It was seven years ago today that my unit began the convoy north from Kuwait into to our base north of Tikrit. It was not a great experience, but if I’m honest with myself I have to admit that I felt a certain sense of adventure over the subsequent three days. Perhaps that was what kept the fear away. (I really don’t remember feeling afraid in Iraq, though now I realize that was because it was buried too deep.) It turned out to be a relatively uneventful trip, at least for my serial in the convoy. One truck in another serial killed a person and wounded two others in a car that tried to get past the convoy, which was what we were trained to do (suicide bombers being a threat). Another serial had an IED go off shortly after it passed an intersection. For us, it was simply a long, long drive in a completely foreign landscape.
As with most “anniversary” dates, today & the next couple of days are a challenge for me. I wish I could shut off the memory spigot, but that’s not really possible. There have been periods when I’ve not consciously realized that “on this day X happened.” The subconscious mind doesn’t forget, though, so I’ll begin having more intrusive thoughts, be more irritable than usual, feel the anger surge up again, and start isolating myself more often. When I realize what’s happening, I can start managing all the effects, so it’s probably for the best that I keep these periods in my consciousness. Still, I wish, really wish, that I could simply forget it all.
That’s not entirely true, though. Yes, I wish that these memories would stop haunting me, and that the difficult emotions that have become so much a part of them would simply dissipate. I don’t enjoy living with PTSD. Yet, it is who I am, now and most likely for the rest of my life. If I could somehow take a pill and make it all go away, I would have to re-create myself again. Over the past six years (it was also around this time, one year after going into Iraq, that I was diagnosed with PTSD), I’ve had to travel down another long, long road in foreign territory, although this one has been internal. I’ve had to re-collect the pieces of who I was before Iraq, sort those parts that were still “me” from those that were no longer. I’ve had to put those pieces back into something of a functional human being–once something is broken into pieces, it can never be made whole again. The best outcome is building something new out of what’s left. The person I am now is who I am now, not who I wish I was, nor the person I used to be. I can’t erase Iraq from my life, but even if I could exorcise it from my mind & heart, I would still be made up of the pieces that were left.
Another year, then, passes by, and another reminder of a short but intense & painful period in my life. Still, I am here, have a loving & supportive family, work to keep me busy (if uninspired), and a mind and heart with which to ponder deep things. I am not wise, nor believe that I ever will be; and my life speaks to fact that I’m not all that smart. But all of that won’t matter if, after having been a part of that which was so wrong, I can live my life simply being good. That’s enough.
