Who do you tell

First time writing since my injury.  It's like riding a bike, right?...~wendy

Ten years on this journey.

But who to share it with?  Who can know?

Not the feel good, funny, homecoming, brotherhood side.

The dark. The ugly side.

Ten years of war and it is easy to pick out the soldiers. The warriors.  But there are others equally scarred by its destruction. They are in the background. Families.  Friends. Lovers. The volunteers. Those nameless people doing all they can to help contain, in some small way, all that destruction. But that means letting the destruction in to your own soul as well.

Who tells our stories?

Who knows what we have seen?

What we have heard?

What we have felt.

The things we do not talk about.

You cannot share them at the time.  

We must-- "Keep all communications positive.  To do otherwise is to put your soldier at risk.  Do not be a distraction.  It can get him killed. Listen. Do not judge. Remember your smiles!" 

"Send a themed care package once a month. Make it fun."

"My Hero. Thank You for what you are doing. We support what you are doing.Thank you for your service. You are a Hero." 

What happens when the words have lost their meaning?  When you can no longer ignore the messy darkness shoved behind the boxes and no longer stand the platitudes you are supposed to spout? 

When you can no longer ignore the things that are real.

The killing.  The dying.  The wretched wounded.  The souls torn open.  The shattered minds.

The unrelenting never-ending fucking wastefulness of it all.

Who do you tell?

Very few people want to see the darkness.  It doesn't fit well into their world views.  It is messy.  It isn't nice to look at.  It might make them hurt too.  It is too hard. Some may ask, but then they get that stunned shell shocked look on their faces, so unprepared for the truth.

Ten years is a long time and it all has to go somewhere.  Buried deep. Maybe too deep.  But also right there, just under the surface, if you care to know where to look.

It is all there in the silence.  Bursting out of the footlockers in the garage where I try to leave it.

If you do it right, it is more than you ever expected to see.  More than you were ever prepared for.  More than you know what to do with yourself.  But no one wants to hear about that part.

Don't let things get too heavy.  Lighten it up.

Smiling soldiers with puppies are good for slideshows. No one wants to see the screaming, bleeding ones at your presentation.

Remember, Baking cookies is easier to deal with than the sobs of grown boys.

Do you hear it? 

(The weeping. He killed a man today. His first. I can hear it, ragged breath coming through the ripped open pieces of his soul. The broken pieces spilling out over the phone line to cover me. I hold them in my hands but I do not know how to put him back together.) (The sobbing. Helo crash. A spinning rotor blade will cut right through human flesh.  It doesn't care if that piece of flesh happens to be the face of his best friend.) (The crying. I love you. Jess is dead.)

Squirt guns and school supplies make better stories than talking the rifle out of a man's hands. (Pleading. Praying. ohgodohgod Swearing. putitthefuckdown. Begging. please.please.please.please.don'tdothistome.please.)

(Two days spent waiting for word. Success or failure? Can I live with failure?)

The flags.  The funerals. Their mothers. 

(I sit sometimes, at your grave, W.  I try to tell you these things. But I can't. I'm always empty. Like this place seems empty. I stare blankly at the granite.)

Broken bodies trying to put broken minds back together.

Even when they make it home it isn't always better.  Too many still fight the war. BD. CJ. Too many lose. The number keep rising.  Justin. Mac. It hurts. Oh God. It fucking hurts.

No one tell you that you when you start this that you will get broken too. You will make promises you can't keep. There are things you cannot unhear or unfeel. The Loss. The waiting and the helpless watching.  No ones says you will also touch the black and it will gut you too.

When we started none of us expected to still be doing this 10 year later.  But it didn't end. 

All of these things...who do you tell? 

And how do you walk away?

I made him a promise. Without this I don't know how to keep it.

Perhaps, it is time, though.

All that is left is the doing.
“The war was a long way away. Maybe there wasn't any war. There was no war here. Then I realized it was over for me. But I did not have the feeling that it was really over. I had the feeling of a boy who thinks of what is happening at a certain hour at the schoolhouse from which he has played truant.” 
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Road Trip Lessons

I am recently back from a cross country road trip with friends, which was a fantastic and badly needed vacation.

One of the goals of the road trip was to get away from everything I do and deal with on a day to day basis. No cell, no email, no news.

