Costs

The Soldier had served his country with honor and distinction. Following his time in foreign lands fighting an enemy that did not share his customs or speak in his tongue, he returned to his regiment, and prepared to make his way home. He felt elated at the prospect of becoming a civilian again, and to chase his own dreams instead of fighting for those of his nation.

Setting foot on his home soil once again was a surreal experience. Relief filled his being because he had made it home in one piece, but he viewed familiar places and people through an almost alien prism. A quick trip down the main street of his hometown revealed that banks had been bought and renamed, that some of his favorite places to eat had disappeared or changed their menus, that the old hardware store was now an art gallery, but at least the library still stood. It was not until he went into the library one day that he learned there was an electronic checkout system with only a skeletal librarian crew on hand to actually be of assistance. The world he left behind had changed and morphed into a place much like his and altogether different.

Sometimes when walking to his new bank or up the street to the new Korean barber shop he believed he had returned from war to an alternate dimension. The Soldier’s girlfriend had left him for another man. His friends were busy with lives that no longer carved out slivers of time they could devote to him. He had gone off to fight for everything and came home to find little left worth fighting for. Ideals carry nations, governments, religious folk, and many others, but ideals without substance starve a human being until they are haunted specters of what they once were.

Every attempt at filling the voids in his life were met with disappointing outcomes, frustrated happenstances, and even his victories felt small and shallow. Part of this, if he were honest with himself, was the realization that he would never again be that man who was willing to sacrifice everything to fight for the freedoms his country enjoyed. He was simply the echo of his previous incarnation.

He did not die bleeding out on the battlefield. He did not make a heroic sacrifice to save his fellow soldiers, or go on to make a career of it. The jobs he thought would come so easily as a Veteran never materialized, and all that he left behind decided he was not missed very much. Sometimes the sacrifice a soldier makes is more than his physical life. Sometimes he comes home and finds his choices have cost him parts of his soul, and parts of his heart.

And he will never be whole again.

(c)Shawn J. Douglas 2012