Eight fucking years. Eight fucking years have gone by since I was wounded in Iraq. That’s a pretty long time by most accounts. Long enough to get over it by some. Why am I still sitting out here on my balcony drinking and working through it? I don’t wanna be this guy. I really don’t. I wanna be the guy I was before I went to Iraq. Sure, he had some problems. He had some anger issues. He had problems relating to his parents and his girlfriend and some of his peers like we all do. What he didn’t have was memories of picking his friend’s fingers up off the ground on a nameless and forgotten dirt road in Iraq. He didn’t have crushing guilt over the fact that that he survived an explosion that killed two close friends he was responsible for. What I wouldn’t give to be that guy again.

I say that because it’s easy to. It’s easy to think that if I could go back to the person I was before that I’d be happy now, but is it really true? Do I really want to go back to the person I was before I ever knew what it was like to really feel alive? I’ve read other vet’s stories and it seems that a common theme is guilt over the initial overwhelming experience of being relieved that it wasn’t you. I definitely experienced this in the moments after the explosion, well… that particular explosion, and I’ve definitely felt guilty about it for a long time.

One thing I’ll never forget is this little ritual I had every time we got ready to roll out. After loading the 240 and cocking it, I would have to get myself psyched up and would hyperventilate and clap my gloved hands together and sometimes smack the side of my helmet to wake myself up. It reminded me of the movie “Gladiator” when Russell Crowe would bend down and grab a handful of dirt and rub his hands together before a battle. Maybe it was just to distract myself from the fact that I was terrified, but I clearly remember leaving each day with a big smile on my face and thinking “I can’t believe this is my life. This is my REAL life and not some fucking movie or video game.” It was exhilarating. I remember the sickening feeling of coming back from a patrol and seeing burning humvees on the back of a trailer entering the gate and being glad that it wasn’t me. I tell you, it was gold. I don’t miss being scared, but I do miss feeling alive.

I remember sitting in my trailer with my roommate at the time, who was also my team leader, in the hours after one of our friends was killed. This wasn’t the explosion that wounded me which I referenced earlier. This was another incident that had happened months prior, and is probably a much worse memory for me than that one, being without the benefit of shock and morphine. That particular memory is crystal and painfully clear. My roommate, he was there for every horrific minute of it, and I know he deals with it to this day. In total it had been a seven or eight hour ordeal, ending with a debriefing in the TOC during which I looked absently down at the blood on my hands and uniform and only faintly heard the voices of those speaking. I was numb. Afterwards, we just sat there in the trailer looking at each other. Neither one of us knew what to say. It was a pretty confined space, with a few coolers between our beds adorned with laptops, empty pepsi cans and bullets strewn around, a miniature Christmas tree sitting atop an extra rocket launcher. We just sat there in silence for quite a long time. I don’t know how long. It may have been hours. It may have been twenty minutes. It was strange, because we were very close and talked about everything before. Somehow, neither one of us could muster up the courage to break the silence, as if to do so would somehow make it all real. After all, what was there to say, other than “Well, THAT just happened…” After a long silence, he started doodling on a piece of paper. After watching him curiously for a number of minutes, he slowly slid the paper over the cooler to me. It was a stick figure drawing of a humvee with our bumper number, HQ 14, clearly displayed, with the gunner (me) on fire. We looked at each other in silence for a moment before laughing hysterically. This was real, gut wrenching laughter, and I’m grateful to him for it to this day. It was the release that we both needed. I honestly can’t think of any other way we could have broached the subject. I’m sure there must be one, but I’m glad that he did what he did. We’ve talked about it a few times in the years since, usually only when we’re both almost too drunk to speak, but I’ll never forget that moment.

They say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I think the same could be said about being more afraid than you ever thought possible and still being here to tell the story. If I could go back and do it all again, would I? I guess if I knew how things were gonna turn out, sure, but that would take all the fun out of it. I don’t think it would be as profound of an experience the second time around if I knew I was gonna come out on top.

If I admit this to myself, I’ll be forced to take responsibility for it and stop blaming this experience for all my problems, and that thought might be the scariest thing of all.