Religion is seen as a truth by some and as fiction by others.

Do we just die, our

consciousness ceasing with our last heart beat, or last breath or is there more? Are
we judged and either awarded with a heavenly paradise, or a soul crushing eternity?
Whatever the case, I have seen the template for what many know as Hell. When God
smote Sodom and Gomorrah, it seems he missed the third and equally evil city. That,
my friends, is Incirlik, Turkey. Some say that their hometown is boring and there’s
nothing to do, and I was counted among them, until I spent the summer in Incirlik.
This abyss makes the greater Newport, RI seem like Hunter S Thompson’s Vegas:
full of chaos, excitement, and lizard people. In this incarnation of the darkest of pits,
there is always the overwhelming aura of what can only be described as a mixture of
depression, hate, and sheer rage, the primary emotions I have experienced here.
Every so often, there is a glimmer of hope, a day or so of good times, but after the
light, the darkness seems so much darker. A slightly entertaining day, makes the
bearable mundane monotony of the last days seem like a vice which slowly twists
around your spirit, wringing any and all joy out, until you are left a withered empty
shell of what you were, replacing every memory of joy with a hope that someday,
you shall escape this wicked place and know what it is to smile, to have a genuinely
happy day. The only good comes from a day that appears to be made by the dark
lord himself to personally break you down, because after such a day, the agony of
status quo seems like a sick reprieve. But this is just my perspective, just what I have
come to realize and observe in the past month I have been here. There are two more
months left in my “sentence,” and I can only hope that I get through said months
without committing a felony or killing anyone, though I would get sent back to the
paradise by comparison in the States…