OIF III.

I am very afraid of dying and each day, out there, I had to do what I had to do. I saw the worst happen to my friends, experienced the lifelessness of expectations, knowing each time that this could be it every time we went outside the wire. Nothing prepares you for seeing your friends body parts get blasted all over the place, or get shot in the neck and paralyzed from a drive-by in Baghdad, people riding in a maroon 5-series BMW randomly shooting in our direction. Nothing prepares you from having to call in a 9-line while said friend is asking you to let him die, unable to move his arms and legs because he's paralyzed. Nothing prepares you to go through seeing the love of his life divorce him because she can't handle taking care of a crippled man, that he can't afford to make changes to his home that he can't afford so that he can almost come and go as he wants. Nothing prepares you for the fact that the Iraq invasion was pointless, that I watched my friends die, become seriously wounded, or deal with PTSD for years after the fact when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, that it was all for nothing since we left and ISIS took over. Nothing prepares you for the futility of it all, unnecessary deaths of my friends, young men with families, the trauma of seeing shit you're not supposed to see, no matter what, dealing with the stress on your own, years after, dealing with lost loves who can't handle your emotional outbreaks and leave you, who can't deal with your fragile emotional state years after the fact, almost losing family who almost gave up, spending time in mental hospitals trying to deal with the issues, living homeless in the streets because you can't hold a job, turning, heavily, to drugs and alcohol just to cope... nothing prepares you for that.

I've learned to suppress bad memories, to become more "zen" when I can, even though I have strong emotional outbursts. I've learned that no matter what, no one cares, that we all have our emotional, catastrophic hands we've been dealt and that no one but you can learn from it, decide what to do with it, and ultimately forget our fucked up hands we've been dealt and move on.