Echoes

I’m pleased to report that things are going well in my life. Like everyone, random bills hit me hard sometimes and family stresses me out (I won’t even talk about Turkey Day this year), but I move on. And I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed with Writer’s House Literary Agency, which was a dream coming true – a four year goal finally achieved.

But there are echoes of my past life – the manic life of the young man returning from war – that still sound off even today.

I told you once about a friend; an old Marine buddy, roommate, and childhood friend. We’ve been seeing each other occasionally for coffee or meeting up to watch football, but he’s fallen on the wayside again.

I got this voice message from him two weeks ago: “Hey, man. I really need someone to talk to cause I don’t have any friends. And my girlfriend just cheated on me and I just want to go out and chill and drink a few beers.”

I knew it was going to be bad but how could I say no? I knew he had been sober for some time, and gotten a nice job, and behaved like a normal, calm civilian. But he was relapsing into the insanity of never really dealing with his mental health problems and them flaring up again. The girlfriend, as much as that hurt him, would just be a catalyst for reliving more pain.

We went to the bar. I told him I wouldn’t let him get too drunk, but really, how was I going to stop him? I told him he needed to start doing healthy things: like not moving in with a girl he had just met; taking martial arts again to help focus and discipline his mind; not start drinking again.

“I just want to become a Marine again,” he said. And it was true: war was the easy part for us veterans. We did what we had been conditioned and trained to do, and we did it well. But no one really prepared us, or watched after us for when came home.

It’s crazy but I still feel the same too sometimes. I think: "if s*** gets too bad, I can always go back to Iraq.” The real world – taking care of, and being responsible for yourself – that’s the hard part. The military is an easy system to adapt to and understand. Life runs like a well-oiled machine when you are in service, because you have a purpose and a mission and that is all.

“You’re doing well for yourself man,” I told him. “You’ve just hit a bump. You’ve got to quit thinking about war, man. You’d probably just see more of your buddies die.”

At about 11 pm, surprisingly, he abruptly informed me that he was ready to go home.

“Awesome,” I replied. He didn’t seem very drunk at all.

An hour later I got a call. He had been pulled over by the cops for driving ninety on his motorcycle. I was a little buzzed myself, so I had another friend pick him up.

We saved him that weekend, but the following Friday he whipped his body into a tree after getting drunk and driving in the same way. He did come out the coma. No one believed he would have survived.

I get angry when I see my veteran friends imploding. I want to shake them say, “Cut it the f*** out! Yes you’ve been to war and seem some rough s***, but we need to you to be okay. We need you to move on!”

I’ve moved on, but I still remember my training: I am not allowed to leave a man behind. And I am understanding this now as the toughest mission.

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