Pounding through the tall grass, feeling the damp morning mist come down, a peaceful yet deep scene; Soon to be loud and eye opening. Bangs and pops slowly echoed in as I neared the paintball field. I stepped in and loaded my paintball gun, running my hands over the curves and grooves, grasping the fore grip, spotting and calling bunkers to run to with teammates, I hear the referee announce the game:


"15 minute CTF game! Have fun and play fair gents, enjoy."

I slowly felt a hood of realization breeze over me with the wind, that this will be a lifestyle for me in 2 years. Snaps and cracks of paint balls whizzed by like bullets as I ran through the field, this will be reality for me but without a ref, no safeguard of coming home safe and well. I could be one that doesn't return home, I could be one to get marked. I got careful that game, each move cold and calculated.

Not only could it be me, but my friends who might be out away in a foreign land fighting for each other, a fight to get back home with each other and live with a family. Anyone of us could get the hit and have to be out, not for only a simple paintball game, but for a lifetime.

I made sense of my realizations and applied them like never before. My senses heightened, I moved quicker from cover to cover with paintballs whipping past, noticing where each round came from and calling each enemy out to my friends on the vegetation choked trails. Sliding into a leaf covered plywood corner, i peaked carefully for anyone with opposite tags of mine, seeing 2 yellow streamers flapping behind a figure shooting my teammates bunker, i aimed with a precise quickening and squeezed the trigger 3 sharp times, watching each ball break and showering the yellow runner in red paint. Bringing me to another deep and chilling realization that the paint wont be something you can wipe away when i'm in a torn land screaming with war, it will be a permanent wound and reminder that life isnt always a fun game and you got to the dead zone when you get paint on you. You simply die.

The places may be different, the paintballs traded for bullets, jerseys for flak vests, but the fight the same. To get back to your place in the regular world, with no marks on your skin, no paint on you, no blood on your hands.