Military service is an unusual thing. You spend a lot of time in an unusual place with unusual people doing the extraordinarily unusual things. Which is especially weird when for some people, it's spending a lot of time in California with Joe America doing the most menial fucking thing ever every day.

During wartime, you're fighting a war. It's a pretty unusual occupation, warfighting. It's not really for everyone. In fact, it's really not for anyone. But during wartime, you're a warfighter who isn't fighting a fucking war. So that's weird.

And when you aren't even a warfighter yet, you just really really want to be, you are wishing you were fighting a fucking war, even though you'll hate a major amount of your life if you ever get around to it.

It's all a little peculiar.

Hard military men are pretty unusual too. My last girlfriend, lovely as she was, was the daughter of a member of the United States Army's Special Forces. He was an odd guy. Goofy, scrawny, kind of funny looking. He wasn't the meatheads some people think of as being the bad ass members of our armed forces. He was kind of a kid at heart. Probably exaggerated by how much time he had to spend being about as much of a grown up as anyone will ever be, but it wasn't just that. It seems that line of work just attracts a certain kind of person. A certain kind of unusual.

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me how fucking stir crazy I'm going here in a civilian life (and a boring as shit one at that, let me tell you. I can't remember the last time I heard any noise that was worth hearing, much less the last person I really talked to other than my mother, and that was just because of the recent tragedy in Boston). I'm sitting here, and realizing that I'd rather be sucker punched in the gut, have a sack thrown over my head, and be abducted away to boot camp, than continue on with this freaking life.

That's not a rational thought. But there it is, in my brain. Wondering why the fuck I can't get a stupid job just so I can pay $700 for a couple of months so I can finally tick off the last box and say "Hey Uncle Sam, I've got your proof I'm not an idiot, now let me in!" Wondering why the fuck the most exciting thing in my life right now is that there isn't anything exciting in my life.

It is an unusual man that thinks these things. That wants nothing more than to go and be screamed at by grown men, to be thrown into the mud and the dirt and the dust and to use up every last ounce of will to get through whatever unpleasant experience is up next.

One of the first Marines I ever talked to after starting to consider the decision to enlist didn't have much to say to me. He was well adjusted, though had his oddities about him as most do. He'd enjoyed his time in the Corps, and it brought him pride as much as it brought him pain. But he had one thing to say to me that stuck in my head for a long time. "You've got to be a certain kinda crazy to want this life, boy."

I wasn't really sure what he meant. I mean, sure, you think "well, you probably have to be a little nuts to go into a line of work that involves a hail of bullets being a likely plot point in your future," but I'm starting to think there might be a little more to that. It's a bit strange, but it's actually reinforcing my desire to enlist. Maybe I'm better cut out for this shit than I thought. I mean, who the fucking hell gets this frustrated because they can't get a break on going to MCRD? Normal people hear "we'll break you the fuck down and build you back up" and run the opposite direction. Yet all I can think is how stupid it is that I'm not fucking there yet.

Maybe I'm just crazy. But god damnit I'm gunna kick the shit out of MCRD's ass sooner or later. I'm just tired of fucking waiting. I'm one freakin' job away from being able to just get it over with and let the Marine Corps ship my ass off to be remade. I wish that job would come a little quicker. I'm just about fed up with this life and it's time for me to get a second try at a new one.

/exhausted rambling