He’s in Nashville now, a stop on his way towards visiting all fifty states. He doesn’t use a small plane, an automobile, or even a bike as his mode of transportation. Ron Zaleski is walking all across America. With his petition in hand, he doesn’t even wear shoes. When there’s no one around to solicit signatures from, sometimes he’ll lay that document down to pick out one inch shards of glass or repair a torn off heel. Passion can’t even begin to describe how fervently he believes in his cause.
59-year-old Zaleski is the founder of the The Long Walk Home, a nonprofit organization that seeks to raise awareness and create solutions for the mental health problems veterans face during and after their service. He wears an impressively-sized sign around his neck on his daily 10 to 15 mile barefoot walk that reads: “18 VETS A DAY COMMIT SUICIDE (‘commit suicide’ in red, bold letters).” A veteran Marine himself, Zaleski’s quest is a very personal one. “I get that sense that everybody that is in the military is related to me in some way,” he believes. “That could be my son, my daughter, my loved one in there.”
And the grief of his walk gets more personal more often than he likes. “The hardest part of this journey for me has been when a car pulls over, and a mother will stand there and cry.” She’ll tell him that “her child came home safe, committed suicide, and then she’ll hold me,” Zaleski shares, also tearing up.
Zaleski joined the Marines in 1970 even though he came from a devoutly catholic lineage and did not believe in killing. His family, he also notes, was “a dysfunctional World War II family.” His father had brought the war home with him as it continued raging within his mind. That rage manifested itself as alcoholism and mental abuse towards his family. Zaleski joined up to intentionally anger his parents in a passive-aggressive kind of way.
But when the orders to go to Vietnam arrived for him and five of his buddies, the reality compelled Zaleski to follow his convictions. He told his commanding officer that the only way he was going was “chained to a helicopter,” and he was willing to face the jail time for his decision. Miraculously, they decided he could stay because of his other critical skills. “I became an office squirt because I could type and had brains,” Zaleski says, emphasizing his Long Island accent and vernacular.
He saw one of those men later. Zaleski asked what happened. “We all got shot and two of us are dead,” his buddy told him. He decided to embrace their sacrifice for freedom -- so he stopped wearing shoes in 1972. Understandably so, people would ask why he didn’t wear shoes and Zaleski would respond combatively, “because I don’t feel like it; you got a problem with dat?”
In 2005, after years of slowly destroying the family business he inherited and a horrible divorce – all problems stemming from his arrogance and bitterness (most likely learned behavior from his father) – a girl asked the same question he had been hearing for the last 33 years. “Why don’t you wear shoes?”
“I had been doing it so long,” Zaleski recalls, “I couldn’t really have an answer. God spoke through that child.” What were you doing? He questioned of himself.
He realized then that he had what he calls “a hollow memorial; a meaningless penance.” Zaleski finally decided to do something tangible to help with the legacy of his fallen friends. So he kept doing what he did – walking shoeless – but he started doing it with a purpose.
Some of the results were unexpected. In Zaleski’s pursuit of getting mandatory PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and grief counseling for all returning veterans by collecting a one million signature petition (20,000 names in each state), he helped finally cure some of his father’s demons. Initially Zaleski walked the Appalachian Trail in bare feet to meet his goals. His father asked him “What’re you punishing yourself for?” and Zaleski shared the reasons for his personal crusade.
His father started crying then, an emotion so rarely seen by Zaleski that he only initially recognized it as a “strange noise.” Zaleski’s father it turned out, had been wearing a tremendous guilt for the last 60 years, stemming from his short time in the European theater of combat: the guilt of watching men serving five years and being killed on the final days of the war when he had only served five months; the trauma of watching 12-year-old boy soldiers, “Hitler’s Wolfpack,” being shot down by his comrades; using soap made from dead Jews. His father’s revelations underscored the sense of urgency in Zaleski’s “Long Walk Home.”
