Jaded

last night something happened to me to make me realize just how jaded I've become. One of the new girl's at work comes up to me while I'm busy with something else and says, "hey I have this specimin that needs to be done right away, the nursing home says he's been bleeding internally and they need the results as soon as it's finished." You want to know what my response was? Well, it wasn't the correct response. I said "I'll get to it when I get to it. they guy is like 90 years old why do I give a fuck if he lives a couple more days, everything we get from those assholes (the client) is suppossedly a stat, what, is everyone fucking dying over there. If it were a real emergency they'd bring him to the hospital." As soon as I said that my heart sunk, I couldn't believe what I had just said. Needless to say I proccessed it immediately.

I began to think about how I became the way that I am. What would I do to someone else if they had said that about my grandfather as he lay on his death bed. The man who was everything I aspired to be. I tried to do some self-relfection after I got home from work last night searching for an answer to how I may have become so desensitized to the world. When I say desensitized, I'm not talking about the bullshit they talk about on cnn or msnbc where they tell you there's too much violence and sex on t.v. What I'm talking about is a lifetime of internal and external suffering. having to be around things and see things that no other human being should ever have to witness.

Most of you know the story of my childhood so I won't go into why my child hood was so terrible. I have had lots of problems dealing with emotion and I have severe attachment disorder. But I think what really made me the person I am had alot to do with the army. There I was fresh faced and 18 in the army, learning to be a man. Everyone talks about how important the first few years of life are in forming a personality, but I think 18 19 20 are just important. You're finally away from your parents, trying to learn how to be an adult. Anything can affect how you view the world and what type of adult you are going to be. I want to talk about being desensitized by watching a man being shot in the head and immediately knowing he's dead. I want to talk about performing CPR on a fellow soldier for the first time and realizing you've just broken his ribs in what will probably be a vain attempt to save his life. That's true desensitization.

I understand that who and what I am is my own choice, but being in an environment like I was, while I was trying to form my "adult" personality was harmful. The next time you meet someone who just seems angry at the world, stop, and wonder what might have caused them to be that way. Many of us have seen and heard things that no other human being should have to. One last thing, please thank a veteran if you know one. How many of those men and women had to suffer through their formative adult years, becoming jaded, so we could all feel a little safer.