Journal Entry: "Illusions"

Time is both eking and flying by. How strange a concept: time. In retrospect, it’s as if I arrived here just yesterday, yet from another perspective it’s as if I’ve been here for years. There are moments that I feel like this is all I’ve ever known and everything else was a dream. If it were not for the letter and the rare call home, I might start to think of my life before basic as a delusion. I’m mostly joking but it is weird how distorted your sense of time can become when essentially under confinement. I simply cannot imagine trying to resist the madness creeping in under permanent or indefinite incarceration. At least here there is a relatively short countdown to hold on to when those feelings of disconnectedness take hold. Anyone who hasn’t been through this might think, “It’s only a couple of months. It couldn’t be that big a deal.” And most of the time it isn’t a big deal, but there are those moments, those days, where all proper perspective is lost and you honestly feel like you’ve been here forever and you have so long before you get out that everything will be different, that you’ll be forgotten. It’s a strange panic-filled sensation. I’ve written about this before and now that I am “over the hump” those moments of dark dread have passed for the most part. In fact, a silent strength has settled in where my tolerance for both my surroundings and my separation from my loved ones has dramatically increased.