“If you can get a guy (the appropriate counseling) right when he gets out he has a much better chance,” Zaleski says. Speaking of the estimated 175,000 homeless veterans in the U.S. he adds, “For a guy who put his life on a line to be under a bridge drinking his memories, that doesn’t make it for me.”
So far his progress has been minimal. Maybe four or five thousand signatures he guesses. And Zaleski doesn’t want to simply create awareness. He wants real change. “If I tell somebody their house is on fire but I don’t help them, what good is that?” Zaleski wonders. Of the politicians he’s encountered, most have written off his cause because they aren’t his representative. “They (the politicians) say nice things to my face,” Zaleski says brashly, but they eventually just ask him “are you my constituent?” and when he answers incorrectly they decline to latch on to his cause. “A soldier didn’t fight for the North or South or New Jersey or Kentucky,” Zaleski screams, “they fought for America.”
On a positive note though, Phil Roe, a Tennessee Congressman and former soldier himself, has decided that he wants to help champion Zaleski’s goals. They plan on meeting up in October when Roe can concentrate solely on Zaleski’s cause and not on the upcoming election.
But even if Roe turns out like almost all the other elected leaders he’s met, Zaleski’s not going to quit. “I question my sanity I really do. I realize if I do nothing, that’s crazier than doing something. I don’t want to pass this along to the next generation. I don’t want another mom to tell me about her lost son.”
You can follow his journey here.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
738. From Fallujah to Philanthropy
By: Dario DiBattista
You can see him behind his laptop at the Washington, D.C. Dupont Circle Starbucks at end of an eight hour day, crafting the framework for his entrepreneurship. Six years ago, in Fallujah, as a corporal in the D.C.-based Marine Reserve unit, Mortuary Affairs, you could see him in rubber-gloved hands, collecting the corpses of his dead comrades. “You just hoped the body you found wasn’t the one of someone you knew,” Xi Xiang tells me.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” I ask.
“I don’t even know how to answer that question,” he replies, his deadpan gaze hinting at a deep trauma that belies his smile and congenial manner.
It really must have been bad. Xiang and his Marines developed a dark humor to cope with their job. In a photo of his group at the time, an image titled “We’re Dead,” you can see all the mortuary Marines laying on top of each other in a row with large, beaming smiles, in one of the mass graves they prepared for the dead insurgents.
As a protocol for their job, they had to have weekly sit-ins with Navy chaplains acting as counselors. After one week of his counseling responsibilities, a new ensign had to leave the room to cry at the stories Xiang was relating to him.
The muscular, dark-crème-skinned 28-year-old’s life has never been the same since Fallujah. Days after the battle ended, his team was sent into the abandoned city to collect the remaining enemy corpses. Amongst the rubble – blasted out homes with rebar-spiked chunks, downed power lines, and mortar crushed streets – Xiang observed a toddler standing alone in the carnage. He reasoned the child’s parents were dead. He believed the boy had no future, and would probably perish, too.
“If I ever get out of this f***er,” Xiang told one of his buddies under the scarlet sunset of Mesopotamian evening, mortars cracking in the distance, “I want to do something big.”
He thought for a long time about what exactly he was going to do. He knew that he wanted to make difference, he just couldn’t decide on how. But a seven month tour gives a man a lot of time to think.
“I really believe in education,” Xiang says, “it’s all you can give to someone to help them improve their own circumstances, which in turn creates better civic responsibilities, lower crime rates, more wealth – the benefits are exponential.” His idea to help give better education to new generations is broken down in three main ways. Xiang pumps his fist and raises a new finger as he lists them, “Scholarships, incentive programs, funding scholastic programs.”
Xiang wants to use his business dream – a patent-pending software platform that selects and distributes advertisements for out-of-home digital display networks – to finance his desired philanthropy. He spends every free second on this project, when he’s not doing IT consulting for major military contractors. With a large portion of the projected profits for his venture (he hopes to have a demo ready by the end of this year), he plans to start a nonprofit organization, a “dot org” as he refers to it. “I have an insane compulsion,” Xiang says almost bouncing out of his seat. “I just want to impact the world.”
