I’m tired.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of being heckled in line at the grocery store because I’m wearing my Air Force shirt. I’m tired of people judging me because I tell them I’m in the military. I’m tired of having to defend what I do to my “friends”. I’m tired of feeling like an outcast because I signed up to do something that most Americans (98%) never either get the opportunity to do or fail out of once they decide to do it. I’m tired of being boycotted by my fellow countrymen simply for the reason that they don’t know what they believe in, they just know that what I do is not what they believe in. I’m tired of people who can’t defend their beliefs, either with words or actions. I’m tired of people who buy into the idea that the travesty we’re involved with in Iraq and Afghanistan is somehow the worst thing that’s ever happened to America. I’m tired of feeling like I somehow “sold out” simply because I signed on the dotted line. I’m tired of dealing with companies that sell themselves by having “veteran” or “G.I.” in their title.

I’m tired.

I’m tired because I feel like I have a better understanding than most of what really happens in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. People die. Iraqi people. Afghan people. American people. Canadian people. British people. That’s the reality of it. There’s no such thing as an atrocity of war. War itself is an atrocity.

I’m tired of defending myself among the very people I signed up to defend. My hippie friends in Oregon. My liberal friends in Texas. (Yes, they exist.) I’m tired of justifying myself among the very people that have taken the same oath I have taken to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I’m tired living on poverty wages while the independent contractor who does the same job as me makes $86,000 a year. I’m tired of people thinking I make a lot of money. I’m tired of being treated like an outcast simply because I tell people that actual no-kidding good is being accomplished overseas as a direct result of our presence. Schools are being built. Poppy crops are being eradicated. Democratic process is being established.

I’m tired of people’s worn-out, thread-bare retorts to this war. People that have no business talking about it. People that don’t deploy to Iraq. People that don’t wander the poppy fields of Afghanistan. People that, thanks to the liberal media, think that tens of thousands of American military members have been killed since 9/11.

Most of all, I’m tired of the people that believe that I can’t justify the fact that I’m in the military along with believing that God has a better ideal for this broken world. I’m tired of those people most of all.

I’m tired.