Loss

This has been a hard week for me both Ken Obi and Mahi Mahi are on their way home leaving me as the only guy still in Fallujah. This place is crazy it's like an emotional intensifier. Whatever emotion you feel for someone or something gets intensified becasue you don't have any reasonable way to get away from that thought (or sometimes that person).

Mahi Mahi and I were talking about this, Iraq isn't for the weak. You have to be of strong mental character to handle this place, and not so much handling it here but when you get back and how you deal with people who don't experience this. It's hard to explain but, I know that I am different know than I used to be.

When Shen left I wasn't saddened it was a marking point but, I wasn't saddened but, it was a few nights ago and Mahi Mahi and I were just sitting around working and he says to me 'I'm gonna miss you man.' and I was like "I'm going to miss you too man."

There is something that is special about hetrosexual man-love. It seems more real but, if you have lived in the conditions that we were subject to it becomes natural. You need someone here to bond with it keeps you sane. But, unlike others that I have worked with we actaully became close and he is someone that I would consider a friend. I don't know how the real world will change that when I get back and we meet up again but, while he was here it was real enough. Under shelling you tend to learn a lot about a man and his goals.

Then a night or two after that Ken and I had to say our goodbyes. This is a man that has been through the real shit with me when this wasn't the lovely paradise you all read about in the papers. He was with me when the Marines tried to stick with me treason and he is the guy that taught me how to eek a living out of this god-awful meager existence. It's like saying goodbye to your parents and it was emotional, not terms of endearment emottional but, it was. People leaving is a bittersweet experience, you are happy that they are leaving and part of you wishes it was you (the person leaving coincendenatlly never feels that way) but, when you leave you you are concerned for the people you leave behind. I'll tell people there are only two types of people in Iraq casulities and survivors of casulities.

Congratulations Survivors.