He’ll be there, clacking away at his keyboard, until he can make his dream a reality. If you’re on the Circle for a late-night latte, maybe you should shake his hand. He’s working the hardest he can to create real change for this insane world.
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
You can see him behind his laptop at the Washington, D.C. Dupont Circle Starbucks at end of an eight hour day, crafting the framework for his entrepreneurship. Six years ago, in Fallujah, as a corporal in the D.C.-based Marine Reserve unit, Mortuary Affairs, you could see him in rubber-gloved hands, collecting the corpses of his dead comrades. “You just hoped the body you found wasn’t the one of someone you knew,” Xi Xiang tells me.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” I ask.
“I don’t even know how to answer that question,” he replies, his deadpan gaze hinting at a deep trauma that belies his smile and congenial manner.
It really must have been bad. Xiang and his Marines developed a dark humor to cope with their job. In a photo of his group at the time, an image titled “We’re Dead,” you can see all the mortuary Marines laying on top of each other in a row with large, beaming smiles, in one of the mass graves they prepared for the dead insurgents.
As a protocol for their job, they had to have weekly sit-ins with Navy chaplains acting as counselors. After one week of his counseling responsibilities, a new ensign had to leave the room to cry at the stories Xiang was relating to him.
The muscular, dark-crème-skinned 28-year-old’s life has never been the same since Fallujah. Days after the battle ended, his team was sent into the abandoned city to collect the remaining enemy corpses. Amongst the rubble – blasted out homes with rebar-spiked chunks, downed power lines, and mortar crushed streets – Xiang observed a toddler standing alone in the carnage. He reasoned the child’s parents were dead. He believed the boy had no future, and would probably perish, too.
“If I ever get out of this f***er,” Xiang told one of his buddies under the scarlet sunset of Mesopotamian evening, mortars cracking in the distance, “I want to do something big.”
He thought for a long time about what exactly he was going to do. He knew that he wanted to make difference, he just couldn’t decide on how. But a seven month tour gives a man a lot of time to think.
“I really believe in education,” Xiang says, “it’s all you can give to someone to help them improve their own circumstances, which in turn creates better civic responsibilities, lower crime rates, more wealth – the benefits are exponential.” His idea to help give better education to new generations is broken down in three main ways. Xiang pumps his fist and raises a new finger as he lists them, “Scholarships, incentive programs, funding scholastic programs.”
Xiang wants to use his business dream – a patent-pending software platform that selects and distributes advertisements for out-of-home digital display networks – to finance his desired philanthropy. He spends every free second on this project, when he’s not doing IT consulting for major military contractors. With a large portion of the projected profits for his venture (he hopes to have a demo ready by the end of this year), he plans to start a nonprofit organization, a “dot org” as he refers to it. “I have an insane compulsion,” Xiang says almost bouncing out of his seat. “I just want to impact the world.”
He’ll be there, clacking away at his keyboard, until he can make his dream a reality. If you’re on the Circle for a late-night latte, maybe you should shake his hand. He’s working the hardest he can to create real change for this insane world.
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
737. Beware! Combat Rage
(This is a re-post from my blog at www.notalone.com/blogs, check it out!)
It still comes out sometimes. The combat rage. Usually at bars; other people get so plastered that they lose their filters. They will come to me with disrespect, being uncouth or accosting me for no real reason. I’ve learned to be a peaceful man, but don’t doubt that beneath my wild beard and extra pounds of flab, the green, clean, killer-confident Marine still lies dormant.
You wouldn’t poke a stick against a serpent would you?
It’s the hardest part of the combat experience to erase – that warrior instinct to maim or kill at a moment’s notice. It’s part of boot camp: beat up the other Marine, knock off his helmet with your pugil sticks, and get a phone call home.
It’s an aspect of weapons training: peer through your rifle’s iron-sights at the targets shaped like people; imagine what it’s like to violently end another human.
