For those of you who did not know, I was once a man with purpose and singular goal

I asked to serve without reserve, to find a calling that did deserve

my skill, one that would allow me to quench this savage lust to kill

I became a soldier and did all that within entailed, I trained and killed and thought I had prevailed

for my foe was dead and I was not, that glorious state my talent had wrought

Battle won, I journeyed home back to the town where I had grown

And people asked me about my deeds, if I was haunted by what I'd seen

"Not in the slightest, I am a man. Now that I've killed, I'd do it again."

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And they were perturbed, not of my 'noble' actions, but of my honest word

Yet there was no horror in my actions to me, nor was there perverse insane glee

It simply was. I was a state sanctioned murderer, to me it was no fuss.

You should get some help, is what they all said. You don't want these demons stuck inside your head.

I drank the Kool-Aid, damned fool that I was. Just like that, my life came to dust.

"I've killed and feel nothing, surely that is as it should be?

How else can a soldier live their life with sanity?"

With those questions, I was a soldier no more. Unfit to serve, a disgrace to the Corps

Out of my home and onto the streets, 'for my own good' I was homeless for weeks.

Then came the drugs to 'normalize my thoughts,' because of them I was locked in a box

I lost everything.

Home, job, friends, brothers, duty, money, honor, independence and time

Years wasted away taking with them my body and mind.

For my own good.

Now it is three years later, my shame all the greater.

Why did I ask for help? There was nothing wrong with me.

Perhaps I'm the only sane man, living in a world of insanity.