Five Reasons

Video Log 2

Specialist A. Morrison reporting. Time stamp 0800 hours. Date: September Twenty-Seventh, 2020.

Corporal Stinson didn't watch my previous recording, I've learned. Apparently, they actually wait until you die on the battlefield to watch what you recorded for... whoever. Good information to have, personally. At least I know I can't get into any trouble for what I tell you until I'm already in rigor mortis.

When they told us we'd be going to the Middle East, I think somewhere deep down we all knew we wouldn't just be there for a couple months. But this? I don't think any of us expected to be here through the whole pandemic. I think we kind of had a hope that they would at least consider bringing everyone back.

And I suppose they kind of did bring some home. But how long will it take for everyone to put their boots back on American soil?

Honestly, you'd think that the ten-year mark would've been when they started to think about bringing everyone home. I mean, it wasn't "war" anyway, right? But a decade after that mark is coming up sooner than anyone thought.

Some of the guys out here, the officers, they've been in and out of active deployment since their kids were born. Kids that have since graduated and started their own careers. Some officers have been joined by their kids over here.

Reason number one I will never have kids: I will not abandon a child the way I was.

I know it sounds like everyone in the States has some kind of sob story about the lack of a parent in their household. But statistically, more kids suffered through childhood without one parent than any kids had both parents living under the same roof.

And I am unfortunately no exception to statistics here.

Mom and Dad were never married, not even after I was born. They were hardly a couple, honestly. Mom went out with her friends one night and woke up the next morning in Dad's apartment. Not in his bed, not on the floor, not on the couch. She woke up completely clothed in the bathtub. She was twenty-two. Her purse was on the kitchen counter. There was a water bottle and a couple Tylenol beside it. She couldn't remember a thing from the night before.

She did, however, remember the address four months later when she got a positive test.

She showed up, pounding on the door, yelling at Dad, telling him he raped her. He remembered her too, but he swore he didn't do anything to her. He said her friends had left her slumped over on the sidewalk and she was passed out. He said he carried her like a fireman to his apartment and tried to lay her down on the couch, but in her drunken stupor she insisted she had to throw up. He said he took her to the bathroom, tied her hair back while she puked, and let her lay in the tub until she woke up.

His girlfriend agreed with his story. She said she had spent the whole night there with them. She had been worried for the girl not because her boyfriend was psychotic but because she looked absolutely awful. She said she provided the hair tie for her hair so she wouldn't puke in it. She said she was the one that recommended a pillow and blanket in the bathtub. She said she was the one that insisted he go to work that morning and leave the girl there. She said she was the one that left for a few minutes to get the mail, when she should have stayed to make sure the girl wasn't frightened when she woke up.

Mom didn't like this story, I guess. So she took Dad to court. Dad told his side, with his girlfriend, Stella, beside him. Mom told the court what she remembered. The lady-judge didn't like any of the story, apparently. She told Mom that she was crazy. Mom said the judge was crazy and that she would just get an abortion if she couldn't claim child support from Dad.

But the judge didn't like that either, since by the time Mom and Dad made it to court, Mom was about to pop me out any minute. The lady judge said Mom couldn't get an abortion. Said she had waited too long. Said if she didn't want me, then to put me in foster care.

Reason number two I will never kids: the government is a joke and I don't trust the system. That's not something the military had to teach me, but it certainly could have.

Mom had me three weeks later. And when Mom tried to drop me with the social workers, my umbilical cord still attached, Dad showed up.

Dad, who did not engage in any action that would procreate me. Dad, who let Mom sleep in his bathtub when she was drunk. Dad, who had no real relation to me in any way.

He told the social workers. He told the judges. He told them that the system was flawed and screwed up and resulted in countless of issues with children that went through the foster care homes around.

And when the judges asked what he wanted to do about it, Dad said he wanted me. So, Dad raised me. And Mom paid child support. Even though the story is that Dad isn't really my dad.

Either way, I think Dad did a pretty good job. He and Stella got married eventually. It wasn't like I didn't have a mother. But I didn't have Mom. And I certainly didn't have my real dad. I still don't even know who he was.

But the part that hurts the most, really, is that Mom would go through all the trouble of taking Dad to court, saying I'm his fault. Then, when it's decided I'm not, she wants rid of me at the first opportunity, whatever that may be.

She could have pretended she didn't know who the daddy was. That actually would've been a lot closer to the truth. If she had done that, Dad would have led a very different life, him and Stella and the babies they would've made. And I probably would've been in some home with dozens of other screaming kids. But I might have had Mom.

Or Mom's mom.

Or we would have found my real dad.

And maybe then I wouldn't have spent my teenage years feeling abandoned.