You still remember how family, relatives, friends, teachers and even strangers were rubbing into your face that you’ll never achieve anything. you remember how doubt was nagging in the back of your mind, how you laid every night in your bed and stared into space while your brain was overthinking. your grades weren’t perfect but enough to keep yourself over the water even though you weren’t stupid and you knew that… but words hit harder and leave scars that never heal properly.

At your 17th birthday you decided: you want to vanish, you want to prove all of them wrong, you want to create your own empire and glow in the light of honor and pride. you went to boxing, learned skills, trained your body, improved your stamina and called yourself as a volunteer at the Military camp. you needed that… you really did.

You never felt as free as the moment you entered the bus that drove you and server other people to the Military station. it was like a breath of fresh air.

However training was brutal. alarm clock at 4 or 5am, running laps like a caged animal, crawling under barbed wire, running parkour in heavy military uniform and loading a gun with fake bullets on group training to shot other teams while staying under cover. hell… but in the same time like therapy. you slowly started to understand what you wanted and needed in life, you saw your future, you sketched a plan of your path in your mind, became organised and neat… in control… something you never felt in your life before.

Today was a new task you needed to complete. after running almost 30 laps non-stop the officer called everyone together and walked up and down before your noses while the whole crew held their chin high and their backs straight in front of him. Officer Henderson’s voice echoed through the open training area. loud, clear, stern and controlled.

Officer Henderson: “New Task! I want you to get the flag off that flag column. the one who gets it first can take a day off tomorrow.”

The young soldiers in training immediately looked over to the flag column and ran over like hungry dogs to try their luck. it was… painful to watch. the metal was slippery, the column too heigh but all of them were so stubborn and determined that everyone tried at least six times to climb up that piece of metal to get the flag. Officer Henderson was standing few feet away and shoke his head in disappointment and told his assistant.

Officer Henderson: “nobody in the past 17 years managed to get that flag… and this… this is painful to watch.”

The assistant nodded and wrote down something on their clipboard.