And it’s the most essential part of war: an explosion ignites while on patrol, rack your machine gun and get ready to kill.
I used to spend a lot of time at bars because I was depressed and didn’t care about life. Drinking allowed me to at least feel a burn, the flaming spirits torching my throat and charring my mind, which was something at least. Or maybe I’d just consume so much I’d never wake up again. That would have been fine, too.
Now I drink however, because I have found a calm and joyous spirit, and I love to be social and spend time with my friends. I’ll have a few brews and laugh and watch sports; or stay up late, engaging strangers with discussion of the arts, culture, or life and the lessons I’ve learned.
But I forget sometimes who I am really am – the warrior I was programmed to be – and the mental struggles of surviving battle that I may never entirely rise above.
A short, muscular man with a shaped-goatee, tried to take one of the chairs that I had reserved for my friend, as I chilled with some friends at a local trivia night. He did this even though I reminded him when asked about the chair several times already, that “Yes, my friend is coming. He’s just running late, man.”
His question, this time, was especially disrespectful. During a chug-off (if more than one team gets the correct answer, they send a representative to throw back a beer as quickly as possible to try and win the round), he had already taken another one of our chairs when we left our table to cheer our teammate.
“You sure you need this chair?” he asked yet again, jeering us, as he began to drag it away.
I slammed my palm against the table and leaned into him. “Take your hands off that f***ing chair.”
He stared back, deciding if he wanted to pursue a brawl. I’m sure he was way stronger than me – I haven’t lifted much in the years after getting out – and maybe more trained. Who knows, maybe he was even a part time lightweight cage fighter; almost everyone I meet is into martial arts these days. But I get blackout rage, this deeply ingrained caustic instinct that prevents me from feeling any pain when I’m mad. And I don’t think those who haven’t survived man versus man, life or death combat (or ever even had to consider their mortality) can really understand how that can be. Like a suicide bomber, you can’t stop that mentality. There’s no defense.
He backed off and returned to his group of friends, chair-less, and leaned against the bar. My friends stared at me awkwardly and my pulse still roared.
It was all the better for him, though. I like to think of myself as a pacifist now, but I cannot shut off my nature. It’s in moments like these that the darkness returns. I pray I’m not pushed too far in these times. They are less and less frequent the further away I get in years from Iraq and war. But I know that they’ll always remain.
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
It still comes out sometimes. The combat rage. Usually at bars; other people get so plastered that they lose their filters. They will come to me with disrespect, being uncouth or accosting me for no real reason. I’ve learned to be a peaceful man, but don’t doubt that beneath my wild beard and extra pounds of flab, the green, clean, killer-confident Marine still lies dormant.
You wouldn’t poke a stick against a serpent would you?
It’s the hardest part of the combat experience to erase – that warrior instinct to maim or kill at a moment’s notice. It’s part of boot camp: beat up the other Marine, knock off his helmet with your pugil sticks, and get a phone call home.
It’s an aspect of weapons training: peer through your rifle’s iron-sights at the targets shaped like people; imagine what it’s like to violently end another human.
And it’s the most essential part of war: an explosion ignites while on patrol, rack your machine gun and get ready to kill.
I used to spend a lot of time at bars because I was depressed and didn’t care about life. Drinking allowed me to at least feel a burn, the flaming spirits torching my throat and charring my mind, which was something at least. Or maybe I’d just consume so much I’d never wake up again. That would have been fine, too.
Now I drink however, because I have found a calm and joyous spirit, and I love to be social and spend time with my friends. I’ll have a few brews and laugh and watch sports; or stay up late, engaging strangers with discussion of the arts, culture, or life and the lessons I’ve learned.
But I forget sometimes who I am really am – the warrior I was programmed to be – and the mental struggles of surviving battle that I may never entirely rise above.
A short, muscular man with a shaped-goatee, tried to take one of the chairs that I had reserved for my friend, as I chilled with some friends at a local trivia night. He did this even though I reminded him when asked about the chair several times already, that “Yes, my friend is coming. He’s just running late, man.”
