"Coming Home"

Hat tip to Today in Iraq.

This guy might be one of the luckier ones:

I don't have nightmares, or see faces. When there is a flash outside my window at night I know it's just lightning and not a flare or explosion. I can even drive without cringing at the slightest pile of rubble along the roadside in anticipation of an ear-rending explosion and shrapnel tearing through my flesh. I rarely get into fights with people who I imagined are "eyeballing me." I actually adjusted quite well.

It certainly could have been worse. One of my buddies got locked up in an institution by the police for being a danger to himself. Another woke up in the hospital with no memory of the beating he received from those same police - not for being a danger to himself, but to everyone else. One guy got a brain infection and wakes up every morning expecting to be in Iraq. Two more are in Afghanistan, having re-upped rather than deal with being home. Five more went back to Baghdad as private security guards. Their consensus on how it is a second time around: still hot and nasty.

The ones who are still around here I don't see as much as I used to; that doesn't come as much of a surprise. Too many things have happened since we got back a little over a year ago. Busy schedules and girls have gotten in the way. Classes have to be attended, jobs worked; life goes on.

War stories end when the battle is over or when the soldier comes home. That's one way to tell it's a story. In real life, there are no moments amid smoldering hilltops for tranquil introspection. When the war is over, you pick up your gear, walk down the hill and back into the world, where people smile, congratulate you, and secretly hope you won't be a burden on society now that you've done the dirty work they shun.

Lying there on that bathroom floor, with my dog eyeing me and wondering if a coup d'état would be necessary to ensure his continued food supply, I did figure out one thing: My problem was, I had the wrong definition of home. All my life I learned it was "where the heart is." Things are much easier now that I've figured out that home is just a place where you receive mail.

Definitely check out the entire article if you have the time.