Unspoken Abandonment (2 page)

After a few minutes, I was able to regain my com
posure. I was drenched in sweat
,
and I tried
to relax for a moment
as
I
worked to collect my thoughts. I reflected on the incident, and it made no sense to me. I was not scared during the traffic stop, I was
n
o
t threatened in
the least by the driver, and it i
s something I routinely do every day.
So, w
hy today, w
hy right now
,
and w
hy all the other times this has happened
before
?

T
he attack
eventually
ended
,
and I went back about my
night
handling the random calls that came in and doing the occasional traffic stop. The remainder of th
at
shift
was uneventful and
otherwise
unremarkable
.

After my shi
ft, I turned in my police cruiser and
w
alked
to my personal vehicle
. During the thirty-
five minute drive
home
, I repeatedly thought about
the
panic attack
from earlier in my shift
. I kn
ew it was
nothing
which
I c
ould
control, but it ma
de
me feel
like
I
was
either
weak or
as though
there
wa
s something wrong with me. I knew then
,
as
I
still
do
now, that
those ideas were not true
, but it was a difficult feeling to shake.

I arrived home
just a little past one-
thirty in the morning. I opened the refrigerator
,
hoping to find dinner, but there was nothing
prepared
. I very rarely came home to a cooked
meal;
instead
,
it was usually a frozen dinner or a drive-through on the way
from work
. I had a quick snack,
I
took a shower, and then
I
slid into bed
absolutely exhausted
.

I tried desperately to sleep that night, but I
just
couldn't. I had
already experienced multiple
panic att
acks
by
that point
in time
, but
that
most recent
one wa
s really
bothering me.

The attacks occurred very infrequently in the beginning, maybe once a month or less. Eventually, they progressed to what seemed like a once per week event. They were always set off for no apparent reason; they just appeared.

“
Why is this happening to me?
Why me?
” I asked myself
so many times
.

Panic attacks were no
t my only worry.
I
was
go
ing
to work and walk
ing
through life pretending that I was fine. I worked hard not to show the truth, and I honestly thought no one could see what was just beneath my surface. I looked to everyone around me, praying that someone would see the truth and
call me out on it. H
owever, I did
too well of a job pretending to be whole,
even
when I kn
ew I was
being
torn to pieces
on the inside
.

It was about four
o’clock
in the
morning, and I still could not
sleep. Like so many other nights, I was laying awake
and
looking at the ceiling. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and
I was watching the ceiling fan,
almost hypnotized by its repetitive movement. This position was nothing new to me,
and
I decided to take one of the pills my doctor had prescribed to help me sleep.

I
made my
way to the kitchen and opened the medicine bottle, dropping two pills into
the damp
palm
of my hand
. I sat for a minute or two and just stared at the pills. My mind was racing off in its own direction. I do
n
o
t know if it was anxiety, frustration, or something else that hit me at that moment, but I realized I had had enough. I was
n
o
t going
to live like this anymore
,
and
this
needed to stop. This was the very moment I decided to take control and get my life back. It w
as an epiphanic moment
which
I will never forget.

I had recently had a talk with a friend who had given me what would ultimately be the advice I needed to move forward, and
it was
the advice I needed to
put this portion of my life behind m
e for goo
d. I had been given this almost-
magical
advice, but I had no idea how to even begin
to
us
e
it. At that
very
moment, as I stared at those two pills, the a
nswer came to me, and
I knew exactly where to begin.

I walked from my kitchen
to the garage
,
and
I flipped
a switch
, bringing life to the flickering overhead,
fluorescent light
.
The garage was nearly silent
with the gentle hum of the light’s power supply being the only sound.

Sitting in the corner
,
under a pile of typical garage
clutter
,
was
a very plain,
nondescript, black
footloc
ker. There was no padlock on it
or anything
to identify what was inside; however, as I looked at it I knew that within this box was
the heart of my fears. I had not
opened the box once since I packed it
three
years
earlier
. I packed its contents and closed it
,
for what I thought would be forever.
It turned out that it
would
not
be
forever, and
the time had come to open it once again
.

I dragged the footlocker to the center of the garage
,
and
I
knelt down next to it. M
y hands trembled as I slowly unclasped
the latches and began to open
the creaking lid
.

As I opened the box
,
I could instantly smell an odor that I had all but forgotten. It was a ripe smell that is nearly impossib
le to describe:
a mixture of pollution, filth, and garbage.
I found it amazing that
,
even after
three
years
,
the interior still smelled like the air so many thousands of miles away.
I
ha
ve since shown the footlocker to others, but no one else can detect the odor I smell when I see the contents inside.
It still does not make sense to me how I can smell something no one else can,
merely
by looking
at the contents
inside
of
an old box.

The box was littered with random trinkets and war mementos. I barely remembered packing any of this at all. How could all of this
have
faded from my memory?
I began r
ifling through the contents
and
found a
tattered burqa, Afghan money, and other odd items. I
was
wonder
ing
why I even bothered to save this stuff
,
when
suddenly
, I
saw something that instantly caused my
heart
to
skip a beat and fall into
the pit of
my stomach
. I
found
exactly what I was looking
for;
i
t was a simple,
black and
white, hard-
covered composition
note
book with the single word “Journal”
hand
written on the cover.
This
was
the
journal
I had
kept
while I was in Afghanistan
.

I removed
the
journal from the footlocker and held it in my hands. Part of me wanted to throw the book back into the
foot
locker and let it stay ther
e, but I knew that in order
for me
to t
ake the first step
toward putting my life back together
,
I needed to
open
that book
and read
every word
sandwiched between its cardboard cover
. The latter thought won the struggle, and a knot developed in my throat as I opened the cover and began to read the first
page
.

I sat on th
e
cold cement floor of my garage, reading
the
journal that felt like it h
ad been written a lifetime ago. The night passed by as I read, and the
morning’s rising sun
brought with it a life changing
journey
.
I want to share with you
that
journey a
nd how I arrived at that moment, and
i
t all begins with
that
journal.

Just a day or
two before I left for Afghanistan, I visited a local s
upermarket to get some items I thought I may
need over the
coming
weeks. I decided to stock up on toothbrushes, deodorant, toothpaste, and other
such products
to get me through the
days
until my first care packages would begin arriving. I also got some comfort items,
such as
candy and magazines, to make the same
period of time
more tolerable.

I was in the stationary section, looking for paper and envelopes to use for writing letters, when I saw a black and white composition notebook. I knew I was embarking on something incredi
ble, and as I saw that notebook
I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t that be some
thing to keep a running journal to
remember this adventure forever?
”

I purchased the notebook, and I did write
just
such a journal. However, what started out as something to
be
remember
ed
forever
eventually became something I could never forget. Here is my journal
, word for word, exactly as it was originally written
:

February 22,
2003
:

We were on the plane coming into Bagram
, Afghanistan,
when
the pilot announced we were fifteen minutes out.
Thirteen hours earlier, we were yelling and excited, but now not a single word
was being spoken
on the same plane. I initially thought everyone
around me
was simply tired, even though I was wide awake. We were in the back of a C-17 transport plane, with our seatbacks against the wall, and I could se
e everyone else was awake also.
Al
though no one mentioned it, I
think
we were all very afraid. We were
a
fraid of the
known and
even more afraid
of the
un
known. All of our b
riefings to this point told us
we were just minutes
away
from stepping foot in a country filled with landmines, a hostile and motivated enemy,
an unwelcoming civilian population,
and a long uphill battle. All I could think was, “Holy shit, what
have
I g
otten
myself into?”