My childhood had never been a bed of roses, but it wasn’t until the incarceration of my then best friend that I truly came to know that there was nothing special about my life or life in particular, general, or otherwise. The compounding of the traumatic over the course of a lifetime can really channel the cynic’s ghost into the lens.

I joined the Army to die and I did. Just not in the way I had intended. I wanted out of this god forsaken game of life. I remember thinking that my life was somehow special. That I was immune to human tragedy, since I had a purpose. Even as I watched terrible things happen to those close to me I recall thinking surreally that it couldn’t happen to me, but I was blind to the fact that it had happened to me. Of course, a tragedy befallen your friend affects you too, so why think of impossibility when the possibility has already become certainty?