To Whom It May Concern

Normality?

It’s been seven months since I got back from the Sandbox. After a couple of months everything was normal again. Now back in Nebraska, working, with our lil’ one due in August, I don’t think much about my time in Iraq, except for the occasional time I do happen to hear the news of another fellow soldier losing his or her life, or the thoughts of friends going back over.

So I was at work the other day, actually down in one of the classrooms, when there was a very loud muffled bang from outside, I’m not sure if they were using dynamite somewhere or what exactly was going on, but instantly the hair stood up on my neck and I was leaning over in my chair, as though I would go under the table or something. It took a few seconds to catch my breath, and I found I was breathing very hard, my heart rate was elevated, blinking fast, and other symptoms of a sudden onset of adrenaline when the body reacts to fear.

No one noticed, they were all laughing and carrying on, the same thing I would have probably been doing two years previous, the sound of an explosion or something large hitting the side of the building would be more of an afterthought than anything else. My reaction was not something I expected at all. I have always been of the belief that I would get my life back to normal, that nothing would affect me once I got back home and my life was back on track. There were so many others I knew, even those I loved, who have been in a lot worse situations over there than I was ever in.

I felt embarrassed later in the day, because honestly, I was never closer than maybe a couple hundred meters from any contact with enemy fire, which, oddly enough, occurred at our home base with a little more than a couple of months left, while I was sitting on the toilet. And despite it being a reasonable distance from me, it shook the small building, and sounded as though it landed right behind me.

There were lots of explosions like that, but further away. Usually we were out on the road or at other bases. But you become bred to ducking down, to covering up, heading for the bunkers placed strategically throughout the area in every camp you are in. I really believed that you could just forget that, and walk away and nothing would take you back there, yet for that split second, my body may have been in a classroom, but my mind was back in that dry, blistering heat of Iraq.