His question, this time, was especially disrespectful. During a chug-off (if more than one team gets the correct answer, they send a representative to throw back a beer as quickly as possible to try and win the round), he had already taken another one of our chairs when we left our table to cheer our teammate.
“You sure you need this chair?” he asked yet again, jeering us, as he began to drag it away.
I slammed my palm against the table and leaned into him. “Take your hands off that f***ing chair.”
He stared back, deciding if he wanted to pursue a brawl. I’m sure he was way stronger than me – I haven’t lifted much in the years after getting out – and maybe more trained. Who knows, maybe he was even a part time lightweight cage fighter; almost everyone I meet is into martial arts these days. But I get blackout rage, this deeply ingrained caustic instinct that prevents me from feeling any pain when I’m mad. And I don’t think those who haven’t survived man versus man, life or death combat (or ever even had to consider their mortality) can really understand how that can be. Like a suicide bomber, you can’t stop that mentality. There’s no defense.
He backed off and returned to his group of friends, chair-less, and leaned against the bar. My friends stared at me awkwardly and my pulse still roared.
It was all the better for him, though. I like to think of myself as a pacifist now, but I cannot shut off my nature. It’s in moments like these that the darkness returns. I pray I’m not pushed too far in these times. They are less and less frequent the further away I get in years from Iraq and war. But I know that they’ll always remain.
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
736. Six Months Down: How Close Am I Towards Making My Goals for the Year?
Six months have passed. We've laughed. We've cried. My bank account has dipped to zero. But does that mean I'm not close to making my goals for the year? Let's discuss (or actually, you just sit there and read).
---From Blog Number 719---
Goal Number One: Sell both my books. Well, yeah, I have not achieved that one, yet. I'm methodically pitching agents and have gotten some pretty good responses so far (one request for more material and several personalized rejections). My big secret I'm not telling anyone is that, supposedly, one of my mentor's agents is interested in talking to me about representation. But alas, she was supposed to call me two Mondays ago and I still haven't heard from her. Sigh.
Goal Number Two: Continue doing my very best at Hopkins. Well, I got the same grades as last semester so I'm totally on par with that one. I'm taking a full time load again this Fall.
Goal Number Three: Complete a book of poems. Um, let's not talk about this one just yet. I have poems -- just not in a book. Yeah...
Goal Number Four: Make enough for sushi with my writing. Well, I'm a paid blogger now at www.notalone.com/blogs, and I'm going to be getting recompensed for making documentaries for them -- and I'm started a podcast too! Sweet! And yeah, I'm not making money overall for my words but I've had my stuff published in The Washington Post (see two posts ago) and later this year in Connecticut Review so that's pretty tops, huh?
I don't know people! I think I'm getting there and I'm not quitting. Much love all :-)
---From Blog Number 719---
Goal Number One: Sell both my books. Well, yeah, I have not achieved that one, yet. I'm methodically pitching agents and have gotten some pretty good responses so far (one request for more material and several personalized rejections). My big secret I'm not telling anyone is that, supposedly, one of my mentor's agents is interested in talking to me about representation. But alas, she was supposed to call me two Mondays ago and I still haven't heard from her. Sigh.
Goal Number Two: Continue doing my very best at Hopkins. Well, I got the same grades as last semester so I'm totally on par with that one. I'm taking a full time load again this Fall.
Goal Number Three: Complete a book of poems. Um, let's not talk about this one just yet. I have poems -- just not in a book. Yeah...
Goal Number Four: Make enough for sushi with my writing. Well, I'm a paid blogger now at www.notalone.com/blogs, and I'm going to be getting recompensed for making documentaries for them -- and I'm started a podcast too! Sweet! And yeah, I'm not making money overall for my words but I've had my stuff published in The Washington Post (see two posts ago) and later this year in Connecticut Review so that's pretty tops, huh?
