My confession:
These are not my pictures. They're M's. He took them in al-Anbar when he was at FOB Ramadi. The sandstorm and the moon over the desert, looking out from OP-2 (Forward Observation Post 2).
Now he's back. And things are OK.
I think.
I mean, how do you go and do that and come back the same? You don't. You don't even go to the beach for vacation and come back the same. Something has changed. But when you are walking through blood, trying to see if anyone is alive, and there are more parts than bodies, and you see blood splattered up the walls and bodies stacked up, and then one of the bodies moves his eyes, and you go get him and try to do everything you can for him, and you can't even speak his language, but you want to say to him something that will help him hang on to life, are you changed by any of that?
But you come back, and everything is good.
Except it takes a little while to slow down on the big roads, because you are used to going faster than the bad guys can pull the trigger on an IED; and you are frustrated because all traffic does not move to the side of the road when they see you coming up.
But you laugh and eat a lot and sleep a lot. And then you slowly get back to what it was you were trying to do before they called you up and sent you over.
Where are you now?
What's coming back now and popping into your head without you wanting it to?
Or are you actually OK? I mean, you can be.