Just about to go out Gate, 1

04JUN2009

This Anger at K____ is present when I lay down at night and when I wake in the morning.
I don’t understand it, and am ashamed of its power to make me disagreeable to others.
Why can’t the friendship go back to how it was before? Why won’t I allow it? Or is it him? I figure I know what I’m doing, even if my mind doesn’t.
I worked in the CP for awhile (2 hours to cover for B__ and H____. They were only supposed to be gone for 45 minutes.)
Finally I understood why K____ has been such a con man of late, strongly going on about going out of the wire, not working in the CP, etc. It’s what the CP does to a man. He’d rather have a limb blown off by an IED sometime during the deployment than do this kind of office-like work. It’s enough to drive a man crazy ..
Out of the blue, K____ stepped in and tried to start talking to me. I quickly excused myself and went to the latrine, just to get away, because the Anger was still strong.
I guess he followed me out; sat down to smoke a cigarette, waiting for me. When I came out, he was turned the other way and didn’t see me, and I just went on by.
He had this look on his face that looked hurt and confused and I wondered about it ..
I was relieved from the CP and went to the chow hall to smuggle out some Gatorade shakes. They were a hot commodity since missions and chow times almost always overlapped. The smuggling job worked well enough but for carrying the 48 can pack across the FOB to the barracks ..
K____ was there and finally caught me where I couldn’t get away, and we talked. I gave him the sheet set I’d gotten for him before they sold out (the PX can rarely restock itself).
My voice was different, I noticed, more genuine, lower, measured, as we talked. He insisted that everything he owned and had received in packages of late (like ping pong paddles and balls, pt mats, food, etc) were all as much mine as his.
He seemed genuine to me, not con-man like at all, and slowly the friendship seemed reestablished.
With an even, friendly rhythm we discussed the idea of ‘con men’ and the romanticizing of the missions, which were my two greatest suspicions of him and he agreed with the points made as if they were already his own, which is what I had hoped for him.