I don't know people! I think I'm getting there and I'm not quitting. Much love all :-)
Friday, May 28, 2010
735. Memorial Day (We Were Dreamers)
Torn from our family and our lives, we volunteered to put the weight of the nation on our shoulders. Many of us didn’t know why we would ever fight, or what romantic notion would compel us to even try.
It was for God, for country, for family, for the love of a heart so many thousands of miles away; we fought.
Anything would have been better: working late at the office six days a week; driving during rush hour to some distant relative’s house; mowing the lawn on Saturday; shopping with a girl; attending a high school reunion; anything at all.
In between battles, over cigarette smoke and strumming guitars, we would talk about our plans for after we returned home: the embrace of our lover; living life as a college boy; sleeping in everyday; betting on black in Vegas. It would all be so sweet.
It was those images that kept us awake behind our machine guns after fighting for days. It was the thought of our lover’s taste that gave us the drive to search houses and vehicles while not knowing what hid inside. It was the hope of something better that helped us exist unbroken in our reality.
Oftentimes we were mindless; we had been conditioned and trained. We would give immediate obedience to lawful order. We would react by instinct and perform like automatons. But we were dreamers – we would have never joined if that weren’t the case.
And that is the tragedy of a military death in combat. The dreams of nations, the dreams of family and friends, the dreams of the individual soldier; they all fall one person.
It is a burden that those who have survived will never forget. We don’t seek pity and charity from anyone. We just ask that you remember; just like us the best you can.
Lest we forget and the American dream becomes a nightmare.
RIP: Sergeant Bill Cahir; Corporal William Salazar; Lance Corporal Michael Starr; Lance Corporal Norman Anderson; Corporal Joshua Snyder; fallen members Third Battalion Seventh Marine Regiment for OIF II
~ Semper Fi ~
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
It was for God, for country, for family, for the love of a heart so many thousands of miles away; we fought.
Anything would have been better: working late at the office six days a week; driving during rush hour to some distant relative’s house; mowing the lawn on Saturday; shopping with a girl; attending a high school reunion; anything at all.
In between battles, over cigarette smoke and strumming guitars, we would talk about our plans for after we returned home: the embrace of our lover; living life as a college boy; sleeping in everyday; betting on black in Vegas. It would all be so sweet.
It was those images that kept us awake behind our machine guns after fighting for days. It was the thought of our lover’s taste that gave us the drive to search houses and vehicles while not knowing what hid inside. It was the hope of something better that helped us exist unbroken in our reality.
Oftentimes we were mindless; we had been conditioned and trained. We would give immediate obedience to lawful order. We would react by instinct and perform like automatons. But we were dreamers – we would have never joined if that weren’t the case.
And that is the tragedy of a military death in combat. The dreams of nations, the dreams of family and friends, the dreams of the individual soldier; they all fall one person.
It is a burden that those who have survived will never forget. We don’t seek pity and charity from anyone. We just ask that you remember; just like us the best you can.
Lest we forget and the American dream becomes a nightmare.
RIP: Sergeant Bill Cahir; Corporal William Salazar; Lance Corporal Michael Starr; Lance Corporal Norman Anderson; Corporal Joshua Snyder; fallen members Third Battalion Seventh Marine Regiment for OIF II
~ Semper Fi ~
All content ©Dario DiBattista 2010. All posts are for display purposes only and not to be considered published.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
734. Dario's Guest Blog for the Washington Post
From Fallujah to Chili's: A reservist goes back to work (Excerpt)
(You can read the full blog by clicking here)
At the restaurant, right now is the highlight of our guests's week. Monday through Friday, for eight hours a day, they had to dress up, be polite to the boss and look busy behind something light and digital - how tough for them.
None of them carried a weapon instead of a Personal Digital Assistant. None of them listened to wind-tossed dog tags clanking against the rifle, boots and helmet memorial of a newly killed Marine. None of them picked up the body parts of both strangers and friends: a tossed salad served by suicide bombings.
