Breaking the Silence

I’ve been silent for a while now concerning writing war. There are a couple reasons: I’m burnt out by talking about combat and coming home, and I’ve been running out of things to say. The narrative feels kind of old to me. How were things when I came home? Rough. Why so? That’s a story that sometimes takes too long to tell.

But mostly, I’ve been feeling removed from the warrior experience; so much so, that I walk around Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda (a major military hospital – I have a part-time gig teaching writing there) and just feel numb to it all. Not so much the numbness I felt after my combat time where I just couldn’t relate to being a civilian again. It’s the opposite, really. I help instruct Navy Seals, Special Forces operators, EOD (bomb) technicians, and I can’t relate anymore sometimes to what they’re saying or feeling.

Maybe that’s a guilt I have since I didn’t do anything nearly on the same level of their experiences. But there’s this odd disassociation that’s been occurring within me. And it’s somewhat intentional: I play music loudly, like a nasty civilian when I drive onto base and park, and I don’t shave well and walk with headphones in my ears – things the Marine Corps would kick my ass for.

I’m in an odd place. 28 years young, but, this upcoming March, I’ve been a decade away from my first deployment. Time really does have this way of erasing your identity, healing trauma. I used to get drunk and cry. Loud noises or petty disagreements were calls to arms. Today I drink beers and yell at football, completely ambivalent to the war going on, not caring that the calories I’m consuming will make me slow and weak. Loud, unexpected noises I usually greet with a chuckle. Petty disagreements I let roll off my shoulders – like “water on a duck’s back” as many senior NCOs once said to me when I wore stripes. 

But I need to remember that OUR story IS an important story. All of us vets. And all I can do is share it, and continue to when I can, and hope it’s a beacon that can lead other warriors to where I am now.

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