Fellow travelers

     I hear a knock on the door- "Can you please get me a bottle of vodka? I want to get lit tonight. And then drink my way through tomorrow, too!" I gently dismiss the plea for alcohol from my 20-year-old friend. Personally, I view age as just a number, and think most age laws regarding firearms, drugs, and drinking should be revoked; however, how could I willingly benefit his desire to "get lit" for the next 36 hours? Such a common occurrence, I'd think they'd learn by now. So many men, drowning in despair and darkness.
     Another friend, falsely accused and in the stages of prosecution- he stops answering my phone calls and texts on the weekend- he too turns to liquor to phase out the dark terror he faces during the work week. I challenge him to not let this happen, to keep fighting, but he's more and more depressed each time I see him. And he knows better, too. But I sympathize- I too am persecuted on a regular basis, for standing up for truth and freedom, and human decency. Ostracized for not blindly following a path of a rote "yes, whatever you say" style of living. Outcast for trying to better myself and think critically, outside of the prescribed norms. It happens daily. We suffer for succeeding, and pay the price for being upwardly mobile in spite of the limits these small-minded tyrants put on us.
     Still another, voice shaking, tells me through the fog of a downed fifth of vodka that the painkillers he took from a friend of his to ease the pain of recent oral surgery will now be the downfall of his career, now that the labs report a drug in his system that wasn't prescribed. We hug several times, but I don't know if he is coherent enough to sense the care in my heart.
     I heard from another friend today, finally free of the grip of this slavery and tyranny. He's a free man now, but shackled to a relationship he and his wife failed to invest in while the distance apart became the norm. "Being apart really took it's toll, man- we have a lot of work to do." I offer a teary prayer for him and his wife, yet another casualty of a system that takes men and their families, guts them from the inside out, and leaves them by the wayside to bleed to death.
     One man confides in me, that after a successful early career, college education, and a beautiful wife, he too feels the overwhelming evil that besets us each day. "I want to go see a therapist- I know I have symptoms of depression, but I don't want them to flag me for when my contract is up and I'm a civilian again. The stress is just wearing on me, man." Forced into schools and jobs he never wanted, his heart and mind are breaking under the load of posing each day: each man is an actor, we all put on masks before we go to work. Not a single man enjoys it- our commanding officer's lengthy history of alcohol abuse testifies to that-
and we all live for the moment we're "allowed" to return to our homes for the day, a sort of twisted slavery.
     Some men kill themselves to end the pain. Many are heavy drug and alcohol users. Still others will chase after the myriad of broken women that are a side effect of broken men. Some pretend to not care, and stuff down the stress and anxiety. This isn't a type of worry that is circumstantial- this comes from knowing that what they are trying to mold you into is someone that you never, ever, even in your worst nightmare, could ever dream of being. You're afraid of the new outbursts of anger, of how you wish sometimes you'd sleep and never wake up. Most of all, we're afraid of becoming like the tyrants we're forced to serve under. These are the fellow travelers that I walk through this season with, each of us carrying separate burdens, and feeling very alone.