It's March 2005; I've only been back home from my second tour for about four months and I'm heartbroken and poor and not mentally well. It's been over two months since my year-long orders to active duty ended. The military's finance system has yet to sign off on the thousands of dollars they owe me. So I'm forced to work when I'm barely capable of basic existence. On my days off, I'm too depressed to move. On my couch, I watch the days turn to darkness through the slits in the patio blinds; and when it's dark I'll finally rise to go get wasted.
I loved someone once. And she loved me. She wrote me daily in Iraq and drew me pictures. She scribbled hearts under her name and marked the envelopes with lipstick. We used to work at the same store. Now that I'm home again though, I've become an ugly man - filled with rage and sorrow, prone to excessive self-medication. I scared her away. I show up to a different Chili's now; it's too hard for me to face my failures...
(You can read the full blog by clicking here)
At the restaurant, right now is the highlight of our guests's week. Monday through Friday, for eight hours a day, they had to dress up, be polite to the boss and look busy behind something light and digital - how tough for them.
None of them carried a weapon instead of a Personal Digital Assistant. None of them listened to wind-tossed dog tags clanking against the rifle, boots and helmet memorial of a newly killed Marine. None of them picked up the body parts of both strangers and friends: a tossed salad served by suicide bombings.
It's March 2005; I've only been back home from my second tour for about four months and I'm heartbroken and poor and not mentally well. It's been over two months since my year-long orders to active duty ended. The military's finance system has yet to sign off on the thousands of dollars they owe me. So I'm forced to work when I'm barely capable of basic existence. On my days off, I'm too depressed to move. On my couch, I watch the days turn to darkness through the slits in the patio blinds; and when it's dark I'll finally rise to go get wasted.
I loved someone once. And she loved me. She wrote me daily in Iraq and drew me pictures. She scribbled hearts under her name and marked the envelopes with lipstick. We used to work at the same store. Now that I'm home again though, I've become an ugly man - filled with rage and sorrow, prone to excessive self-medication. I scared her away. I show up to a different Chili's now; it's too hard for me to face my failures...
Sunday, May 16, 2010
733. Check Out Dario as the Featured Student Voice in The Johns Hopkins University Arts and Sciences Magazine!
Here's a snippet (click here for the full story):
Which is most difficult: Waiting for war, fighting in it...or making sense of the aftermath?
These are among the issues that Marine Reservist Dario DiBattista Jr. grapples with in his memoir Go Now, You Are Forgiven. Currently a graduate student in the Advanced Academic Programs' writing program, DiBattista, 26, served two combat tours in Iraq before coming home, he says, to a life of "discord." Eventually he began to find catharsis by blogging about his experiences—work that gained him notice in The New York Times and an interview on Connecticut Public Radio.
DiBattista's story extends beyond the battlefield. Inhis memoir, for which he is currently seeking a publisher, he writes movingly about the pain of living in "constant flux"—as a college student (at Central Connecticut State University), waiter, and Reservist "on standby for war." In the end, he says, "Go Now, You Are Forgiven is about accepting responsibility for one's life, no matter how the problems came to be, and moving forward confidently and self-forgiven."
Which is most difficult: Waiting for war, fighting in it...or making sense of the aftermath?
These are among the issues that Marine Reservist Dario DiBattista Jr. grapples with in his memoir Go Now, You Are Forgiven. Currently a graduate student in the Advanced Academic Programs' writing program, DiBattista, 26, served two combat tours in Iraq before coming home, he says, to a life of "discord." Eventually he began to find catharsis by blogging about his experiences—work that gained him notice in The New York Times and an interview on Connecticut Public Radio.
DiBattista's story extends beyond the battlefield. Inhis memoir, for which he is currently seeking a publisher, he writes movingly about the pain of living in "constant flux"—as a college student (at Central Connecticut State University), waiter, and Reservist "on standby for war." In the end, he says, "Go Now, You Are Forgiven is about accepting responsibility for one's life, no matter how the problems came to be, and moving forward confidently and self-forgiven."
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