Like every day in my life lately I manage to screw something up. Working late, doing whatever I can to make money, then coming to work and do the Army thing takes its toll.

The normal work day for me is simple, but long. I leave the house at 5:45am; do PT, the normal work day which ends at 5pm. Then I get started on my extra duty. That ends as early as 8:30, but has gone as late at 1am. Since I have not been the best of soldiers lately and because I am living in the barracks they are talking about regularly leaving at 11pm. Reminding me that I don’t have a family to go home too now.

I make an attempt to find someone to steal internet from in the barracks. I have a selection of 9 wireless networks. The strongest one being at the complete opposite side of the building. I managed to find one that I can pick up in my room, but it cuts in and out. Nine wireless networks create a lot of interference between each other.

So after the battle with the wireless networks, I find one long enough to check my e-mail, PayPal, and Google ads. Every day it’s depressing, almost no earnings, nearly no job offers. I get a couple quick fixes that someone wants done to an existing page which in return they give me $20-$50. Not really anything that is worth bothering me for, except they do add up.

I work on these little tedious jobs until midnight if I am lucky. Most of the time I end up staying awake until 1-3am. This is where I get in trouble. I don’t realize it’s that late, and I think I have time for one more thing. I make an attempt to go to sleep and get only a couple hours of sleep so I can get up at 5:30 and go to PT. I have done it before. It used to be the way of life in Korea, especially in the field. I set my alarm and go to bed.

The next morning I roll over with the sound of the alarm clock buzzing, laying there for a second, my head pounding it takes more than a minute to open my eyes. The sun is up and the room filled with light, which hurts my eyes. The alarm is still buzzing and I walk over to slap it off. Stopping to look at the time for a second, its 7:45, I know I set the alarm for 5:30. I grab the clock in disbelief and sure enough it was set for 5:30. How did I sleep through that alarm for two hours?

With my lack of stable internet I went to bed earlier than normal last night, midnight. I had deprived myself of so much sleep for so long, that my body just shut itself off to get those extra two hours. This is the best explanation I can think of. I laid back down pondering what I can do. It’s Saturday but I have extra duty still and it starts at 6:30.

I am on the post police detail walking around post picking up trash. I have done this detail before so I know that once it starts everyone gets in different trucks and drives to random spots of post where they believe the most trash is that day. There is no schedule, but even if there was, I didn’t know it, nor did I have a vehicle to go find out. I can call my SGT and explain and surely get in trouble. Or I can hope that some unit sent more people than they should of which is quite common and get lucky.

As I lay there on the bed thinking this it becomes an easier decision to make the wrong choice. My eyes fall into the back of my head and once again I am out cold. Less than an hour later it was obvious that I once again made the wrong choice. Someone is banging on my door with enough force that I think if I don’t let them in the door will give way and they were coming in anyway.

I sit up in bed and rub my eyes for the second time, I knew what they wanted. I leaned over and covered my face. Wishing for my life to end. I crawled over to the door, taking my time. My mind was racing and with every step I was trying to think of what I was going to say. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say. I was out of excuses. I stopped at the door trying to think of something to say and froze. It suddenly hit me, it didn’t matter. I had already used up all my chances; there was only one thing I could do.

I open the door and there was the high speed CPL that lived down the hall. The only reason he was there was because someone called him since he lived in the barracks. Before he spoke I knew what he was going to say.

“Why didn’t you go to post police this morning? You knew you had it”

“Ummm… I, uh… don’t know.”

I don’t know? I did know, I overslept. I wasn’t about to say that though. The best thing that I could think of was “I don’t know”. Thinking back I remember my days as a private. If something like that happened I would snap into a mode where I would instantly do everything possible to make an attempt. I could be ready to go in less than a minute. Now I stand there with my head peeked through a crack in the door, in my underwear, and say “I don’t know”.

I let out a long sigh wishing for the world to come to an end, I don’t want to live like this anymore. I drop my head and fight back tears feeling that seem to come more often than they should lately. I lift my head back up to hear him tell me.

“Well, aren’t you going to go?”

I thought for a second and said “I don’t know where to go, they could be anywhere on post”.

I said it again; as if it was the only thing I knew how to say. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the door as I closed it in his face.

I sat down in the chair next to the door and lit a cigarette. Pondering what they are going to do to me now. I grabbed some pants threw them on, knowing this was far from over. I planted my face into my hands, thinking that if I can’t die maybe I can hide. At least it’s more realistic. Then there was another knock on the door.

I looked up, knowing that this was it, another ultimatum. Do or die. They knocked again, I reached over and opened the door just a crack and sat back down. He waited a second before he realized that I had only opened the door to invite him in. The door creaked open and he came in handing me his phone. I stop and stared for what seemed to be several minutes, but it was only seconds before he said “it’s First Sergeant”.

Knowing that the real 1SG was on leave I thought that this might be the acting first sergeant. He is still new to the company and doesn’t yell, which only meant I am going to get a speech telling me to “soldier up” or worse the whole “disappointed in you” speech which is basically the same except its emotionally depressing as well.

I grab the phone, plant my face back into my free hand and let out a crackled “hello”. I was wrong; it was the real first sergeant who was on leave. My first sergeant is normally friendly man. Never swears, never yells. He is a minister at a church on the weekends. I made him mad once before, and that was the only time I had heard him yell, until now.

He went into explaining how I am ruining his leave because he keeps getting phone calls about me and how I keep thinking that they can’t do anything else to me. I said nothing more to him than “roger first s’arnt” and “hooah first s’arnt”. I hung up the phone and handed it back to the CPL standing outside the door, closed the door and finished getting dressed.

I didn’t know that the first sergeant was getting phone calls the entire time. That wasn’t my intent either. I also don’t remember saying that the Army can’t do anything worse towards me. At one point in an argument with my sergeant I said that I don’t care. I think that is where everyone is confusing me. They believe I am doing everything to spite them and do only what I want to do. This only shows that not a single one has heard a word I have said.

I have gone AWOL to go grocery shopping, gone AWOL to prevent my wife from being deported, gone AWOL for things that one person told me I could do only to have another one come behind him and tell me I can’t. I have gone AWOL, because I am getting out of the Army and my PLT SGT denies me from going to get anything done for myself or my family. If I wasn’t on extra duty then I could get some of them done during my free time since they are still open. I go around my PLT SGT and that just makes him mad and he comes back and denies me from doing it still.

My being late has been caused mainly by oversleeping because I have too much on my plate to get done. I can’t get it all done and sleep what my body wants me to sleep. I can’t just cry and do nothing while the bank reposes everything I own and my family starves.

I have asked for a compromise or a solution, so they took away my driving privileges, forced me to leave my wife, and ignored that I have problems.

I was suppose to spend the weekend getting all my equipment cleaned and ready to turn in. With the exception of post police in the morning. Now he has changed him mind again. At 5pm he decides that I am going to battalion and pull weeds. After I made plans with my wife so I could see her. Now I am going to get in trouble again because I need to explain all this to my wife and I can’t send her away anymore.