Dead by April?
The stress has started. I wasn’t sure if it would come this time, but the nervous energy has taken on its familiar grip. I keep registering each full hour and the sound of the clock ticking away whilst trying to study, yet conscious of my anxiety. I keep reading, focusing on the meaning of each word and sentence.
Only 20 more pages, then I will go to sleep – and the next four days away from home will fly by, surely. I will be fine on next week’s Psyops training mission.
Taking a break from my psychology studies, I start to write and words spoken by a friend earlier this week, enter my mind: “This is how a society penalizes criminals – people who deserve punishment”.
Think about this statement; to punish a criminal you strip a person naked and take all of his belongings away. You isolate him from his family, home and comforts. You send him away, where the rest of the world can’t see him – where he has no voice. You make him perform and obey. He is isolated, and has lost all that he was, including his freedom. He has become a slave, or a vulnerable puppet. This is how we punish criminals.
Why would any normal person join the Army and freely put himself through training missions and a life that is similar to a convict’s? And why am I doing it?
Aside from the questions, this thought of mine is a defence mechanism of course – comparing criminals with life in the Army. It’s an intellectualization of the situation I’m in, and an attempt to block the emotional tension, or stress concerning the coming five days at work. Which lead to my next conclusion, or question: Is this blog post merely an escape from anxiety – through the isolation of thought from accompanying emotion?
If such intellectualization is a common defence mechanism from anxiety, is the Army particularly attracting such a group of people - that for one reason or another has become emotionally blocked, or insensitive? People craving more intense external stimulation since they've become numb to more subtle stimuli, or ways of expressing themselves?
Is this why I am in the Army – to learn to deal with the emotional challenge that life and various people in the Army bring out of me? Am I pushing myself in this environment since it is making me uncomfortable and since I can’t stand experiencing the tension? Will I stay for as long as it lasts and until I have mastered it?
We have an intense period of several training missions ahead. This means I have the next two months to practise letting go of my freedom and learning to find peace in my mind, despite having my life controlled by others.
Inspired by the band with the same name, let’s just hope I won’t be Dead by April...
