Suicide, 1

As I was catching a helicopter ride back to my home FOB I swear I caught the Toughness and Rawness interacting.
I was to go on leave, but it took over a week for me to be released from the hospital. My leave date was nearing, and I was cutting it close.
When I talked to my First Sergeant on the phone, he said I’d have to talk to him about it when I got back. He seemed to make it sound like I didn’t deserve pass, since I’d been away for so long already.
I was angry to the point of trembling. The unfairness of being punished at all for being bit by a spider -- not to mention punished so harshly -- made me angry enough I wanted to hit something.
Throughout the day I told the Rawness to chill out. I told myself that the injustices I had known weren’t relevant in this situation. I guess I have a temper. The Toughness continued: You’re not in the House anymore, you’re not a boy anymore, the world isn’t completely insane anymore. You can‘t help what you feel but don’t stress, don‘t flip.
When I feel angry and can’t do anything about it, I stress. When I was a kid I would take it out on somebody undeserving, including myself, for my unforgivable powerlessness. It made me like my Abusers. Seems like in order to make sure it never happened again, I finally stopped registering anger altogether.
I knew when I got back I’d simply raise hell -- Raw hell -- and would win.
There was trouble getting me back. The terminals are full of soldiers, lounging, sleeping, working on their laptops, walking around with their duffels, it can be chaotic.
Turns out I could’ve gotten a ride the day before but the hospital said they had already released me. I was put down as AWOL. I raised my voice a few times, while remembering I was already on edge and trying to hold back.
If this makes me miss my leave flight .. I thought to myself over and over, as sirens went off in my brain. The hospital liaison apologized.
When I got back to my home FOB I immediately went to the first sergeant’s office, where it turns out of course they would never do something so insane and unfair.
No one noticed my anger, though it still took a few minutes for me to exhale it finally.

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When I got back to mine and K__’s room, and was taking off all my gear, Mace__ immediately wanted to know everything, especially what it was like to be waited on my young nurses when I hadn’t seen a woman in so long. I told him I always had to lay sideways.
K__ had already gone on leave, so our room was oddly empty, I thought I could hear it echoing whenever I made a noise.
I had only been back a few hours but missed K___ already. Why? I think to myself. Because he made things cool. You’re cool.
I went to take a shower, and Ir___ was in there, the guy who made me lift my shirt in the gym that one time. He asked me about the spider bite.
_Yeah, rumors were flying,_ he said. _They were saying you weren’t coming back, that you were going to Germany to have your foot amputated, we heard a bit of everything._ He asked me about K__, and I told him he had just gone on leave, and that I would be going on pass shortly.
_He may not come back you know,_ Ir__ said.
_It’s so close to our next movement, I heard we might not see the ones going to the states until we get there. And that’ll be two months. But I heard that only applies to people leaving at the end of the month, not the beginning._
That would be devastating, I thought to myself, impossible even, to go two months without K___. No, you’ll be okay.

__________