Blog 33 Belief and Distrust (Gary)
page 47
Today I was confronted by my wife’s awakening to the realization that my fantasy life and need for excitement are a substitute for not having a family full of rituals and traditions, that my fantasies are a substitute set of rituals that fill up the space for me. Today when I walked I brought that up The Hill for me to process and shared it with Mark. It struck me when she said it, and I know that it is true.
Beliefs are a big part of the story. When I was a child my beliefs seemed to float. My ground was so unstable I wasn't sure what to believe in. Before I left for the military I had decided to believe in monogamy, the Holy Catholic Church, the sacredness of our bodies, family, the support of friends, John F. Kennedy, my country, family, and friends. That was my game board at the age of nineteen. Before I left for Vietnam I saw hope in being part of a large Irish Catholic family that my future wife offered, a religion that I could belong to, and a woman who could offer me the love I so desperately needed as I was an orphan of sorts. I thought I had found my place, my ground, my missing family home.
I so wanted to believe in something. I believed I was doing the right thing by serving my country and going to Vietnam. I was committed to my duties in the Air Force as an Airman First Class and felt valued. I went to church to be part of this new family, studied my catechism and was learning what it meant to be in relationship with a woman and part of a family. By the time I came back from Vietnam a year later all of it had lost its meaning.
I was thinking today life was like a game board and back then I thought I had accumulated all the right pieces. By the time I returned home it was like someone had swept their hand across the board, wiping it clean. I was bereft of any meaning in life. I felt I had lost all moral stability. I turned myself over to desire and fantasy like my elder colleagues in Vietnam had done. Whatever I desired I would attempt to do. I was in the abyss. If that meant alcohol or women I would go for it. If I thought marrying her would give me something I would go for it. I became a selfish (or more selfish), self-indulgent, dishonest prick: A true prick. At least I was most certainly a man without a ground and a compass.
Choose carefully whom you follow and don’t let numbers choose you.
You see, I needed something to come back to or it wouldn't work. Everything I knew and wanted to believe in was destroyed. Even my culture, my country was not the same. No regard for loyalty to country, despised instead of respected, no one to listen, no one to care. Can you even imagine coming back from risking your life for a year, for your country, for American idealism and past heroic wars, to see kids your age running up a major street, blocks from your home, with the black North Vietnamese Army flag—the flag of an enemy that was killing your brothers, young Americans just like yourself? Strip clubs, drugs, and acid rock had become normal for my generation. That wasn't what I remembered. Where could I go? I was lost big time.
I have to admit that I had a fantasy of being welcomed home by people happy to see me, and pleased that I had returned. In my fantasy people would acknowledge that I had fulfilled some kind of patriotic duty, and they would all want to hear my stories, see my pictures, greet me with hugs and invites to celebrate my return. Virtually everything, save a couple friends in Vietnam, had dissolved. I felt left with nothing. My fiancée, my country, my friends and family had abandoned me. Even the culture I had known was no longer here. Everything had evaporated and I wanted desperately to come home.
I came back but I didn't come back to a home. There was no longer a home here. Everything I thought I could value was gone. My president was assassinated, my fiancé was no longer mine, my enemy’s flag was being carried down my street, my "friends" were clearly more concerned with their little dramas than my experience of war, my music had been replaced, drugs and naked bodies on stage was the style. Miniskirts, hot-pants, and see-through tops were certainly seductive and exciting to see. No matter, I was lost but I was alive and looking with a jaded mind and a fogged lens. I couldn't go back and I didn't see a way forward so I took, and I mean took, what I could. I said okay to the new culture, I said okay to marrying, I said okay to the people who said they wanted to hear my story but then ignored me. I made the best of what I had. I was a lost child again, and I knew how to do that. I would get fed wherever I could. There is a greedy, angry tone to that. I searched for a place to belong. I was raised on chaos and disruption. So, I am back, but am I really?
God bless my fellow soldiers who never came home, who never had the chance.
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