i became the ugly.

You know how people say that the people around you, your surrounding environment is what makes you the way you are? For the past few weeks, I've actaully had the unfortunate opportunity to actually experience those words.

In the ROKA(Republic of Korea Army) the day begins at 6:30AM with the daily morning roll call. We all get up and fold our mattress - the majority of Korean soldiers still sleep on the floor - and roll up our sleeping bags and place them under our lockers. Then we change into our army uniform and line up outside at the military training ground for our morning roll call.

This is just a general picture of what occurs during the morning. For those of you who haven't been into the army. So anyways, there's this kid(I say kid because he's lower ranking) that I got along with. Normally, when I get along with someone and get close I have this tendency of taking care of them. That may mean doing their laundry for them or cleaning up their mess. I can't help it, I just like doing it. It makes me feel good.

For the past few months the kid's been waking up late for the morning roll call. So stupid me, always made sure he woke up at the right time by waking him up(when actually he should be waking up to the alarm bell). I didn't want him to be late for roll call. Again, for those of you who do not know much about the ROKA, a superior ranking guy waking up a lower ranking guy is a very abnormal thing to do. The lower your rank, the faster you need to wake up and prepare for the morning roll call. But me, I don't really care about the whole lower higher rank crap.

One day I woke the guy up, and he just threatened me to never wake him up again. Apparently he was offended by the way I woke him up - using my leg to gently tap his butt. It's not like I kicked him. All of a sudden, I was so mad. I'm not really a morning type of guy so it's not so easy for me to wake up but I do cuz I have to. Not only did I wake myself up but I put the effort to wake the kid up. He should actually be thankful but nooo, this jerk just got mad at me.

I wanted to just whoop his ass but I decided to stay calm and let off the heat by just ignoring him. Later in the day, I just wanted to go and tell him that it wasn't a big deal and just forget about what happened. Coincidentally, he came to me and said, "let's talk."

I was about to say, "hey, look let's just forget about what happened" but he interrupted by emphasizing what he said in the morning. At that point, the ass became the asshole. And all this hatred and anger got inside me. For the past few weeks, I was occupied with all this negativity. People around me, told me I looked different. Not only did I look different, but I also treated other people differently. The anger that really should have been directed towards the kid, got out of control and spread everywhere to innocent people.

I hated the fact that I became someone that I did not like. I became the ugly. I'm not usually an angry person but because of one asshole I became the asshole. That really sucked and I had to do something about it. So right now I'm in the process of cleaning all that hate out of my system and come back to the happy calm version of me.