Excerpts from my conversation with Katie the following day as a result of the Adriana incident.

“I really got nervous yesterday. In public, like that.

“I just harbor such resentment for people. I really wish I didn’t.

“I feel like every generation which experiences war suffers from a certain shame. In Vietnam, that blame lay solely on the soldiers involved, whether deservedly or not. This time around, it’s going to be the American public. They’ve tuned out the war and the sacrifices being made. They’re going to have to deal with their apathy eventually.

“We’re taking the greatest men and women, the idealists of this generation, and sending them off to foreign soil to battle. And meanwhile we sit back here and get drunk and party and get laid and text message and twitter. This life just feels so contrived.

“Listening to Adriana talk about being lazy, about taking advantage of the few years she’s got to just goof around or what ever, that really pissed me off. I don’t have that chance, you know? I mean, I could have, but I felt a deeper calling. Whether I can reconcile what I do with my feelings on war and our administration, you know, I at least stood up and was counted.

“And now, here I am, feeling guilty in spite of four and a half years of decorated, honorable service, and so I’m switching jobs from journalism to infantry and volunteering to fight in Afghanistan within the next few months. All of this, so that I might feel more complete or resolved in my service to what, in spite of all its faults and flaws, I feel in my heart is truly a great nation.

“I’m literally putting my life on the line for what I believe in, and people like her, my age, aren’t even putting the same years of their lives to any use.

“I guess I just hoped when I was in Japan that the American public back home felt some calling to service. Even civil service, volunteer service, protesting, whatever. But I come back and it’s like nobody’s dying out there. The only people who give a shit are the one’s who’ve already lived through wars. If you’re under thirty, you’re not concerned.

“I just want to know at the very least that people are trying to be their best. That what ever that might mean to each respective individual aside, I want to know that they’re reaching out for something. Whether it’s doing well in school and caring about it or volunteering or serving in the military, I just want to know that people aren’t taking their lives for granted.”