Realization of Change Balancing Allegiance:

Realization of Change Balancing Allegiance: Coming Home as a Veteran Sometimes I wish everything could be the way it used to be. The best part of the school day would be when the bell would ring, and you and your friends would walk home together, joking about the craziest thing you'd seen or heard that day. After life in the working world began, you'd steal a few minutes talking to coworkers about the scores of the weekend's football games before getting back to your desk.

You'd spend Saturday nights in restaurants or bars, catching up with old friends, telling jokes. I used to be a person who could do all of these things. When I first got home, I thought I still could. But what I didn't realize then, that I do now, is that war changes the very fabric of who you are. It takes one set of priorities, goals, and relationships and turns them on their head. It has made me an adult, in both the best and worst ways possible.

In Richard Rodriguez's book, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, the author describes the challenge of being split into two competing selves by a life-changing event. In his case his dual life started when he gained an education. In mine, it was the day I decided to sign up for the Army. I was eighteen and I thought I knew everything.

(I didn't.) I thought being an adult was as simple as making a decision and sticking with it and that as long as I was sure about what I wanted to do, nothing bad could come of it. (of course, there's more to it than that, as I would soon find out.) I thought that being a soldier would make me my friends and family proud, but I never thought about what would happen to us while I was gone, the ways in which we'd change and grow apart.

Every challenge during my service a new challenge was presented to me: from boot camp, to shipping off, to finding my way in a new and unfamiliar country among people who I didn't know or understand, to seeing frustrating, scary, or even horrific things so often they became commonplace. But the greatest challenges were the first and the last: leaving home and returning home.

Rodriguez writes about how his parents became "figures of lost authority," implying that his parents' control over him had lost power because other people (in his case teachers) and forces became more important to him (51). This was true for me too, only it did not just apply to my parents. It applied to my entire way of life. All of the things that were familiar and felt safe became alien. The military had conditioned me like school had conditioned Rodriguez.

In order to be an effective soldier, you have to look at your unit as your family. You have to look at your fellow troops as your closest friends and allies. You have to see your work there, whether it is thrilling, mundane, or terrifying, as the most crucial work you'll ever do. All of that makes it hard to look at your "real world" family, friends, and work as important. This is my old bar.

Everything about it, from the broken dartboard on the wall to the waitress with the cigarette voice who knows what I want to drink before I even open my mouth, is the same as I've ever known it to be. My buddies have only aged a year since I've last seen them. They're holding an impromptu party for my return. it's basically just a few beers and a discussion of old times. A few of them have changed jobs or gotten new girlfriends.

Some have packed on a few extra pounds or grown a beard. Not that much has outwardly changed. it's no different than if I'd gone away to college or gotten a job transfer cross-country. I know that I'm just supposed to act like "long time no see." I can't really talk about what I've been up to.

No one wants to hear me answer, "Killing people, seeing people get killed." They probably wouldn't mind hearing about the things that don't matter: like how hot it is in Iraq, how boring most days are, and how I tried and failed to learn a little Arabic. That stuff is socially acceptable. But the guy who would talk about those things isn't inside me any more. I'm someone new. I don't blame them for not getting it. They're just kids. (They're the same age as me.) They can't understand war.

(Neither could I, but I do now.) Rodriguez relates that he "couldn't forget that schooling was changing [him] and separating [him] from the life [he] enjoyed before becoming a student" (47). He goes on to say that he never spoke about it, even with those he was closest to. His change, as mine, is entirely internal and personal. The noise of everyone talking at once in the bar creates a hummmmm that escalates and.