A place called home

For our readers, I apologize for the delay. I have been mulling over how to handle this subject, as it isn't always the easiest to explain.

I'm going to go with a more conversational piece tonight. It's weighed heavily on my mind for the past few days since reading a post by OAF Nation. (Bill will recognize this one)

I was inspired...

No, that's not even the word. Commiserated perhaps - with this concept that "Our war is over."

I can't speak for Bill and Slind, but I didn't join on the concept of patriotism, college, or change of pace in lifestyle as so many tend to do. I signed up after I found that a couple of my friends were killed in Ramadi in 2006. Having grown up in/near/around Oceanside, CA (where everyone seems to know everyone), I had some very tight friends that had gotten out of high school and went straight into the Marines. I - on the other hand - decided to try my hand at emergency medicine... I spent a few years working on Paramedic rigs saving lives. A terribly thankless job - but holy shit, at that point in time, it was the biggest rush a kid that came fresh out of high school could ever imagine. I mean - "runnin' hot" going code-three through intersections with a gunshot victim screaming in your face, and police escorts plowing through traffic, all while trying to hold direct pressure AND make a radio report to the local hospital... like I said it's a rush.

And then the news hit home. Like a sledgehammer to the chest... a group of friends, dead. KIA Ramadi, Iraq - and here I was at home using my skills to help out street thugs that got their rocks off shooting each other in the streets... I wasn't making much of a difference, aside from keeping assholes from meeting the reaper. I decided that I would try to make a difference. Fast forward through boot camp, field med, combat trauma management, TCCC, a deployment to Iraq, and eventual discharge.

I'm at a desk now.

There was no real transition, there was no recovery from point A to point B. Nary a moment to breathe... Paramedicine, deployment, not getting accepted to Deploy with 3/5 on the deployment where many, many friends got "schwacked."

Sometimes I wonder what it was all worth, AQ already taking back Ramadi and Fallujah. Its almost too much to bear knowing so many of our losses were virtually in vain because we never truly finished the job... and the survivors guilt... that nagging feeling that I should have been there - My God, it feels at times like it never goes away. That I'll never sit back with these guys over a glass of bourbon again.

----22 veterans commit suicide every day----

So far since getting out in early 2013, I know 5 personal friends that I will never hear from again. They got out and it was all too much. For a while I thought that maybe the pressures of life were too great... now I'm wondering if maybe it's an absence of.

OAFNation said "You know what PTSD is... its knowing that we'll never be this cool again."

I can't help but wonder how close to the truth this is. We as OIF and OEF war veterans knew danger as most never would, particularly those in direct combat, those that worked with the MTT/BTT/PTT teams (when its 15 Marines, 1 Corpsman, and 200+ Iraqi soldiers, many of whom are anti-American, you learn to constantly live in fear that it's going to be one of the IA guys that finally off you... and they have more than enough support to do it) know fully just how dangerous this country is. Then you come home... you come home to a people that ask stupid questions like "how many people did you kill." We all know the answer... It doesn't fucking matter. Fear is fear. PTSD can develop just from living in its shadow.

The system is totally flawed, the VA doesn't even see people for over a year after they get out - and most of us are too prideful to admit we may have PTSD, yet others around us can see it plainly... which plays out the aggressor-victim role over and over and over again. like a broken record.

 I don't have a problem, so back off. Stop looking at me like I'm a victim.

Sadly, many deny their problems until they end up in a drunken depressive rage with a loaded pistol and a bottle of pills... they never truly made it out of county alive.

----The wounds of war aren't always visible----

We all carry them. The first time a gunshot rings out near you and you run to the source rather than away... you know you have been fundamentally changed.

The first time mortars burst nearby - or you run over an IED that didn't go off etc - you just switched to a mindset of borrowed time.

So some of us come back reckless - some withdrawn - some unchanged (I seriously doubt anything phased Bill. He started off as an asshole, ended up one of my best friends, and still an asshole). 

We come back, changed somehow. I wish I could classify it... it just... happens.


God, this is seeming more like a collection of thoughts spattered onto the