Unspoken Abandonment (20 page)

The dream suddenly ends
,
and I instantly
jolt out of my sleep
. I sit upright and panic, not knowing exactly where I am. It takes me a minute to realize it’s only a dream, at which point I’m dripping in sweat with my heart pounding.

“Are you ok?” I’m asked by my wife.

I unconvincingly respond, “I’m fine, go back to sleep.”

“Ok, ju
st wake me up if you need me,
”
she said.

She rolled to her side of the bed and went back to sleep. I laid back down, and as I’d done almost every night for as long as I cared to remember, I laid awake
,
staring at the ceiling
once again
. I thought repeatedly about my dream and could not escape the fear it produced. All I had at that moment was
the thought of that dream racing through my mind
.

I began having this same
nightmare
haunt
me
almost every
night. Even while awake, I was no
t immune from
the
images
and memories
that worked their way into my thoughts. Any time I closed my eyes, I could see the image of a young boy lying dead in a gutter. I could instantly see his starved body
,
and
I could
hear his mother’s cry after
she was
shoved to the ground
.
I
w
ould feel my heart
rate climb
, and I
would have
a sinking feeling in my stomach, as if the
se
experiences were really happening again.
Before long, I started to become angry at myself for reliving th
ese moments and allowing these memories to dominate my consciousness
. It’s my head, I control what goes on inside, and I control what I think.
I asked myself constantly, “W
hy
c
a
n’t I just stop
remembering
th
ese things
?
”
The harder I fought to make
the memories
stop, the more frequently
they
came
,
and
the
more memories
they
brought with
them
.

I routinely thought about the death I had seen, but the images of poverty and suffering were killing me inside. The memories of people starving, the look on a dead man’s face capturing the fear and torment he experienced moments before his death, and other vile recollections were constantly there. The worst were the memories of seeing innocent children, as young as four or five years old, being led off to be
what I know was raped by an adult man,
all
while I was forced to watch and do nothing.
K
nowing that I watched and did nothing was
now
pure torture – pure and agonizing torture.

These were the thoughts that swarmed through my head at their own will, leaving me with no ability to control them. My thoughts
of these memories
were beginning
to dominate nearly every waking moment of my life.

My first days at home were
somewhat
strange. Everything was exactly as I had left it, but somehow it no longer felt the same. When I first got back to my tiny
, one-
bedroom apartment
,
I found the television was right where I had last watched it, the couch was right where I had last
sat
on it, and my bed was right where I had last slept on it. Everything was exactly the same, but it felt as though it all belonged to someone else. It seemed as though I was stepping into someone else’s life, and at any moment someone was going to pull the rug out from under me
to
send me back
to some
terrible
place
.

I originally joined the military in 1996
,
and
I
got out in 1999.
Shortly a
fter September 11, 2001,
and once the war in Afghanistan erupted,
I
learned
that the unit in which I had served was being placed at the top of the list for deployment to Afghanistan. I
could no
t help but feel the obligation to my unit, and I
felt
a duty
:
if my unit needed to go
,
then
I
would
need to go with them. I signed a
one year
contract, essentially agreeing to serve one tour in Afghanistan. What that meant
for me
,
in the end
,
was
once I was released from Fort Drum, I was simply done. I was able to just walk away from the
military
and return to the life
I had prior to signing that one-
year contract.
I went from the middle of a war to the experience of Fort Drum
and then right
back
home. There was never any buffer between any of them, and
I found
next to nothing to h
elp
me
with the transition.

For many
soldiers
, it was
much
worse. They were in Afghanistan one day and back in their own living room
less than two weeks later. It is so
difficult
to just turn that
“combat mode”
off and jump from one extreme to another.
Going
from war to everyday life turned out to be much
more complicated
than
it was for me to
go from everyday life to war. I searched desperately for the
metaphorical
light switch that would just turn that part of my life off for good, but
such a switch
simply doesn’t exist
.

My very first night at home, my family got together at my parents’ house
,
and we all had dinner. We decided on Chinese take-out, and we ordered almost everything
available on the
menu. We sat around the table
, enjoying one another
and talk
ing
over our L
o
M
ein noodles and fried rice. I found the conversation mostly centered
on
Afghanistan and what kind of things had happened there. I told
my family
about Massoud and some of the interesting things I had seen, but I did
n
o
t want to talk about anything in great detail.

