3

I’m living Real life, and sometimes I think he’s playing the board game. He’s so proud of himself when the dice roll his way. I used to be glad for him. Glad for anything good to happen to someone good.
I made the choice and was encouraged by _Dexter._ He lives his whole life under the radar, except for the small part he can share with his sister. Dexter’s world is the Real one, it’s the more interesting one. Real life is reckoned with. The sister’s world is boring, civilian. Yet Dexter lowers himself to fit into her world, and he never resents her for it. Sometimes I can’t help but resent the hell out of K__.
I know I’d kill someone like him, to stop the Americans’ atrocity from happening to one of my own. And I know he might be that someone, inevitably, getting in my way, because he has no idea what I’m talking about.
His ignorance and apathy will be like a blockade between my children and their safety. And I will rip him limb from limb. To do it I’d inevitably cry more tears then the blood he bled, but I’d still do it.
K__ has this way of acting like everything he does is important, like every moment matters. I see Him in K__, accosting me.
At some point my confidence got wrapped up in what K__ thought of me, how he treated me. Like he was the compass, instead of my own conscience. As if when I was around K__, I forfeited my own power.
It’s like I wanted an institutionalized friendship. Like someone who craves safety. Like those people who are supposedly political but merely belong to a political party founded on institutionalized ideas. People like that are afraid of ideas, afraid to live in the moment. I thought I hated people like that. When something is institutionalized it loses its power.
I enjoy my self, my moments, and my Qualities when I consciously remember who I am. When I don’t, I’d rather be around someone else -- a point of desperation. Maybe that’s the crux of co dependency.
It’s natural, when equality isn’t assumed, to not feel anger at a person, because the initial thought is, Who do you think you are? A backwoods, uneducated, damaged twenty five year old with little to show for.
Maybe after a year it becomes obvious that the friendship is just a friendship. What it taught compared to the House’s teaching is one thing. What it is in real life is another.
In the beginning, K___ was impressive because his self assuredness was natural and pure -- not based on anything material. It’s the only kind of person I could’ve been friends with. It made me glad for him whenever he had a gain, or beat someone out, or was good at something, same as I would be glad for myself.
He didn’t really have a place in our platoon, didn’t really know who his boss was, which disallowed his confidence to be anything but genuine. When we got in country, after a few months, he did land in a platoon under a traditional structure, and about then was when I started perceiving him differently.
Maybe the reason the conversation and honesty seem sucked out of the room is because we’re not familiar with each other anymore. The reason we’re not familiar with each other anymore is because I keep most of my life to myself. I keep it to myself because he’s inept at even listening to it. He always says the wrong thing, the wrong way, and I lose a little more respect for him.
He seems cocky and I want to believe his confidence the way he seems to believe it himself. I want to believe that when his confidence seems to forfeit itself for cockiness he doesn’t mean it or even know he’s doing it.
I remember that he’s never had to work for a living.
I should be able to wake in the morning and say to K___, _Da-mn was that a slew of nightmares. I couldn’t escape from them, until Mace__ shook me awake, then I swung at his face._ And laugh.
But I don’t say it like I want to. I apologized for swinging at Mace__ and tried to change the subject. When I say things the way I like to say them it makes K__ uncomfortable; he drops his gaze, like I’ve just said something inappropriate.
Meanwhile it was just as uncomfortable for me to listen to his stories as him to listen to mine. Maybe I was just more generous.
I want to ask him who built the pyramids. The Egyptians, he might say. No, their slaves. And they weren’t Egyptian.
If a pyramid could talk it would tell you the names of those men, it would tell you about each one’s hands, each one’s private skill. Same goes for everything built in the world. He almost has a bachelors and I didn’t get past the sixth grade but I know the truth about History. Maybe he finds that troublesome.
After a year of friendship seems like I wouldn’t have to keep the ninety percent a secret still. It was a reasonable price to pay in the beginning. But now I have this seemingly inexplicable, unwarranted, fierce anger.
I thought that at some point I would be able to live my life out loud. That I would be able to live naturally. Either by getting rid of the Difficulty altogether or my making good enough friendships where my mentioning it wasn’t a crime.
Sometimes I try to imagine what K___ must think of me. Sometimes I wouldn’t blame him for thinking I’m a psycho.
K__ has normalcy on his side. I have Realness on mine.