because that would be rude. And I'm working on my interpersonal skills these days, or so I keep telling Eli.
I'm trying to pretend I belong here. But I don't. And I never will.
I'm wearing a long-sleeved grey t-shirt and jeans. My tattoos are hidden. I'm not wearing any camouflage, and I left my dog tags in a shoebox on the top shelf of my bedroom closet in the apartment that my GI Bill money is paying for. I won't be broke while I'm going to school. I mean, I'm not rolling in one of the many BMWs or Mercedes I see cruising around campus, but I'm not homeless and I'm not hungry so there's that.
I think they set a land speed record with my separation paperwork when we got home from that last deployment. At the time, I couldn’t wait to be gone from the Army. Guess I hoped that maybe I’d feel a sense of normalcy return by now.
It hasn’t.
And now, I miss it. The chaos. The waiting.
But I can’t talk about those things here. If I don’t open my mouth, maybe no one will figure out that I used to be a soldier.
Maybe no one will ask me what it’s like to kill someone.
Funny how it hits me today of all days.
How lucky I am to be here.
How much I don't deserve it.
As I listen to the conversations and try to find some element of commonality between me and the aliens surrounding me, a single feeling slides through the noise.
I am completely exposed. I can’t f*ck
ing breathe.
Today of all days, my f*ck
ing psyche has to decide to have a goddamned tantrum.
It doesn’t matter that I’m f*ck
ing on one of the richest campuses in North Carolina. I’m safe. The rational part of my brain is pinging hard against the wave of panic.
It doesn’t matter.
Unarmed. Unprotected. Out of uniform.
I want off campus. Away from the crowds and the noise and the problems that are so f*ck
ing trivial, I don't even know where to begin.
I round the corner to the massive quad at the center of campus, tension sliding around my ribs and squeezing my lungs until I cannot breathe. Until all I see is darkness.
I don't pass out, but it is a close thing. I double over until my vision clears.
I cannot stay here.
I need to get away. To get out.
To stop the fear from crushing the breath from my lungs.
It's the first day of my second semester at school.
And I'm going to spend it in a bar.
Because drinking is cheaper than therapy.
Until it's not.
But I'll deal with that some other time.
Right now, I just need to go back into the emptiness inside me.
Because the raw, ragged feelings are too much, too soon.
And I will never, ever go back to the place I once was.
I was so f*ck
ing close. So close to walking into that classroom and pretending that the last six years of my life hadn't happened. That the shitshow that was my last tour in Iraq hadn’t happened. So close to pretending that I'm just another normal guy on a slightly above normal college campus.
I walk into the closest bar, which is oddly enough, a golf club near campus. I order a local beer and two shots of tequila. The tequila to take the edge off. The beer to nurse until the pain and the panic and the fear stop.
The tequila goes down easily. Too easily. I close my eyes and rest my head against the cool glass.
"You look like you’re having a rough day."
The familiarity of that voice hits me all at once. If I close my eyes, I can still see her that night under the streetlight.
But she’s not a memory.
I open my eyes and I am captured again by the soft gold of her eyes and the utter perfection of her smooth, dark skin.