Return from Afghanistan

For the last time, I'm telling you...

I'm back.

I've tried to wrap my mind around everything that's happened here, with varying degrees of success. One cannot imagine what it's like, looking back on a year of one's life like it belongs to a stranger--like the person who was making decisions, and moving his arms, and talking, was not oneself--this person did things, said things, that no civilized human would do or say. The events that happened to and around him were often absurd, sometimes tragic, very occasionally horrible--and to reconcile what he knew was the proper way to go about evaluating and interacting with life with the awful things in front of him, he developed a massive, thick, callous and obscenely inappropriate, cavalier attitude toward it all. That was me. That's where I stand now--watching a series of slideshows of my life, pictures of a man I recognize but with whom I have nothing in common. Or, the person who sits, and drinks, and interacts with his family has little to nothing in common with this other man.

The deployment of a Company, 126 soldiers, part of a Battalion, part of a Division, part of the entire effort to stabilize Afghanistan against the Taliban. A small slice of what happened in the opening years of the 3rd Millennium A.D. Largely irrelevant. Back here it all seems so incredibly, tragically unimportant--worth a quick handshake and sympathetic ear--or the expectation of a long story--none of those things mean much. They certainly don't balance out the sleepless nights, there or here. The feeling of distance, the impossibility of communicating even a small slice of went on in any kind of significant way. It breaks the heart.

I hope that the future cures me of this awful, maudlin mood. I'm sure everyone goes through this kind of thinking, but it just seems so unproductive and pointless. What the hell is wrong with me?