The Reconciliation

What I wanted most back then was an escape. I could no longer live in a country that just tossed us aside after we went halfway around the world and fought a war in its name, supposedly to “protect our freedoms.” I’ll never forget the exact moment when I realized what it is we were actually doing in Afghanistan, the moment that all my military conditioning went out the window for even just a second. I’ll never forget the look of absolute terror on those children’s faces when we busted down the door to their home right in the middle of their dinner. To this day, their screams and cries as we proceeded to ransack their home looking for a suspect who we were told was involved in a local terror cell, still echo in my head. That memory will probably torment me for the rest of my life.

I came back home to Saipan to thunderous applause and warm hugs from everyone at the airport. The banners and flags were flying everywhere and entire families had signs and pictures up welcoming us back home. The roads were lined with flags and it was this huge spectacle. But it was all empty to me. I could not feel the warmth in their hugs or the love in their words. I was empty. A shell. My time in Afghanistan had turned me into a soulless drone. Being surrounded by all these people celebrating us was the last thing that I needed in that moment. I just wanted to be alone.

The following weeks and months after coming home were the worst. The demons that made a home inside me during the war kept me up at night. When I did manage to fall asleep, I would wake up screaming and crying out in the middle the night after reliving the grotesque scenes in my dreams. In my waking life, I was filled with so much rage, so much pain. Every little thing would set me off. If someone said one thing wrong, I would snap. Eventually, everyone started avoiding me. I would go out into the living room to watch TV or play some video games, and the rest of my family would scurry off into their own bedrooms. I was so lost in my own world that it didn’t occur to me that this was happening until it had been going on for a few weeks.

When it finally hit me that the rest of my family was actually avoiding me, I finally asked my mom why everyone would go to their rooms every time I would come hang out in the living room. That was when my whole world shattered. My mom told me that they didn’t know how to deal with me anymore, and they were scared that I would just snap at them again at any moment if they were to say something wrong. That was when I realized that I had become a monster. It wasn’t just that my own family thought I was a monster. I actually was one. After that, I stopped hanging out in the living room and stayed in my own room for the most part, only coming out to grab some food to take back to my room to eat. I wanted to keep the monster locked away so that I could no longer terrorize anyone.

It wasn’t until I started going to college that I finally found a release from all the pain. It was as if the Universe had led me to the place where I would finally get some closure. I was taking a freshman U.S. History class, and one day we were having a discussion on the Vietnam War. As we began talking about it, I started to see some parallels between what happened in Vietnam and what happened in Afghanistan. I started to see how the veterans of those days shared similar experiences with us Afghanistan veterans. But it wasn’t until Ali spoke up in class that things really started to clear up for me.

Ali talked about how he and his family had fled from Iraq when he was still a kid during the first Gulf War. He recounted a story of how troops came into their home an demanded that his father come with them for questioning. He told us about how they didn’t see his father for days after that, and that after he did come home, they made a decision to escape the turmoil and eventually found themselves on Saipan. His story struck a chord in me because it brought me right back to that family whose home we broke into in Afghanistan. I began to cry uncontrollably and I had to get up and step outside because I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Me, a grown ass man, bawling my eyes out in the midst of a bunch of 18 year olds.

After class that day, Ali came up to me and asked me why I had to step outside. I told him about what happened in Afghanistan and how his own story brought me right back to that moment when I locked eyes with those kids who looked at me like I was some big bad monster who had come to kill them all. I told him about how their screams still haunted me in my dreams and how the demons would never leave me alone. I poured out my whole life story for this kid that I had just met, telling him about more than I had ever bothered to tell anyone else before. It just all came flooding out and I couldn’t stop.

Next thing I know, tears started flowing down Ali’s face as well. He told me that he never knew that we had to go through all of that, that he just thought we were all heartless foreign invaders who wanted to kill them all back then. He said he had learned to grow up with a sort of hatred for our troops because of how they had terrorized him and his family when he was still a little boy. His whole life after the incident he experienced in Iraq, he had gone on hating not just the military, but anyone and everyone who decided to join. He told me that it wasn’t until that moment when I broke down and explained everything that I had been going through since my own incident in Afghanistan, that he finally realized that we are people too, and we also go through our own share of demons after the war. He asked if he could hug me. I wasn’t much of a hugger, but for whatever reason, I said yes.

It was in that hug that I found my release. When we met in each other’s arms and two worlds came together that were once at odds with each other, we both found transcendence. He told me that I no longer needed to carry those demons with me, that even though he wasn’t the same kid that looked at me with those terrified eyes, that he forgave me for what we did, and the he now understands that I did not go there with the direct intention of terrorizing those kids and that family. That we were just following orders and that we had been led to believe that we were doing a good thing, the right thing. We were both in tears as we embraced each other and found the healing in each other’s arms that we had not been able to find anywhere else up until that point.

All of the pills I had been popping to numb the pain, all of the booze I had been drowning myself in to try to forget about everything that had happened, did not compare to the tremendous amount of healing that I found in the arms of this 19 year old kid. We developed a great friendship after that day and began to hang out often, learning more and more from each other each day. It’s amazing how one person, one complete stranger, can completely change your life and bring you more healing than any substances ever can, just by taking the time to talk to you and listen to your story.

This is a fictional short story that I wrote over 9 years ago, back when I was taking a Creative Writing course in college, posted on a platform called Steemit. Though a complete work of fiction, the events imagined in this story echo countless similar instances that actually happened in real life to many other veterans who served as boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many such moments triggered painful awakenings in countless servicemembers during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to them understanding USMC MajGen Smedley Butler's famous words: War is a racket. If you truly support our troops, please don't ever support sending them off to fight in another overseas forever war (like the illegal War in Iran that is currently happening).