My father and I were never the touchy-feely, “I love you” types, but we
have
both
always
had our own way of making
sure
the other
knew
exactly
how we felt. I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he talked with me over dinner that night. He was grinning from ear to ear, and
he
could
n
o
t stop smiling.

When I was leaving for Afghanistan, I was preparing to board a bus that was taking my unit to mobilization. This was the last time we could see our families before departing for war. As I prepared to board the bus, my father grabbed me and hugged me tighter than I’d ever been hugged. As he squeezed, he whispered in my ear, “I love you, and I need you to come home. So you do whatever you have to do
over there
, but you come home.”

As I looked at my father smiling over his Chinese food, I knew I had done what he asked
of me
. I could see that he was proud, but more than anything I
knew
he was relieved beyond words that I had come home.  The night drew on, but
I still remember how
his smile never faded.

T
he following day, my phone rang, and
I answered, “Hello.”

“Woody, you’re home! It’s me, Sean.”

Sean was one of my best friends
,
and before leaving for Afghanistan
,
he promised me the time of my life when I came home.

“Tonight, we’re taking you out, dude.” Sean said.

“I don’t know, man. I think I might wa
nt a few days to settle in, so I can
kind of adjust to everything.”

Sean responded, “Bullshit, you can adjust with a stripper’s tits in your face! We’re picking you up at
eight
-
thirty
.”

I w
asn’t in the mood to go out yet;
I really did want some alone time. I knew though that arguing with Sean would be a fruitless effort
,
and I conceded to
the fact I had to
go.

HONK!
HONK
!
HONK
!

I heard the
repeated
blasting of a horn in front of the house.  I looked at my watch and saw it was
eight twenty-five
. I went down to find Sean and another friend, Steve, waiting in the car for me. I got in the front passenger side, and we drove off into the night.

Sean was driving and he asked, “Are you ready for one hell of a night? I’m not drinking a drop, so it’s all you!”

“Look man,
I really want to hang out tonight, but let’s just keep it low key. I’m not up for a crazy night. Let’s just all go somewhere, have a few beers, and shoot the shit.”

Without hesitation Sean said, “You’re the boss tonight.”

Sean drove us
to the Blackthorn
e
Tavern, our favorite pub. It wa
s a small Irish style pub with dim lighting, low ceilings, and
an enormous selection of beer. Located in Easton, Massachusetts, the Blackthorne was very popular with the local working-class Irish.

Sean brought the first round
of beers
to our table and we began talking the night away. My friends repeatedly asked me what Afghanistan was like, and I vaguely answered, “It sucked
,
”
or some variation of that,
each time. My friends prodded for stories, but that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Eventually I was able to change the conversation to other topics
, and Afghanistan was forgotten,
at least
for a little while
.

Steve
unexpectedly
stood up and yelled to the
pub’s
other patrons, “Hey everyone, listen up. My boy here just came back from Afghanistan, and we want to show him a fun night!”

The room clapped and a few people whistled. I told Steve to sit down
,
because I really didn’t want this. Inevitably people in the bar began bringing me a beer, or a handshake, or a “thank you.” I pretended to be grateful for each, but I really didn’t want them. I d
idn’t want anything from anyone, and
I really just wanted to be left alone.
This was something that I
really
did
n
o
t want
;
I did not want
this kind of
attention
.

The three of us sat around our small table, talking and drinking.
As I expected it to,
the conversation shifted back to Afghanistan.

S
teve asked “So come on, tell us.
How many of those fucks did you kill over there?”

“What fucks?” I asked.

“Come on, dude. You know, those Afghanistan fucks.”

I was able to successfully stop their earlier attempts at this type of conversation, but this time I was drunk
and didn’t have the same
perspective
.
For the first time, I felt like I was beginning to lose
control
.

“Exactly what ‘fucks’ are you talking about?” I asked with a tone of anger.

Steve said, “Forget it, man. I’m sorry I said that.”

“No. Too late, shithead,
” I said.  I loudly continued, “You’re going to tell me exactly what ‘fucks’ you’re talking about.”

The area around us quieted, and everyone was looking toward our table. Steve quietly said, “Dude, calm down. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

I slammed the beer bottle in my hand to the table top. I yelled, “No, you wanted to talk about this and here you go. I’ll tell you when you’re fucking done.”