The Loss of Self

I grew up poor. My family was on food stamps and my father's low wage job made dreaming the day-to-day game of the day; alongside hot wheels or the cobra figure that turned green under the sun. The figure would get on the top of the car and ride atop tree branches or thin, green, and fragile pea plants trying to reach a destination where Total cereal, powder milk, and powder eggs tasted different. Eventually the figure broke, the elastic that held the legs to the torso tore, and the car, which also changed colors in cold or hot water, stopped working and stayed in a weird in-between color.

Later in life the dream changed and it wasn't any longer about tasting foods in different flavors, but trying to blend in while in school. Being an outsider in a NY high school while attending ESL (English as a second language) classes was depressing; on top of living in a low-income building surrounded by thin walls, yelling neighbors, gunshots outside, the endless emergency sirens on the road, and the abuse in the home. The dream was just to get out alive.

Entering into young adulthood worsened when I ended up in the streets with no money or job in TX. Shortly thereafter trying to return home I was met with the disdain of a father who told me that I was nothing to him, less than a zero to the left of a number, and that he didn't even want me at his funeral... among other things. The dream was to die... yet, somehow I survived. 

Somehow, with nothing in sight, no prospect of ever getting out of the poverty-stricken circumstance that envelops the poor, and me back then, I looked onward with nothing in mind. Old aspirations somehow came about and a new dream manifested when I married. The dream was to make my wife happy. Simple as it sounds, the dream begun with leaving an addiction behind, moving from the ghetto I was living in at the time in Puerto Rico to FL in the United States and figure out how to shape the dream.

I joined the military after losing many jobs to migraines with the hopes of steady pay to make the dream come true. One year after I joined the military, September 11, 2001 was met with catastrophe and soon thereafter I found myself alongside my 82nd Airborne brethren flying to put our lives on the line for the America we love, its freedoms, and my dream to make my wife happy. Once deployed the dream changed once more to return home alive, a prospect harder and harder to realize with every day spent searching Al-Qaida camps trying not get killed by RPG (rocket propelled grenades), land mines, or other deadly traps (like women or children wearing explosive vests).

Once out of the military, after two deployments to the Middle East, the dream morphed completely and I no longer dreamed of a happy family. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) changed my life. Between flashbacks, night terrors, and the hypervigilance, there was no time for life, let alone any dreams. Eventually, the years passed. Decades later there is no dream. The America I fought to defend, the freedoms I believed in, all somehow appear to have changed. Whether for better or worse I fear history will be the judge. 

In the end, while we all have problems, while we project our troubles into our everyday hassles, I lie here in daily pain, aging, and dreamless. Sure, life goes on and I couldn't be happier for those who can enjoy life and have much different dreams from the boy who had to stand in lines at the supermarket made specifically for food stamp users; having everyone looking at little me, and I with no idea as to why. I don't regret my life or the very many circumstances I found myself in. I've lost much, including my dreams and the desire for them. Above all, the one thing I have to live with now is the loss of self.