Dear Jo,
Like me, we both grew up in a dysfunctional home. It was not once that I watched my father hit my mom. I was often angry and fearful. I was angry with my father and found myself having vengeful, murderous thoughts towards him as young as I was. Thoughts of strangling him in his sleep were frequent and stuck with me as if it were a real memory.
Then one day my mum woke me up before dawn in a quiet panic. She was talking in whispers. I could sense fear in her words but I was calm as I had been expecting this moment. I was praying for it. She motioned me and my sister to come with her. I tiptoed my way out of the house. That was the last time my sister and I ever stepped foot there. We felt some sense of freedom hover over us as the car sped off and our house kept disappearing from our sight.
I started life in a different State together with my mother. I watched her struggle to put food on our table. There were days my sister and I almost went to bed hungry. Those days would trigger the anger I had felt towards my father. My uncle called us bastards, good for nothing ones at that. The names stopped bothering me after a while, as I began to understand the powerless and pathetic nature of where they came from. I made a resolve to prove him wrong. I vowed to be a great influence of my time. I wanted power back. I wanted to be a hero and fight for the good of others.
Years later, I joined the service, and it gave me some sort of an elevation. I proved my uncle wrong but at that point in life, I’d already moved on from that promise. It was only about and for me.
We met in basic training and for the both of us it was beyond therapeutic. People must have thought we were psychopaths. Well, the people on our level at least. Those training us, the ones above us understood this energy all too well. They helped us to nurture it and focus it into the right direction.
Then came our first kills. Was a hell of a lot different than in training. You can’t train for that. It was like seeing a color for the first time or tasting a new food. How can you describe a sense? I’ll never forget my own. After it was done a woman came running, and held onto the blood-stained body. She shook it hoping he was alive and wailed to the sky grasping onto this lifeless body. I had to press my eyes shut for a split second to wring out the stress like a wet towel. I had no time to puke so I made a mental note of it and moved on.
There is a feeling of guilt and shame and tremendous fear. Fear, which eventually settled on my own self and the fear of what I might have become. However, and I write this to you as I know that you are going through the same hell… You can, if you let yourself, go through a process of self-forgiveness. Recount the happenings; every detail. They don’t deserve to be forgotten and will poison you if trapped. Write them down. Get them out. It’s as grey as they come but think about the many people whose lives you’ve saved by taking out a terrorist who had killed so many. Think about the pain you’ve saved their families from.
And I know it’s not your thing but you can also pray to God to help you deal with these many surging emotions. Tell Him to help you come to terms with them. Ask Him to help you deal with the anger you harbored towards your father while growing up. Ask for forgiveness from those you have wronged along life’s path; this gives you back the power you lost when you wronged them. Have an eye for the good things of life.
Take a deep breath in. Exhale.
