Time seems to fly by, around me.
I say around me, because I'm not the only one to notice it. The men I keep company with all feel the same way. Maybe it's the place...
I used to be called the life of the party, but as I've gotten older, I've fallen into a more mellow lifestyle. Granted, I'm still enlisted with the Marine Corps, but that only serves to balance out my newfound mellowness with the right amount of chaos.
The men I'm surrounded by are a strangely mixed group. I have a roommate from St. Louis, and one from Compton. My neighbors to the left are from Florida, Pennsylvania, and Los Angeles. To the right, They're from Maine, Idaho, and Honduras. We're all chronologically young, and the majority of us have the lust for life that can only be achieved when you've put your own on the line.
When you combine mellow people with the urges of an adrenaline junkie, you get a strange beast. It can go one of two ways--
First, you can have the guy that is usually calm and quiet, then has a spurt of devilishness, a need to do something fucking stupid.
Secondly, you have the man that prefers to be the eye of the storm. He would feel as much at home at a family picnic as he would at a rave, and he would have the same mindset for both events: There to party, not there to go fucking insane and start a moshpit. He enjoys being the calm(ish) center of activity, always there, never forgotten, but then again, he's never at the front of your mind precisely because he's so calm. The perfect middle ground of not getting thrown out of a club for being too rowdy and not being placed at the crime scene because he didn't leave a lasting impression.
I think you can venture a guess as to which one I consider myself to be.
We're not exactly trained to blend in with people, but the fact that we spend our time with people from such a vast expanse of society, be they rich or poor, from the north, south, east, or west, we're capable of picking up cues from each different person that enables our ability to fit in anywhere. It's about body language. You get to see how people from all over the world carry themselves, how they interact with others. Obviously, saying that everyone from Compton is a thug would be stereotypical, but what are stereotypes, except some form of observed truth?
I'm Irish. I love to drink. I get in fist fights with the men of my family. Stereotypes exist for a reason.
These guys I live with, they all fit some stereotype fairly accurately as well.
But that doesn't matter. We live at a faster pace than most. In our line of work, the threat of death is more prescient, more integral to what we do. We are trained to kill, or be killed defending what we love. We all volunteered for that. We form friendships that can last for decades in the span of five minutes. Many of us can tell if we want to spend the rest of our lives with someone we meet based off of a week of interaction. We must appreciate the full extent of our emotions because of how quickly life could be snatched from us.
We live fucking fast.
It's a grim reality. Death is our friend, and he wants to take us with him.
We're just here to squeeze the most out of every moment we get before he does.
~Philosaholic