A Dance with Heartache

 I hope that in whatever voice you've been reading my works in that you come from a place of anguish and grief. The state of the world has been in flux for almost 20 years now, in our faces, and there is no longer any place to run. I've learned a lot in my short lifetime, and the more that I learn the heavier my heart grows. When I was younger I had the religion of the American Christian Church to guide me, but I've yet to meet any man as wise and compassionate as my Great Grandfather, and what it has transformed into today is an absolute abomination. 

I don't say this to discount any wisdom that is spared in their holy book. What has guided me through these last 15 years has been the books of Proverbs and Psalms, of which I would read through every month. One Proverb and 5 Psalms a day. And to escape the grisly reality of my work I would distract myself with World of Warcraft. It was the only way that I could override the nightmares. 

In a sense one could say I was addicted to escapism. I wanted to love myself and what I had done, but my peers were very immature and I had no one to commiserate my grief to. When I left the 3rd Special Operations Squadron, I had thought that I was going mad, and I was very angry about it. I gave them my very best and they squeezed me dry like a sponge. Never once, above my flight Officer leadership, did I ever encounter a man of integrity. 

Oh wait, I flew with LT. COL. DJ Turner of Operation Anaconda Fame. If you'd excuse me, sir, I'd like to tell this story now. I'm unsure if you remember it, but like every thing that I have been told that I consider wisdom I wrote on my heart, and I can now tell you that I understand what you were saying to me. You, I considered my Captain Jean Luc Piccard, and I pray you forgive me for taking your message to the extreme. 

See, reader, LT. COL. DJ Turner was a man who disobeyed a direct order to save the lives of men on the ground. I met one of them at a VA In-patient clinic, a man who had been a part of that team. It is for these men that I do what I do, done what I have done. These men showed me what honor and integrity were. These men are those that I consider true heroes. 

Captain Turner, I believe his rank was at the time, was an AC-130 pilot who placed his ship on the line so that a ground team could get out at a place now christened, Robert's Ridge. The rest of his crew got the Air Force Cross, while he got a reprimand. I won't go into the details, but one day I was sitting at the Mission Computer at the Nellis Predator Operations Center, building a mission when he sat down next to me and asked me how I was doing. I was admitted that I was tired and stressed, and that I'm unsure of why people were treating me poorly. He told me the story of Robert's Ridge from his point of view and finished with this, "Whatever it is that you do, make sure that it is the right thing, because there are a lot of people that will push you to do the wrong." He stood up, patted my shoulder, and left me to ponder that. 

I wonder what it is that he had been told about me that prompted him to say these things. I wonder a lot of things, namely why is it that people in my life keep trying to hurt me. I've done nothing but what I had been trained and instructed to do. Those that want to punish me, what's worse: the mistake, the covering up of the mistake, or the revealing of the mistake? I also wonder where are those people that hold themselves to that standard as now COL. (Ret) DJ Turner had. 

I can for sure say that it isn't a man like Ratnearson, whose wife is a Lawyer for Raytheon, the component of the military industrial complex that had the main contract for Drones when I was in the service. See, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what his beef with me is. Because it for sure ain't for disobeying a superior officer. As far as I could tell from the surface, we should have been best buddies. 

It wasn't until I did a background check on his wife that I uncovered the very thing that I needed. When that came across my view, all my struggle with him ceased. I was free, because his machinations were not motivated by a sense of honor, but simply another lump of shit spewed out by the Military Industrial Complex. 

But then his tabloid idiocy was used by my own city council to try to shut me up by throwing me in jail. They set the bail for $100,000, and my poor mother had to put up her retirement to get me out right before the covid wave hit the prison system. Now my life is threatened every day by local police forces, angry patriots, and even just idiots who want to be mad at something. I also apparently have the Crips and JSOC personnel wanting my life. 

Is my country, my home, overran by mafia? Why are we allowing our planet to be destroyed by profit? Why are we allowing people to destroy communities in our own neighborhoods for profit? Why does my own State need to fabricate charges against me? In order to shut me up? Then I'm just going to be louder and I have another platform to speak upon. 

So I'd like to thank everyone who has ever broken my heart, to include my diseased rat of a pest stalker. I'm just going to stand my ground, and let you prove to the world how despicable you really are. Upon this ground, I will dance.