Going home, A difficult time for every mid twenties man. As a Soldier for the past 3 years of my life I left my home town of white suburban America the same way so many before me left it. Clueless to what the world had to offer me, and my mind. I left home when I was 18 joining the Army and headed off to war, I couldn't to this day tell anyone my reason for doing it. I had nice house, fantastic parents and 12 loving brothers and sisters that would in a drop of a dime do anything to help me. But I did join the Army and I did go to what some may call a war, which has changed me, not so much for the better and not so much for the worse but it, without a doubt has changed the way I look at my home and what I left behind and what I ultimately will return to and how I will respond to my friends that I left so many years ago.

I have one year left in the Army and I am not exactly certain how I am going to take it when I return, will I be bitter, mean, angry or bored I am not really sure. Whatever way my mind takes me I know that it is not something I look forward to for any reason. In the last 3 years I have been home three times and disliked everything around me, my friends that I left have continued to stay the same age I left them, we no longer have anything to talk about. My family has no idea the situations that I have been through or the hurt I have for the friends that I have lost; we too no longer have anything to talk about. When I go home I watch slowly as my life around me crashes and falls away beneath me. I am scared to go home because of the things that might do, I am in no way a dangerous person but m mind has changed in so many ways I can no longer think on the same level as I once could. I know that I could never physically hurt anyone but emotional damage still hurts and I can't be around when or if I start to hurt people emotionally that is not me it has never been me I have never hurt anyone in my life and I refuse to start.

But this is not all a sob story as I will return home with precious years of life experience and enough gray hairs someone might mistake me for a mid forties father rather then the young twenty one year old that I am. So in May of 2009 I will make my return to classic white suburbia, returning to my 12 brothers and sisters and my 2 dogs, but there is hope in the near future, the university of Arizona where I can once again leave my fears behind me and run away somewhere, somewhere where nobody knows me and blend into the fabric of society, anywhere that I can be alone with my thoughts is all I need all I ask for and when I find that place I will once again write about what it feels like to be "going home".

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