Perspective
No One Comes Back the Same
By Richard J. Roberts, Ph.D.
I am afraid that I cannot protect my loved ones.
I am afraid that my neighbor’s garbage bag will inexplicably explode.
I am afraid I will lose my job if I can no longer leave my bunker some day.
I am afraid of falling asleep.
I am afraid that no one reliable is watching the perimeter, that no one of equivalent grit has my back.
I am afraid that the love men show for one another in combat will end up sapping my marriage.
I am afraid my family will become collateral damage simply because they are near me, And I’m afraid of letting them down when I absolutely must withdraw.
I am afraid they will likely shun me if they learn the truth.
I am afraid of taking my kids camping or teaching my son to hunt.
I am afraid of having both legs amputated like Tammy Duckworth, but even more afraid my fellow soldiers can sense the minute tremors I suppress.
I am afraid that I will not make it back to the World. But, if I should make it back, I’m afraid I will be redeployed. And, if I should be redeployed,
I am afraid the next deployment will end badly.
I am afraid that some unknown stranger will encroach upon a poorly defined boundary drawn in the sand by my ever-vigilant internal warrior.
I am more afraid for the unknown stranger than for the internal warrior: This Doppelganger never cuts and runs, no matter how brutal the fight or bogus the apparent provocation.
I am afraid to forgive those who recruited me after the rush to war following 9/11.
I am afraid that Chalabi, al-Maliki, al-Sadr, Talebini, al-Sistani and all the other camel spiders were never worthy of our sacrifice.
I am afraid that my own stop-loss edict will be eternal. Blowing up barrel after barrel of unknown chemicals seemed like good, clean, all-American fun at the time, but I am afraid it will prove to have been an unwise career move.
I am afraid I’ll become another Uncle Jim, who died in Southeast Asia as a teen, only to endure another 42 years in a Homeland he no longer recognized and in a Nation that no longer wished to recognize him when he tried in vain to join the local VFW a few days after he was mistakenly drenched with dioxin near Phu Bai.
I am afraid that we are all Pat Tillman, undone by friendly fire, That historians will ultimately lynch us for failing to question sufficiently the banality of leadership.
I am afraid I will instantly cleave to the pavement when some roofer’s truck backfires.
I am afraid I turned my back on God in Fallujah when I saw a mangy pack actively recycling the carcass of a once boisterous child.
I am afraid that God turned his back on me at Fort Carson, Colorado—not for learning the killing motions I would be ordered to perform—but for a basic lack of imagination.
I am afraid I failed to foresee how atrocious acts can rise from the dung of sheer human weakness, How unanticipated lapses in simple civility are occasioned by mind-numbing fatigue and activated by a wrong-sounding noise that punctuates the searing smog of techno war.
I am afraid of what I may feel while watching network news— but more afraid of missing the daily report.
I am afraid of expressing phony sympathy for the losses of flood victims back home, given that I cannot grieve profitably for my own losses in the desert.
I am afraid to conceive another boy, whom I would treat too harshly Or to parent the precocious little girl, who will view me with scorn prior to reaching pre-adolescence.
I am afraid of the bad things that happen when I party. But I am more afraid that even worse things will occur when I refrain from consuming Old Grand-Dad and leaves of grass.
I am afraid that high-dose Zoloft is not all that prevents me from enjoying a serviceable erection.
I am afraid that some vagrant song or passing stench will draw me so deeply into the recesses of unbidden recollection that any cogent sense of self will just shimmer and dissolve, like a mirage on the scorching highway.
I am afraid that my buddy’s “thousand-yard stare” may become permanent. That 12 cognitive-behavior therapy sessions will not heal my nonobvious, inner wounds.
I am afraid that daily we will all become like starving dogs left to chomp on the rubber bones afforded us by hospital administrators, the subalterns of an indifferent bureaucracy.
I am afraid that my inability to censor indiscrete comments reveals that my grey matter has been shaken by one too many IED blasts. That each discrete memory lapse I suffer demonstrates how my white matter has been stirred by my fall from grace.
I am afraid that my doctors will find serious medical problems. And I am afraid that they won’t.
I am afraid that I have no true war stories left to satisfy others, and that, like Homer, once I started narrating blindly, I may never stop.
I am afraid of yet another cry for help. That despite everything we have been through, I would feel compelled to respond once again if only to see if I could make some things right.
I am afraid that Congress has mindlessly appropriated the best I had to offer (loyalty, duty, honor, bravery, resilience, and youthful exuberance) and managed to melt down these resources into ammunition to be used against me. Bullets from some perverse elongated blunderbuss— designed in committee and bent backward—so that the act of squeezing the trigger claims the very volunteer who does so.
I am afraid of what Yeats’ genius forecast, of learning precisely “What rough beast … slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”
I am afraid that Nostradamus understated his issues with the year 2012.
I am afraid that Sarah Palin may run for president. I am afraid that my ceramic inserts for body armor will be utterly useless when confronted with the penetrating lameness of civilian life.
I am afraid that up-armored Humvees can’t protect us from new EFPs.
I am afraid that General Motors, as we know it, will no longer exist. That no one will recall how to refurbish our degraded Hummers.
Most of all, I am afraid to give and to receive love.
Richard Roberts is a psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City and an adjunct clinical associate professor of psychology at the University of Iowa.