you know sometimes you just… you have these moments in life where you think okay this is it this is the one this is the moment everything changes and then it doesn’t and then you’re still you just a little bit more broken than before a little bit more tired I guess I was an artist you know before all this a painter still am I guess in my spare time which is like zero time these days but back then it was my life you spend your whole life believing in something something that feels like it’s part of your soul and then you just let it go for what for security for a path that wasn’t even yours to begin with I don’t know if anyone else ever feels that pull between what you love and what you’re supposed to do like it’s a constant tug of war inside your head my dad he was a general always about duty honor country all that stuff and I tried you know I really did I enlisted after art school because he thought it would make a man out of me whatever that means and I thought maybe it would maybe it would give me some direction some purpose that my canvases weren’t giving me I ended up in the army not the marines not special forces just regular army logistics mostly you know moving stuff around making sure things got from A to B important work I guess but not exactly storming beaches you know so I did my time twenty years a whole career passed by and I came home retired just like he did and I thought okay now maybe now he’ll see me now he’ll understand what I gave up what I tried to do for him for us I thought maybe we could finally talk like real people not just general and son you know what I mean like two men who’ve lived through things we were in his study it was evening the light was dim just the lamp on his desk shining on all his medals and citations his eyes were cloudy he’s pretty old now almost ninety I sat across from him on the leather chair the one I always sat in when I was a kid getting lectures about my grades or my messy room and he looked at me for a long time like he was trying to place me like he knew he should know but the name was just out of reach he said something like so you were in the service too were you and I told him yes dad I was twenty years I said and I saw his eyes brighten a little like he remembered something important a shared experience a common ground and I started telling him about it about my time about the places I’d been about the work I’d done nothing too dramatic nothing that would worry him just the facts the things I thought he’d be proud of like I was finally earning my place in his world and I was going on and on about some mission about a convoy through a dust storm the kind of story he used to tell me when I was little except mine were just logistics not daring raids and I could see him nodding slowly like he was listening like he was really there with me in that dusty desert and then he just stopped me mid-sentence he held up a hand very gently you know and he leaned forward a little bit he looked me right in the eye and his voice was soft almost a whisper and he said to me tell me son what was your name again and I just sat there you know like a statue like the air just went out of the room like I’d been punched and I didn’t say anything for a long time I couldn’t and he just kept looking at me waiting for an answer waiting for me to tell him who I was and that was it that was the moment everything changed or didn’t change I don’t know which it is I just know that sometimes you spend your whole life trying to be something for someone trying to prove something and then at the very end when it’s supposed to matter the most it just evaporates into nothing and you’re left with just yourself and all those choices you made that you can’t take back you know the ones that felt so important at the time they just feel like ghosts now