A Devaluation of the Idea of Heroism

[upaloopa]

4. Here's something I say to myself

I have an American citizenship just as the rest of us do. But mine cost me a year in the Vietnam war and afterward a life of drug abuse and alcoholism, divorce, inability to hold a job, bankruptcy, suicidal clinical depression and homelessness.
All but the first one were because of choices I made. But my choices were colored by a year in a war. I felt like I lost ten years of my life.
I am no hero but I feel I paid a lot more for my citizenship than others I grew up with.
Vets from Iraq and Afghanistan may not be heroes but they have all the shit I went through and probably worse yet to go through for the same citizenship we all have.
So we may not call them heroes I think we have to acknowledge the things they faced and will face.