I remember the first time it made itself fully known.

Like a parasite I had unintentionally picked up from my adolescent travels. Its existence was in me but not of me. An invader unwelcome and yet inside. Like a serpent it crept and weaved it’s way into my mind. Slowly advancing undiscovered as I allowed it to. There had been a few scattered clues of its presence yet I remained blissfully unaware. When the ambush was finally made I froze in disbelief.  locked in place too embarrassed to admit what had just occurred…

I sat in silence surrounded by darkness. It was sometime in the middle of the night. The precise moment I could not be certain of. I no longer kept track of the hours during the period of darkness as all the nights seemed to drone on and blur together into a perpetual green haze. Darkness was familiar to me now. It is where I felt the most at home. Darkness brought strength and Godlike domination. So uneven was our advantage at night that we felt oddly vulnerable during the hours of daylight when on the field of battle with our enemy. Darkness meant it was our time to hunt.

I sat in the back of a vehicle as I have done hundreds of times before.  Night after night we prowled down unlit roads bouncing along in a rhythmic trance. I leaned back into a comfortable position as our truck sped down the hard packed asphalt to an unknown destination. My head felt heavy as I allowed it to lower back against the side wall of the interior in order to alleviate my strained neck. I exhaled a large steady breath and closed my eyes. As we progressed down the street I felt the imperfections of the road in the vibration of the vehicle through my body and into my soul. The gentle bouncing up and down along with the changing frequencies of the tires grew to become a meditative hum. Over time I learned the routes through the feel of the vehicle. I focused on my breathing and took several slow, inward pulls of dusty hot air. It always smelled as if the earth was burning. The rancid haze grabbed the back of my throat as I choked it down. There was always fire in the chaos of an unbound world. I was relaxing my mind, preparing to do what I have successfully done hundreds of times before.  When darkness slowly overcame the last of the struggling and lingering light, rough men came out to feed.

I decided to look at my forearm where I kept a printed image of the target area we were about to attack safely stowed inside of a protective sleeve. This proved to be useful many times over when we had to quickly follow on to nearby buildings as the primary mission unfolded and grew more complex. I glanced down for one more reassuring view at the objective. As I looked I realized I could not see the printed out satellite imagery. I clawed for my sleeve but felt nothing. Did it fall off? frantically I searched all around me. Fuck! it's gone! where is it?  Fuck!  Systematically I began physically checking my equipment in the prioritized order of most to least essential. My hands moved instinctively down to my side where my rifle was slung. Panic began pulling me under the calm surface of rationality. Where is my gun?!? Where the fuck is my gun?!?! what the fuck is going on! where the hell is my shit? My heart began to race and my palms began to sweat. I couldn't catch my breath, I was panicking! I need to get it together, i’m a fucking Professional. I told myself to calm down. Take a breath, breathe! I slowed my thoughts to a coherent pace. Just relax, think about what is happening. Just think. Fuck! My heart rate continued to increase. Why don't I know where I'm going? What is the objective? Where is my shit? FUCK! FUCK! …….Suddenly laughter towards the front of the vehicle slapped me in the face and brought me back home. I slammed into the reality of the present moment. I was not on my way to a mission. I was in the back of a car headed to a party during my first semester of college after coming home from five years of war. My body trembled, my heart still racing and my breathing elevated. I was back in the moment. I felt embarrassed and confused. I had just had an experience that nobody in the car was aware of or could relate to except for myself. My mind had betrayed me. It had slipped into the familiarities of the night, the darkness, the hypnotic trance of the vehicle. I allowed it to wander into memories of my previous identity. The parasite revealed itself to me. I am home now yet  my mind slipped back overseas. How vulnerable and exposed that can make a man feel…

When on a steady cycle of violence, your body and mind become ready for the thrashing automatically. Like the rise and fall of a lunar cycle, there is nothing you can do to influence its timely occurrence. Together the mind and body begin to yearn for a fight. Famished of combat they pull you towards its direction like the feeble driver of an overwhelming team of horses. You can attempt to steer but they are in command. Whether you are home or in a far away land, they instinctively know the timing of the cycle. Years will pass before the affinity of the campaign will wane.

The above is an experience that has happened only a few times before and never again as strong. There are many items of baggage that come home with you after your time is done. Things that were not allowed to be previously discussed out of fear of showing weakness can now be mutually agreed upon by all those that were present in the memory. This does not have to be a debilitating moment, it can be recurring dreams, memories associated with smell, nostalgia etc… It's a funny thing slowly exposing what is in your mind to your peers? Do they feel it too? Am I alone in the experience or weaker in the defense of my mind?  life isn't hindered or broken, we just carry these memories from a most formable time in our existence. It takes time for men of that caliber to come forward and share with one another. It must not be dwelled upon after the reveal. Mutual agreement of shared experiences along with the pressing social pressure to continue to move along. Only when one of our own is drowning do we stop to rip them upward out of the swiftly flowing current.