I’m not sure if it’s the soldier in me or just the father in me. I feel helpless when I see things like what Christopher watts did. It makes me sit back and wonder what this world is about. I think about my daughter and son, and the innocents of a child and their love for their parent. How the two little girls sat in that back seat and trusted their father and loved him, even has he killed his first daughter the second daughter never doubted him.
Sometimes I sit by myself and look at my hands and remember that these hands have pulled a trigger. I remember that my boots have walked a narrow path hoping not to step on a IED. I remember the last thought that run through my head before I watched my friend **** himself. I remember what it was like when we got the call one of our squad leaders stepped on a IED and that there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it home to his family. I remember listen over the radio the day our friend’s life was taken when they engaged in a firefight. And I remember the days I go home and seems like all this happened just yesterday. When I look in the mirror I sometimes wonder was it all real……. How could I have done and seen all this. I think about my kids, my wife and sometimes picture would life would have been like for them if I would have never made it home.
They say no man ever really comes home from war. When I hear this I don’t always know what to think. I try to figure out what these words really mean. I try to picture my life in 20 years, will I still struggle, and will I even remember the things I did when I was young, or will I even be here in 20 years. Was it all worth it? I guess that’s the question every man ask himself……. The nightmares, the sleepless nights, the migraines, having to watch tv with sub titles on, the 27 year old feeling 40, the depression. There is a sense of always wishing you were back over there, things were simple.
Somehow all these things come back from just watching a video about Christopher Watts, Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact you realize everything you did really doesn’t matter. There are monsters in this world and all we can do is hope they don’t come for us and the people we love. Then there is another part of us that wishes they would. You wish you were given another opportunity to rid the world of these monsters, even if you die doing it. Wouldn’t that stop all the nightmares, the depression? Wouldn’t you find peace? Isent that what we all are looking for, Peace? Im not sure I will ever find peace, nor will anyone that has ever been to war. It will live in us somewhere for the rest of our lives and all we can do is hope to figure out how to live with it.
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