Prologue
“Don’t give up on love. No matter if you’re guilty or what you’ve done or what you’ve gotta do, someone is out there for you. You just need to forgive yourself.” – Lea Sekullic
For no noble cause had I gone. No troubled charity to bring awareness to. No one to benefit. No inspiring Gopro videos. No motivational Facebook updates, altruistic or metaphysical pursuits.
… no glorious end.
Only harsher punishment haunted the end of a two-thousand-kilometer bike ride to join the French Foreign Legion. Only a select few even knew which continent I walked upon.
There were, however, a handful of beautiful strangers along the way who each carry a piece of the story. People who colored my life in ways I never could have imagined. Yet, all have succinctly pondered; ‘Why?’
In truth, I never fully knew myself. I just knew I had to run away. It’s no secret my past was wild and destructive. I only sought to lose an encroaching madness, to alleviate a suffocating grip of so many failures throughout my life…
From fighting in the mine-infested Arghendab River Valley during the heat of OEF, I returned home desensitized and confused; the very cells that would ignite my heart with cancerous thoughts. Further prodding those unstable PTSD strains, the battalion commander of my unit decided to torch my military career to keep his. But this was the US Army of 2013- a land full of cutthroats trying to survive Obama’s military drawdown. Like the rest who lost the only life they’ve known, I in turn wondered at that harrowing question, ‘What now?’. It was by grace of the army that I would be able to pay for my French wife to become naturalized, but that ended with my career. Disenchanted with my own country, I couldn’t bare lingering idly, waiting to scrape up a minimum-wage job. And so, on the chicanerous wings of a hefty school loan, Neyla and I took to Australia to hunt new opportunity. Yet, instead of finding opportunity, I became possessed by sin while my wife returned to France, unable to break through my high walls of disregard. I inevitably destroyed her by the promiscuous, destructive life I led. In a last bid for redemption, I turned away from a dream, an offer to join ranks of the New Zealand army, and flew to France in hopes of making amends with her. Just as a broken glass can never again be made whole, my damage to the relationship was already done, and after five months, I returned home without a wife, without money, without a purpose. Since the war, I rode that wake of broken dreams around the world until I washed up back home with nothing, not even dignity. Death needn’t have taken me to hell- I was there already.
But now, I understand it was balance that lacked, rather than complete misguidance. Like withering plants in the desert, I need the storm to thrive; I become sapped, drained, and imprisoned by the security and redundancy of conventional life. Though I have tried, it’s not who I am, not where I belong- at least not yet. Ironically however, it was simplification I sought in the Legion, more than adventure. A way to refocus, restructure myself from the ground up. A way to finally pick up the shattered remains that I myself and the colonel had left my life in. With no other recourse I took the cheapest flight into Europe, landing in Zagreb, Croatia on July 22, 2015.
There was hope this exotic relocation would trigger a change of mood, but it was then I truly understood- old habits die hard. Between Zagreb and Budapest I lost myself to the same shi I tried to leave behind- booze, sex, partying, and endless hangovers; once again a pitiful prisoner of such vain devices. That is, until one particular night, walking along the Rakoczi Bridge in Budapest, something finally sparked, dormant cogs began to turn. I remember the moon in full hue over the pylons, the city’s nightly robust sparkling over a sleeping Danube below, and like a gust of wind, the epiphany swept through. Redemption wasn’t what I needed- not yet. I needed to first set myself free. In Karlovac, Croatia, I traded my laptop for a bicycle and a sleeping bag, gave away all unnecessary items in my possession, thence caught a midnight bus to the famous coastal town of Split. As if thrown a rescue rope to drag me out of hell, the ride from that bus breathed fresh life into every pore, initiating the slow thaw of a frozen soul.
Beyond the horizon, from sea to sea, through cities and villages, across mountains, plains and forests, soaring upon the wings of wisdom into the deepest crevices of my mind had I finally found peace within.