I also took a break from all things war-related, as much as that is possible with Bestie still over there.

What I learned is that the war, the wars, are in inescapable.

A lot is made about how much this war is different from others, how detached the general population is, how the American public isn't at war, the military is. That is true to an extent. What I found on my road trip is that while America generally may be able to ignore the war, it has slowly become a part of the fabric of a thousand small communities.

It is in new, shiny signs that declare a patch of interstate or highway a memorial to a LCpl, a Pfc, a Sgt in Illinios, Missouri, and Kansas. It is in the newly unveiled GWOT memorials that have sprung up in front of VFW posts and downtown next to WWII and Vietnam memorials.

It is in the somber passage of family and friends headed to a funeral in a city in Colorado on the day I passed through. A Marine was laid to rest and I couldn't help but think of Bestie. May you rest in peace, Cpl. Harris.

In a few months, a few years, maybe there will be a stretch of highway bearing his name.

Maybe there will be a banner with his picture on it in a town just off the interstate, his name added to the list on the plaque honoring his state's lost in the rest stops.

These wars are a part of us now.

Seven Years

“For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me that history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could have never told me. Only history itself can convince you of the truth. And once you’ve seen the truth — really seen it — you can’t look away.” from The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova pg. 37

Recently, the 7th year of the war in Iraq passed, with some, but little reflection. I have been thinking about it since then.

I have been thinking about how long seven years really is. About how long 9 years in Afghanistan is. I have been thinking about all the things I have done in those years and all the ways I have grown and changed. It occurs to me that we are creeping up on something that is rather disturbing. My country has been at war almost half of my life.

Some people say that our war, the GWOT or OEF/OIF, whatever you want to call it, isn't like past wars. We have a voluntary military and a smaller percentage of people serve. It is true that people perhaps have less of a connection to the military and its actions than in the past. It is true that we, the protected, do not ration our gasoline or produce. It is easier to forget about what is going on far away, if you want to.

But what has struck me the past few weeks is just how much a part of our lives the war has become. Among my peers, it has become woven into the fabric of our lives. Maybe that is abnormal. Perhaps it is more a reflection on small-to-medium town USA. But at least for some, it is the truth.

I was at work when a moment of powerful recognition hit me. I was standing around with my coworkers, most of whom are close to my age. I work with a former high school classmate of mine and we were talking about mutual acquaintances. We started talking about someone we both knew who is serving in Afghanistan. That led to updates on other people we know who are in the service, and where they are and what they are doing. I have a friend in Ramadi and my coworker remarked that they knew someone who spent some time there. About six or seven of our other coworkers wandered into the conversation and we all compared notes on friends and family, high school buddies, and friends of friends who are serving or have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. We talked about those we knew of who had been wounded and those from our hometown who had been killed. Someone mentioned that we needed a memorial for our war, like there is downtown for Vietnam.

Then the conversation drifted to other things like new movies, music, and if the economy would ever get better so we could find better jobs.

The moment of recognition came before that though. It came when we noticed we had an audience. Five of our coworkers, including our two supervisors, had stopped what they were doing, gathered together, and were listening to us talk. They were all older and grew up after Vietnam and before 9/11. They were staring at us kind of funny. One finally said, "You guys say that like it is so normal. You say, M spent some time there, like Iraq is Florida or something. You just transitioned from Iraq and Afghanistan to a show at the place and the merits of the newest Twilight movie without pause. Like it is just another part of your day to discuss which of your friends are over there."

I guess we did. We transitioned from updating each other on friends and family at war to the other general topics you discuss with people you work with. It was just another thing, just another part our lives, to have friends fighting a war someplace sandy. After all, my best friend is on round two-Afghan Style. By now, so many people I know have joined the service, gone overseas, come home, gone back, come home, gone back, come home, got out or reupped that it is kind of normal.

The war is something we have learned to live with.

The idea that some people, somewhere, wish us harm is something that has almost become normal.

There is something sad about that.

There is that old saying, I think it is a curse, "May you live in interesting times." It seems my peers and I do live in interesting times. We have seen life changing moments of history and been changed by them. Some of us have had the course of our lives changed by them.

Sometimes you don't realize the significance of your own history and the realities of what those historical moments have wrought until something happens to make you reflect.