They asked me where I'd see myself in ten years in high school every year that I was there. I always said I was going to be a hero of some sort. I wanted to help people, to save them, to provide some sort of hope to their hearts, but I never thought I'd be getting away with murder in the process.

My job seems simple, but honestly it's not. I'm in Infantry in the United States Marine Corps, and it's not just the fact that I look into the hopeless eyes of death. It's so much more. Fear of my own life is the biggest thing I worry about on the field, but at night, when sleep seems impossible. After I have thought of my family, friends, and weather I will die that night or the next day, I think of the people I killed. That father that had a family, that young boy that could have had the same dreams as I did. The small child that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the people that could have been killed without anyone knowing until it was too late. People tell me I'm a hero, but would that fathers family tell me I am? Would that little boy or girl? If only people knew exactly how I feel about having to kill. I never said I agreed with war, and what was in it. I just agreed with what I was told. I agreed with the hero's that ,I'm sure, are thinking the same thing as I am.

When you go into the military, for any MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) you never know what you're really getting into, and you're not meant to. All you are meant to know is that, you could be a hero. That the government will pay for college, and help your family. You aren't suppose to be told about what comes with all of the glory. You're not to be told that the gold is really a thin coat of paint covering the aluminum underneath. I didn't know I was going to be a killer. I never knew I would have to do anything like what I have, but I did. I don't like it, and I never will.

When my school asked me every year where I saw myself in ten years, I would have never thought I'd be in a wheel chair, missing both of my legs, my face destroyed, and my family gone with nothing to prove from it. I thought I was going to be a hero. You wouldn't see me as a hero now if you saw me today, because I don't even see it myself.