For what? For whom?

For fourteen days I met the morning at 5am with heavy eyes and heavy feet to become acquainted with my new reality. I ran with the early colors of the day creeping over the horizon to illuminate holy hues of oranges and pinks and purples. I felt the chaffing burns from the same pair of oversized jogging shorts rub my skin raw; healing each night only to tear open again in the morning. My arms failed me daily under the weight of a body unprepared. No mercy was gifted to my overtaxed, fully tensile hamstrings; their request for a days reprieve remained muted under the bellow of voices demanding more from me. The output of two weeks time was measured by my standard of bed making and boot shining, by the speed of my stair climbing, and the precision of the 90° angles exemplified in my knees when marching.

Each morning I peeled off shades of invariable grey PT wear infused with perspiration from the early workout to slide into ‘uniform’ – my fingers leading my arms through heavy combats in the same way my toes led my legs. I mastered the quick pull and tug of black laces to secure black boots. I zipped up, buttoned up, and tied up the fashions of a uniform that caused me to question: “Who would I become under new and unfamiliar threads? For what did I climb into them? For whom?”

A uniform – one form, one mold, one frame.

When handed those seamed combats I was hesitant to put them on – fearful that I would drown in anonymity; believing that I would fade away to a place concealed, unrecognizable both to myself and to the ones who know me. With my hair held down by product and secured in masses of bobby pins, there was little distinction left amongst myself and the other female figures with our tightly wrapped hair. Outward fibres and chosen colors are not mine to choose here, complimenting lines cannot be painted on faces where marks of flair are verboten. What characterizes here is character itself.

I expected to feel buried and nameless. Forgotten.

Counter to all presumptions however, I felt dangerously exposed.

Not hidden – but undressed.

The irony of dressing oneself in uniform anonymity comes with the simultaneous greeting of the distinct self; these new threads do no defile individuality, but rather authentically define it. The figure in the mirror I have spent a lifetime dressing up so wonderfully now stands stripped before me – I stretch my hand out only to shake my own, to meet myself in raw, uncompromising, uncovered form.

I cannot hide when purchased pieces of identity are removed, where the cost of clothing oneself in fine threads reaches far beyond over priced tags. Adornments such as integrity, honor, and virtue are not freely handed out, there are no coupons to be had; to be dressed with decency will cost all comfort.

There is no shadowing truth, I am what I am here: naked. My efforts thus far have merited no garments for wearing. Character is all that will carry forward.

This fragment of time has been one small exposure of what I am about to enter, a mere fourteen days. But as told to me by the Sergeant Major in response to the distaste worn on my face during a grueling morning push-up session, “this is my life now.”

My days (and now that I have signed on that line, my years also) will play themselves out in this bureaucratic playground, the kid with the sandbox authority continuing to remind me of who I am within it. My tongue can make me nothing more here; my words are dead, as are the vocalized ambitions that will sit silent until a platform to speak is earned. Compliance, submission, obedience – these words are no longer available for use at my convenience, they are pivotal in how I conduct myself.

My old world sits with safety on former horizons of the well worn and well known. My feet do not know this land, nor are they granted the liberty to explore at their leisure. However, it is here in the face of a thousand obscurities that I feel strangely at home, or closer to it. I feel a resolve to the question, “for what have I left old grounds?”

I have left to escape ordinary.

I have left to separate myself from the comforts that silently and subtlety kill.

I have left to learn discipline from the voices that bite at my heels, that move me faster than if I was left on my own.

I have left to learn through service the means of duty, of honor, of loyalty.

I have left to excavate something within myself that I hope like hell is there.

I leave those old grounds for me - to put to rest the torment of wanting to become what I will never be outside of them.

Audeaumus – ‘let us dare’ in the face of all unknown to follow the voice that has commanded - the voice that in light of our doubtful humanity, so graciously confirms.