One humid night in Qatar, I sat outside a bar and watched people move around me. It was in the upper seventies, and a cool breeze occasionally cut through the heavy air.
The groups looked familiar enough that they could have been the people I worked with. There were “the guys,” moving together in their own little brotherhood. Then there were the mixed groups, usually with more men than women, where every man seemed to stand a little taller and walk with a little more swagger.
I watched one of those groups pass and immediately started writing stories in my head. Did every man believe he was the obvious choice? I even imagined that the woman enjoyed the attention and the power that came with it.
The truth is, I had no idea what any of them were thinking. I was angry enough to pretend I did.
That anger did not begin with the strangers outside the bar. They had walked into a judgment I had been building for months. I had spent too much time around people who treated commitments back home as though they became optional once we were overseas. I watched selfishness get excused as loneliness, opportunity, or just something that happens on deployment.
I wanted nothing to do with it. Still, there I was, surrounded by behavior I found morally wrong and questioning the path that had brought me there.
Was this really the path I wanted?
I had joined the Army because I needed to become someone different. I wanted structure, responsibility, and a chance to prove what I could do. I had made promises to someone I loved, to God, and to myself. But the farther I traveled down that path, the more I wondered whether I was growing or merely learning how to tolerate people I did not respect.
Part of me wanted to walk away, regardless of what consequences followed. At the time, I did not fear the uncertainty. I welcomed it. Give me a foot in the door somewhere else, I thought, and I will prove who I am.
I told myself I needed growth and responsibility. What I did not want was to become dependent on the Army’s green machine for a paycheck, a routine, and permission to keep standing still. I did not want to become the people I was judging, and I did not want their acceptance badly enough to pretend otherwise.
At least, that is what I told myself.
What bothered me most was how familiar the whole thing felt. It reminded me of high school.
Back then, I wanted to be part of the cool crowd so badly that I allowed my standards to drop. I changed myself depending on who was around. I accepted behavior I knew was wrong because being near popular people felt better than being alone.
The clothes were different in Qatar. The social rules were not.
I had not cheated or done the things I condemned. But I kept finding myself around people who did because some part of me still wanted a place in the group. I thought refusing their worst behavior made me separate from them. It did not explain why I still cared whether they accepted me.
In my original notes that night, I used language I am not proud of. Then I wrote, “Fuck them. They aren’t the human connection I want.”
The anger was real. It was also easy. It was easier to condemn everyone around me than admit I was still measuring myself against people I did not respect.
That night, I flattened strangers, coworkers, and other soldiers into one group. That was not fair. Some of what I believed I saw outside that bar was probably my disgust with the behavior I had already witnessed elsewhere. But underneath all my assumptions was a question I could not ignore: Why did I care whether people I did not want to become thought I belonged?
I had spent years treating acceptance like proof that I mattered. First it was the cool crowd at school. Then it was coworkers, friends, and people wearing the same uniform. The group changed, but my fear of being left out remained.
I had made promises to someone I loved, to God, and to myself. The people around me were not responsible for keeping those promises. I was.
One humid night in Qatar, I thought the cool crowd had followed me halfway around the world.
It had not.
I had dragged my need for its approval there with me.
That was the shit I finally needed to leave behind.