Member-only story
The Soldier That Almost Was
But he unknowingly took his war elsewhere, unsanctioned.
Sometime around 2009, I had just gone through a terrible, nasty, scratch-and-claw breakup, as a stupid twenty-something-year-old kid. I got a check for $1,200 the same day my girlfriend of 4 years to that very day sent me an inbox on Myspace, stating she could no longer do it, it was over and I had to go. I had to leave the apartment we shared. The awkward part about the inbox was we lived together and I read it on the computer next to the bed she was still asleep in.
To say I was broken up and bitter about it would be the understatement of the decade. Now, any reasonable person would have used said $1,200, to establish some sort of new living situation — or I don’t know, something responsible probably, right? Not me. I was going to use it to make her mad before I packed and left. I went shopping and came back with throwback jerseys for myself, shoes, again for me. A case of Pepsi for her Grandmom who stayed with us — and nothing but cold stares for the woman I loved and the one who wrote the stupid fucking inbox I was so incredibly caught off guard by. I was hurt. But I packed and left. I took anything and everything I ever paid for, out of pure spite and not necessity. I’m not proud of it, but it happened. I’m talking I took brand new cell phones and steak out of the freezer…
