People In My Unit

I love the people in my unit.

(Non-romantically, of course)

I know that may sound a little strange, what with some of my earlier posts talking about my frustration with the Army in general, my unit in specific, and some individuals in my unit in the more specific, but I actually do love these people.

And there are a bunch of them. They certainly aren't all perfect. Some I don't get along with at all. Some actively dislike me. Some are lazy, stupid, and trouble makers. But you know what, dear reader? For ever one or two individuals who cause problems, there are ten or twenty fine people who do their jobs well and treat each other properly.

Maybe it's because I've been in this unit for a while, but more than anything it seems like a family to me. A deeply dysfunctional family, but a family none the less. Come to think of it, there is no other group outside of my actual family of which I have been a member of for so long a continuous time as I have with this unit. It's a little bit scary. 

Sometimes, well, I wish I was closer to people in the unit. I've always kept these people at arm's length.  Not just because of the trans thing either. A lot of it was that, well, I don't always get along with people  very well. I tend to either be distant or something of an ass. I'm not good at doing the middle ground.

Fortunately, the distant thing sometimes works. Sometimes if people see you long enough, they'll sort of figure out who you are, and eventually there grows a familiarity that isn't exactly friendship, but is good and can be oddly meaningful. 

There are people in this unit who I have known since before I realized that the trans thing probably wasn't going away. There are people in this unit, going to the sandbox with me, who have known me since before I rediscovered Christianity, long before I knew a single thing about the Episcopal Church. Maybe this unit isn't my favorite place in the world, but it has been a part of my life long enough to be a part of me. 

So here I am, on good if distant terms with the soldiers of my unit. I have one or two friends here, maybe. Maybe they're the sort of friends I can have outside of the Army, I'm not sure. I don't know if I could point to any one single individual in the unit and say, “SGT Such-and-Such is a deeply meaningful person to me, and I love her or him.” I don't think that I feel that way about any specific person, but as a group, as a whole I love these people. I'm going to the sandbox to serve these people, to do my job. 

I may not have the warm and fuzzies for these folks, but I'm going to Iraq for them. If that's not love, well, it should be close enough.