Sometimes when I think of the war, my war, I see all the things I was way back then. A lump develops in my throat.  I was young.  Idealistic. On mission to save the world and protect our freedom.  Only, I never lost any freedom and those poor Iraqis had no qualms with me.  I fought for a God I didn’t believe in and a country that didn’t care about me, I suppose.  God bless the troops, or something.  

I can still feel the crunchy grains of sand between my teeth.  The oppressive hair drier blowing in front of an oven style heat.  The burning, the coughing, always something on fire.  The fear.  The apathy.  The hopelessness.  It all still lives inside of me.  All it takes is a shift in the wind for me to remember the best of bad times. 

I can’t recall specific details from my wedding day or other monumental milestones in the last 15 or so years.  I can still remember how Iraq smelled.  How it felt to drive bomb littered routes hauling shit no one needed to places time forgot.  Memories are funny like that.  I don’t want to carry the weight of it anymore.  

People far better than me did things far greater than I ever could, and yet, I keep writing stories.  The same story. Recycled and re-edited from other angles.  But the story is the same.   Scared kid from a small town goes off to war, comes home anxious, lost, and confused.  Even though I left that way, it seems more poetic to just blame it all on the war, my war.  

What is it about soldiers that makes us desperately want to tell our story and at the same time, retreat within ourselves and not say a word.  We live somewhere between Chaucerian storytellers and hermits avoiding conversations.  We hold on to our stories as if it’s all we will ever do.  For some of us, many of us, it was the biggest thing we ever did. 

The war sometimes seems as if it was the only worthwhile thing we will ever do.  And the cycle repeats.  Share a story, retreat back behind those lines of uncomfortable memories.  That old enemy of restful nights dances like a specter in our brains keeping us from sleep.  Tell them about the good times.  Withhold that part about blood on the pavement.  If it bleeds it leads, they say, but you just want to protect them from those things you saw, and did, so you tell a story about catching a hedgehog on a mission in Mosul.  

No one wants to hear about the children you saw screaming with bloody bandages and burns waiting for a medic to redress their wounds.  That story may make us look like the aggressor and not the valiant liberators we claim to be.  Tell them the story about giving beggar children pens and paper so they can go to school.  That’s a safer story with a happy ending.  That one makes people smile.  

Maybe things like this are why it’s so hard for us to tell our stories.  People want to support the troops until they have to help us carry the weight of our experiences.  The GWOT generation went from combat to “normal life” within a matter of days and were somehow expected to play nice and act like nothing happened.  Don’t talk about the bad stuff.  That dissonance you carry is hard to tune out.  A pride in one’s country coupled with a confusion about mission and purpose.  

God bless America.  Cue the Toby Keith or Lee Greenwood.  You did it soldier, thank you for your service.  Please don’t make us sad.  Please don’t make us confront the cost of war. We are American patriots.  We sent you to get the bad guys.  Light some fireworks, salute the flag, and shut up.  You are home.  The war is over.