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I'm staring out into the night,
And trying to hide the pain.
I'm going to the place where love
and feeling good don't ever cost a thing,
And the pain you feel's a different kind of pain.
I'm going home to the place where I belong,
where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm running from you know I think you got me all wrong,
I don't regret this life I chose for me.
But these places and these faces are getting old,
So I'm going home.

-Chris Daughtry

2:19 AM
I considered putting this off until tomorrow, but I was afraid that I won't be able to remember whatever I wanted to say and it'll come out sounding all wrong.

All my life, I've wondered what it feels like to really work hard for something - to want something so badly that it makes your heart ache. To fight tooth and nail and move mountains in order to achieve something that you've never done before, something that brings tears of happiness into your eyes and makes your heart swell up with pride. I've never had that before, you know. Which is rather depressing because you'll never know what you could have been capable of. I'll never know if I could have been a great lawyer, or if I would have liked SMU as much as I thought I would. There's no doubt that there are worse things in life, and I can't deny that I've always had things pretty easy. But I also can't deny is the fact that I find excuses and fabricate reasons to accept being second best, to make it sound good, and to make myself feel better. I suppose we all do that, I mean if we didn't, we'll drive ourselves crazy thinking about What I Could Have Been. But I don't think it makes it right, do you? I don't think it's right to always accept being second best, but maybe that's me.

So the army, to me, is the ultimate challenge, a time-honoured rite of passage and to become an officer would be to achieve something that I've never done before. To me, BMT and OCS would be a challenge unlike anythig else I've faced. A challenge that I wouldn't be able to run away from - no matter how much I want to - once I've put pen to paper. I know it sounds sadistic, but it feels right in some weird nonsensical way. You know, back a man into a corner and he may be capable of things that he never thought possible.

But it's more than that. Somewhere inside of me, there's a romantic that embraces and adores the idea of "for honour and glory" and all that the army stands for. Growing up, I never thought heros were cartoons that dressed up in tight costumes and had fancy gadgets. To me, the real heros were the ones I saw on television every National Day, the ones that marched past the camera with perfect precision, their uniforms crisply starched and a beret placed stylishly on their head. I thought they were invincible, those men in green, and to a certain extent, I still do.

Then again, it's not always just a matter of fufilling childhood dreams. Things are never quite that simple, are they? It's about employability, and relevance. It's about what you plan to do for the rest of your life, about what is best for you at the end of the day, about a million other things.

I wished I didn't have to grow up.
Then maybe things wouldn't be so complicated.