Dear Combat,

I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently.  While I’d love to report that my memory of you grows fonder as the years pass, quite the opposite is true.  To begin, I want you to know I feel like you took something from me.  I think you took something I didn’t even know I had it until it went missing.  I’m talking about care.  And concern.  Care and concern for things.  Take work for example.  How am I supposed to believe anything that is not life and death is worth spending energy on?  Of course I’m capable, and of course I’m qualified.  But the drive to ‘fight the good fight’, when it isn’t a fight, is gone.  I think you took it.

I also feel like I’m not sure how people expect to be treated.  While we were together, everyone was equal.  It was beautiful.  During missions the mission was all that mattered.  Everyone checked their feelings at the door.  Now, people’s feelings are the mission.  Every experience since being with you has included not only completing the mission, but making the person feel like the mission was completed.  Instead of results, people want to purchase experiences.  I just don’t understand it.  I know you don’t either.

Lastly, for now, because of what you taught me about what’s important and what’s not important when lives are on the line, taken together with the depth of the learning experience, I can’t shake the appearance of having a large ego.  It’s like I’m expected to just forget all the lessons you taught simply because not very many people ever learn them.  The trouble is, as you know, I couldn’t forget your instruction even if I wanted to.  With you, there wasn’t endless debating.  There was action.  There was doing.  Indecision was an enemy.  Now, decisiveness is a detractor.  It doesn’t make sense.

You know I love you, right?  Don’t you?  At the same time, I just can’t help wanting to blame you either.

In the end, I guess I really just wanted to say “Thanks” and “No Thanks”.

Your Son,

Pete

PS – This is just a little thing, and I don’t know if it’s you or just flying that is responsible, but I’m not loving how I can’t pass up a bathroom without feeling like “Might as well.  Who knows when the next time I’ll have a chance to go will be.”