Bite The Bullet

by The Usual Suspect

There comes a time when you just have to say, "Fuck this, something has to change." The hate, the malice, that instant-trigger-switch that flips and turns you into someone that you normally aren't... you can't have that stateside and expect to live a normal life. You can't keep everyone at a standoff distance forever. Your mind shouldn't turn to violent thoughts to solve every altercation.

Some dumbfuck damn near plows over me in his pickup while texting. I can see his front tire tearing the skin off of my face as my skull disintegrates into my backseat. All I can think about is ramming him off of the road, ripping his dazed ass out of the driver's seat, breaking his front teeth out with the barrel of my pistol and blowing the back of his head off. I live, you die. That's not normal. That's not how a normal person mitigates threats.

"You threaten MY life with your fucking ignorance? FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! Don't talk, don't beg, don't run, JUST DIE!!! DIE MOTHERFUCKER! DIE! DIE!!!"

You get sick and tired of clearing your house every time you hear a strange noise or notice something out of place. Sick and tired of being a stranger to your friends and family. You notice the way people look at you. Like they don't know quite what to think, they kind of recognize you, but they can't quite figure out who the hell it is that is living in your skin. After a while, maybe they even stop telling you when you've had too much to drink. They just know that when they start seeing the signs, that they should take you home. Away from the public. That they know that they can't fix it, they can only try to contain it. A walking liability. You're a hushed name that nervous voices whisper when they try to figure out if you're going to be all right, or if you're going to be a statistic.

You can't smoke a cigarette outside without watching traffic, without knowing what kind of cover you can take in a jam. And even then, you laugh at yourself, thinking that .50 cal will punch right through that shit.

Mouths talk about the war, mouths that haven't even left the country, and your mouth fills with the taste of bile. When you get used to having an enemy that kills your friends and tries to kill you, it sticks in your craw. Come on home, and now you have no enemy, but good fucking luck with all your efforts trying to stop looking for them. Look hard enough, and you'll find an enemy. That idiot not watching the road. The money-grubbers blasting the middle class into extinction, the liars, the thieves, the bullshit advertisements and idiot-box programming that shoves stupidity into our brains where complex thought SHOULD be, they all become targets worthy of violent death. Why not? Better men have died for far more asinine reasons. Why shouldn't social poisoners be put to the sword?

You find yourself scoffing at the weak stomach of the common populace, at the liberal media and their pandering crybaby bullshit. Like war is fair, fuck off. Nothing is fair and nothing makes sense, liberal media makes money but changes nothing.

Then you catch yourself thinking things like all of the above, and things much darker than can be put into text. And hopefully that's when you decide that you've had enough. Me, I've had enough of this shit. And that is why I'm leaving for a while. I'm going to treatment. You cannot live to the fullest with baggage like this, and if they have programs out there to help with it, then you're goddamn right I'm gonna use them.

I don't want to go. I do, and I don't. But fuck, atleast you know that in that place, people are going to understand you. You'll be able to say all that fucked up shit that you can't say to all the normal people that you envy now.


There are many, many times that I wish I would have sat on that rooftop and waited for the blast. BOOOM. Out with a bang. Die as an angel, not a falling demon that lingers full of piss and hate until the bitter end. What would you have? A damn good paragraph or a downward spiral epic-length story that only gets worse with time?

You can't hide it from the people that care about you, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many drugs you take. The people who really know you, the ones that truly matter, they can see through all of your faces, they know the differences, and they may not understand what it is that they are seeing, but they will know that things aren't right, and they won't rest either. You'll be alone together, a million miles away, speaking different languages.

What do you do? Disappear? Fall off the grid? Drink or smoke yourself into a coma? Keep fighting until you finally die?

Fuck that, I choose the other road. I'm not going to quit on myself or the people that rely on me. If that means that I have to lock myself up in V.A. care for a while, then so fucking be it. Small price to pay for peace of mind if you ask me. You can't raise children like this, and life doesn't have an adjustable difficulty level. You take the shit sandwich they hand you, and you take a big fucking bite, and if you're badass enough, you chomp it down and ask for seconds, and you learn how to process it and make it work for you. This universe doesn't pity the weak, and hatred is some pretty weak shit.

So hopefully you give yourself a second chance, and try some kind of therapy, something. Something other than a bottle of booze, a bongload of Alaskan Thunderfuck, an eight ball of uncut blow, the finest China White, the purest meth, the highest stakes Hold'Em table, the sluttiest sloid, the fastest car, the toughest opponent, the meanest cop, the meanest train, the quickest bus, the biggest bullet, the fattest pill, the highest cliff, or the slowest, most decadent rotting decay you can allow yourself.

Whatever, ride through and out of Hell or don't. At this point, it's every man for himself until you choose to take care of yourself, in which case....

Welcome aboard. We're in it together. Again.