I joined the Army Reserves at 18 years old hoping to soak my global worn feet into a fresh adventure fueled by a prideful challenge. The college benefits were a major perk, but nothing compared to my sheer desire of wanting my name to go down as a courageous she-hero. I wasn’t patriotic as much as eager to venture into the territory of the “so-called” enemy that I learned to love in my later civilian travel through the Middle East. I have wrestled throughout my entire military career with loving the foreign enemies of the United States that I was trained to hate and kill.

And what about my military career? I am a chairborne ranger (42A, admin. Clerk) for a combat engineering instructor unit. I decided to take one of the easiest military occupations because of its flexibility into other units and guarantee to get me through college without deploying. My patriotism grew when rumor arose that my unit would be deploying to Afghanistan and I found myself eager to go. My unit never deployed, so I took the initiative to learn and understand the Muslim culture I was volunteering to deploy into. I traveled to Pakistan, Syria, and spent a summer living among nationals in Egypt. I decided I would finally be ready to switch my MOS to Civil Affairs or Arabic Linguist after college and volunteer for a tour in Iraq.

I will not go into detail of when and how my thoughts changed about the military machine that I am a part of, but the process all happened within 6 complex months of my last semester at a Bible College, meeting my fiancé, and my realization of being a Conscientious Objector. I am a CO not because I could not kill another human being, but because I can. I am lucky to have had the choice of going to Iraq….but I stand in solidarity next to my brothers and sisters who have and are still going. I consider myself an IRAQ Veteran Against the War, unfortunately never having been to Iraq, but fully representing the entire culture and people caught up in the aftermath of a cruel and unjust system burdened by our American Dream. I still plan on going to Iraq to help pick up the remains of a crumbled infrastructure as soon as my fellow soldiers are rightfully returned home.

Until then, I remain a pissed off Veteran Against the War hoping to channel my anger into a courageous joy that transcends hate, violence, and ALL wars.