violence

I remember the day I discovered violence.
I was periodically bullied at school, what with being the skinny ginger kid, and I had made a point of lifting weights to try and get away from the skinny thing, after about 6 months of lifting I had enough self confidence to turn around to a bully and attack him instead, hard, fast and violently.
I had discovered violence and it made the bad things go away.

When I was 17 and in the army, only just, I was on a late-night patrol and we saw some guys down by the fence in a dark corner, as-per procedure we shouted a warning and their reply was gunfire and I fired back, later we found a body, I killed a man and I was only 17, and you know what? serves the stupid cunt right, shoot at a soldier, what the hell do you expect?

My exemplary performance in the technicalities of getting so many bullets into a man at that range, in the dark, under fire, caught the attentions of a group of people who I spend the next three years with doing the most interesting work the army had to offer, also the most dangerous. I didn't apply to join them, they found me. the day violence discovered me.

Later, and still, I feel many things about the people who died at my hands. my rationale says that they put on a uniform and/or they carried a weapon and they ought to know that is enough to put you in mortal danger. my emotions say that I am responsible for a number of deaths and a greater number of greiving families.

I recently drove past, several times, that place where I first killed a man, I expected a crash of emotions, I only felt two. one was a sadness both at the death and at the violent path I went down because of it. the other was 'stupid cunt shouldn't have been shooting at a soldier'.