Post by DALLAS ANTHONY XAVIER on Apr 26, 2012 20:39:45 GMT -5
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; height: 200px; border: 5px solid #9E7E81; padding: 0 10 0 10px;] Dallas Anthony Xavier [/style] [style=width: 394px; background-color: 9E7E81; padding-top: 4px; padding-bottom: 3px; text-align; right; text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: 10px; letter-spacing: 3px; color: EFEFD5; text-align:center;]25, nicholas lemons, local personality Well... how do I describe myself? I'm not quite sure I'm in my own head these days any more. I'm pretty confident most of the time and I admit that. But recently, that confidence has been shaken quite a damn bit. But it's still there. Maybe in a lesser form. Maybe not quite as strong as it once was, but I'm working on it. And I'm working on it hard because I want to get back on my feet. I'm a pretty quiet guy when it comes to my personal life. I tend to keep to myself a lot for the simple fact that I'm never home long enough to really make any kind of friends. But I guess I'm going to be home for the next while anyhow. So who knows? Maybe I will make friends. It's not like I've really been living in Crystal Falls for too long, really. But when I'm with my close friends... the guys I work with - my brothers for all intents and purposes - well, I'm a hell of a lot more laid back. I'm a Texas boy, born and raised. The only reason I'm really living in South Carolina is because my brother's living here... and I'd take my twin brother's attentions over my Mama's any day of the week. Yeah. I'd probably still be living with her if it were at all feasible, really. But it's not. So here I am. I'm patriotic as hell. I admit it. The only real personal touch that I've added to my house is the giant American flag on the front lawn with the Texan flag flying beside it. Probably a pretty big abnormality 'round here but... whatever. I'm brutally determined. Really. I'm pretty sure that that's one of the reasons that I've gotten as far in life as I have, really. It's kind of insane. I see something I want and I kind of put my head down and bowl through life until I get it. I guess it kind of gives me this screwed up sort of quiet intensity but, it gets the job done and it got me the one thing in life that I wanted most of all. From the moment that my father told me that I would never amount to anythin', I knew that I needed to really do somethin' with my life. And so I did. The SEAL teams for me were the only place I wanted and needed to be. The only place that I ever wanted to be. So I worked my ass off and got it. Obviously I'm not afraid of commitment and dedication. It got me as far as it did, quite obviously. Really... The SEAL Teams are everything to me. My job is everything to me and I love it. Always have, always will. In terms of things I like... well... I like a cold beer on a hot day, but really... what guy doesn't? I like classic rock and country music. Pretty cliche of me, really. I'm also a pretty big fan of classic cars. I have an old Mustang in my garage that I'm, no doubt, gonna really get the chance to look after in the coming months. Dogs are my thing. Cats definitely are not. I hate being idle. I'm the kind of guy that always kind of needs to be doing something. Which, again, is why the next few months are going to wind up being pretty rough on me. I'm not a fan of rap music in the least. Uhmm... The Doc back in Virginia Beach says I have some kind of PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And really... I can't say that that's a big surprise. I'll get into that when I absolutely have to though. All you really need to know is that I have some pretty screwy nightmares. It never effects me in such a way that I like... freak out when I hear loud noises or anything of the sort but. Yeah. I have nightmares. Bad ones. And I'm kinda surprised the neighbours haven't called the local cops on me yet some nights. appearance How do I look? Well. I keep my hair pretty short. Military standard issue, really. But sometimes I'll do something with it that doesn't peg me as obviously being military. It's kind of got something to do with blending in when I need to. I have tattoos. I have an entire sleeve as it would be, actually. It extends to my chest a bit. That's all on my right arm. I have a SEAL trident tattooed on my left arm... Or rather half of one. My twin brother who works out of Coronado has the other half of it. As far as how I dress. Pretty casual most of the time. Shorts and t-shirt in the summer. Jeans and sweater in the winter. Nothing overly impressive. I'm a pretty laid back guy. Little known quirk though. I really freakin' hate socks. Try to avoid 'em if I can. If there's any kind of formal occasion that I need to be present for, it's usually a dress uniform for me anyhow. history Well... I was born just outside of Sinton, Texas (it's near Corpus Christi, actually). I was one of two. I have an identical twin brother named Nathan. My mother might as well have been a single mom, for the most part. Our father was a real special breed of man. The kind that would wake up early in the morning and be drunk by noon. Nate left home pretty early on in life. He was seventeen when he headed to Med School, actually. But that's trailing back to him. Not me. Long story short, really... Life with Dad was rough. He was drunk more often than not and it was often left to Mom, in our younger years, to make sure that we were fed. But Mark (that's my dad's name), well... he just got worse as the years progressed, truth be told. He wasn't a nice man. My brother and I were fourteen when we first decided that we were just gonna run off onto the Ranch property and get lost there. Live out our days huntin' and fishin' on the property and not have to worry about a single damned thing. It scared our mother half to death, really. And looking back on it, I realize just how idiotic of us it really was. But we were kids and we just wanted to escape. We just wanted to get the hell away from Dad. And I think that was what made Mom realize that we'd really rather have gone it on our own than deal with him. When he was mad at us, he let us know with an open hand in our younger years. And into our teenage years, it was a closed fist. My brother and I dealt with it. But it was when I was seventeen and just after Nate had gone off to school that things finally came to a stop. Nate had always kind of