Art La Flamme

So, yeah. Bird Day.

Three things:

1) I am thankful for my wife. Wow, she puts up with a ton of crap, just because I choose to be in the Army. I could make decent money, if I wasn’t in the Army. I could come home at a decent hour, if I wasn’t in the Army. I’d be home right now, if I wasn’t in the Army. I’ve come dangerously close, time and time again, to putting the needs of the Army ahead of the needs of my wife and my family. Time and time again, the Army has called, and I have dropped everything to answer the call, always knowing that my wife will hold down the fort, raise the kids, pay the bills, and fight the good fight while I go off and do whatever it is that I do. She rules. Every damn day I am thankful she’s in my life.

2) I am thankful to be right here, right now. I am thankful just for the chance to serve our nation. Today, the Iraqi parliament voted to approve the draft of the Status of Forces Agreement (here). This is awesomely cool, for about 45 different reasons. We’re all moving beyond the days of a UN-mandated American presence, into an era of American troops being here under terms agreed upon by two sovereign nations. Wow — that just blows my mind. In the coming weeks, the Iraqis will have their next round of provincial elections — the second time the Iraqis have done this. Consider this: Iraq became a nation at the end of WWI, and it was a monarchy until 1958 when a coalition of groups overthrew the king. After ten years, Saddam emerged to grab control of the country, and ushered in his era of totalitarian Ba’athism. After the 2003 invasion, Iraq had the one round of elections in 2005, but that really was done with a lot of hand holding. So, here we are — the Iraqis are about to do it again, and I expect that they will do it all on their own. Wow. I find that to be incredible. I am thankful to be here, and to have even the smallest of roles in this amazing period of Iraqi history.

The Descent into Baghdad

3) I am thankful to be able to run. I was going to say that I was thank for my run today, but really, it’s more than that. Some of you may know that I don’t run just for exercise; I run because I have PTSD. Yep, post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s like being an alcoholic — I will always have to deal with it, and I will deal with it, one day at a time. When I started showing signs, back in 2003, I was such a physical wreck that running wasn’t an option. A two mile run would kill me for a week. Two years later, when I admitted defeat and decided to do something about the PTSD, I had found a new doctor / physical therapist who had patched me up enough to run again. He, of course, thought I’d be good for a couple of miles, tops, but that sounded like crap and I set out to prove my wrong. And the running helped the PTSD. It helped a LOT. Folks with PTSD are often treated with all kinds of drugs, none of which I wanted. None of which I thought I would need, if I could get my body to produce the same ones naturally. To produce the same ones, by running. And so I ran. A little here, a little there, and then poof, I ran a marathon. Injuries aside, I’ve been running ever since, through good times and bad. Today, I took off and ran 10km — 6.2 miles. And yes, I was in pain every step of the way. Which is fine — with this broken body, I will be in pain every day of the rest of my life. No need for it to keep me from doing what I want and need to do. I ran today for no reason other than it was a Thursday and Thanksgiving and I could sneak out to do it. And it felt great. I don’t ever want to go back to being so broken and such a mess that I can’t take off and run like I can now. Running is such a positive part of my life, that I can’t see living without it. I’ll likely run for the rest of my life. And to have found running, and learned the positive role it has in my life, it priceless.

So, there you have it. A guy in Iraq, who could easily be wallowing in the misery of being away from my family and all that crap, and I have three great reasons to be thankful just to wake up and start another day.

Lavatory

I’m going to head back to my hooch now, and maybe watch a movie or something. Enjoy your bird day. Be good.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 6:48 am and is filed under Army, Blogging, Iraq, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.