Blank Doll sits down.

Where do I begin with my words? All these thoughts incoherent, streams of consciousness spliced and spliced again. Where do the symbols end and the matter begin?

I am more than passing glad that BMT has ended. Some of the darkest days in my life were spent in the duration of the past three months. Yet as we, a species blessed with the ignorant bliss of imperfect memory, are wont to do- I miss the happy moments that I have shared in Tekong with my fellow platoon mates.

I have so many people to thank, so many people whom I hope never to see again. I want to keep the friends I have come to love but I am cursed. Blighted. Doomed. Ill-fated.

I may never keep my friends. My life is but a meandering thread of searing gold in the vast eternal tapestry of people. I like to think of myself as a soul ascendant, casting away the shackles of earthly concerns like love for the purity of my ambition. Yet, and yet. There is Icarus who flew too high and fell from grace for more than the Sun's rays on his waxed wings, it was the intensity of his desire to fly that ultimately consumed him.

Having said what I have said, I am grateful for the gift of simplicity that has been granted to me in the past three months. I am a person unaccustomed to simple pleasures although that is not to say that I cannot appreciate them. The taste of cold water, a bath, the laughter of friends, the queue to lunch, the banter, the shared pain, a game of cards.

Sometimes I want with all my heart to be able to feel youth which is that desperate attempt to grasp every single moment of your life as if each fleeting minute were the last- almost like the deep breath a drowning man takes in full possession of the knowledge that it could be his last. I want to know how it feels like to steal a kiss under the stars as the music plays behind and there's nothing in the world but the both of us.

Each time I am reminded of what I have sacrificed, each time I remember my vow, each time I-

C'est tout.