been the voice of reason. He had always kind of been the calm, cool, collected of the two of us and I was the teenager that was stubborn as hell and determined. Well. Thsi time around, I was determined that Dad wasn't gonna beat on me again. So when I finally took a stand against him, he turned on Mom instead. And that was about the straw that broke the camel's back. Thankfully it was all self defense (and I had the bruise to show for it, as did Mom) or I probably would have had a very different route in life. I hit him. And I hit him damned hard. And then I grabbed him by the back of his pants and the neck of his t-shirt and hauled him onto his ass in the yard. He earned a healthy dose of both fear and respect for me, but it wasn't the last time we saw him. Over the course of the following year, he came back every now and then beggin' for what little money we had. I helped Mom run the ranch as best I could and it was never good for tourism when your drunk ass father plants himself on your doorstep. But my parents taught me a lot. Mom taught me how to first shoot a gun. She taught me the value of hard work and integrity. She taught me never to run from my problems, but rather to face them head on. But everything we did still wasn't enough. And that was how I originally got it in my head to join the Navy. The family needed another source of income. Nate was at school and Mom just wasn't bringin' enough in with the tourists we had to make the Ranch thrive. And she didn't want to give up on the piece of property she owned and that we had been raised on. So I signed the recruitment papers without her even knowing. Lord was she pissed at me. But I knew she was also damned proud of me for doing what it took to see the family through. Dad came back again. I told Mama not to let him into the house while I was gone but... somethin' he said really got to me. Somehow he'd found out that I had enlisted. Told me that I'd never get anywhere with it. That they'd be sendin' me back home from the Fleet in a matter of weeks. God, I had never wanted to hit someone so hard in my entire damned life. Never. So. I went through Basic. Gave it my all. And then I requested a billet for BUD/S training at Coronado, California. I got it. Amazingly enough. Just a Texas boy - albeit a smart one. It wasn't like my grades had sucked by a long shot growing up. I was always the quiet nerd, more or less. But Lord... BUD/S almost kicked my ass. It almost kicked all of our asses. I had never done anything more difficult to date in my entire life than get through that. Never. I've done tougher things since then, sure. But that. That took the cake. It was brutal and I had to ask myself, in more than one occasion, if I really wanted it bad enough. But all I had to do was think about the man my father was and his taunts, and I knew that I had what it took. I was going to make something of myself. So I went through the six months of training, hell week and, yeah... even the schooling it took for me to be able to gain rank as an officer. I did it all. And you know what...? I'm damn proud of myself for it. There are so few men that can do something like that. By the way. That brother I spoke of? Yeah. He's a medic with SEAL Team 3 these days. I was assigned to Team 6. Yeah. The big 6. You got it right kids. And if you've read anythin' in the media, you'd know damned well exactly what SEAL Team 6 is responsible for. I was there through it all and, no, other than this, you'll probably never hear me talk about it again. Moving along... I guess that brings me to more recent events. I lived in Virginia Beach for a while. Nice and close to base and whatnot. But Virginia Beach was just too... I dunno. Too much. For a Texas boy who grew up on a Ranch, I really just needed somewhere where life was a wee bit slower. Somewhere where I didn't wake up to thousands of people flutterin' around outside my door. I just needed to get away, I guess. Which brought me here. Back to my brother and the home I'd made for myself. While it definitely has its downfalls as any place like this does, it feels a hell of a lot more like home to me than Virginia Beach did. And I'm still nice and close to base when I get one of those calls at 0300 in the morning requesting me on base. But. That won't be happenin' for a while to come. See... I was on mission. Things went pretty haywire. Long story short... my entire six-man team was pegged down in one hell of a fire fight. It lasted a day and a half. Literally. I watched as each one of them died in one way or another. Jones got a bullet to the throat... Mike bled out after havin' been shot twenty-one times. Twenty-one. Long story short... I was the only survivor. The only God damned one. They pitched a grenade at us that blew me back over an incline. They couldn't see me from where I was. I managed to crawl away and hunker down for a while. When their search party thinned out, I - literally - crawled until I collapsed. And I was a lucky sonuvabitch because friendlies found me. They took me in. Fed me. Clothed me. It was days there... Days of my enemies assaulting the village I was being held in. Days of the villagers fighting for my life. I'll never forget them or what they did for me. And no. Before you ask, I'm not having survivor's guilt because that would do nothing dishonor the memories of the men that I served with. We all knew what we were getting in to. We all knew what we had to do and we did it. So now... Now I'm on medical leave. I was held over in a hospital in Texas for a while. Stayed with my Mama for a while. But she was driving me flippin' nuts. I needed to get home and away because every night I woke up screamin' and sweatin'... I could see how much it broke her heart. So. Here I am. Back in South Carolina. I have no idea how long it'll be before they let me get back on active duty. A purple heart and bronze and silver star later and... voila. Here I am. Back home. People wouldn't leave me alone back in Texas. They all knew who I was and what I had done. But here. Hundreds of miles away in a town that barely knows anything about me for the fact that I kept to myself and mostly wasn't home until recently... Well... I can slip back into anonimity. Maybe. Hello, my name is MEL and I am 23 years old. I have been RPing for 10 years and this is my 1ST character. If you need to contact me, feel free to do so via AIM and my account name is MELIMUS.PRIME. [/style] |
