Yeah, it’s a bible quote. I’m already going to hell. What’s the big deal?

    I don’t know how to write this. When I talk about it, the words seem to come so easily. It’s not like ventilation. It feels more like vomiting, as if I’m suffering from some illness and my body is refusing the emotion.

    Love. The word that gets thrown around more than a baseball these days. A boy will say it to a girl to get in her pants. A man will say it to a woman to sedate her long enough to get out of the house. A person will say it to anyone to martyr themselves.

    My time in the Marine Corps may have been, honestly, the greatest waste of time I’ve ever experienced. I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned a lot about humanity. I’ve learned a lot about the willingness of grown men to relinquish responsibility because of some rule that was written by some General generations ago.

    Above everything else, I learned what love truly means.

    I know that love can mean different things to different people, but, I feel, with great certainty, that I have isolated the truth behind what the word is meant to say. The quote says it all.

   I’ve felt that level of love. I know what it is to feel that your life, sacrificed in place of another, would be far more beneficial than to keep your own in place so that those you call brothers, sisters, friends, lovers can continue to live as they have, regardless of whether or not you agree with them.

   How many of you know that feeling? Can even begin to understand it? The survival instinct is the strongest instinct instilled in any living creature, human or otherwise. We are programmed from birth to stay alive at any cost. What happens to a man when the cost of survival has been outweighed? What happens when he has to live with the selfish, depraved, narcissistic masses?

   Emptiness. Solitude. Hatred. Fear. Sympathy. Empathy. Disgust.

   I have felt this kind of love. I also know that I will never know it ever again.

   He was a Staff Sergeant when I served under his command in Iraq. Staff Sergeant Helker, Jeffrey. He was the best example of true to form leadership. He would put himself on the line for any of his men, regardless of rank. He never boasted of his accomplishments, never made us feel inferior for not having experienced the hell he experienced. He was a true leader of leaders.

   I miss him every day.