12 Years Ago

I don’t want to pet the drama llamas and I don’t want to jump on a band wagon or soap box here. The thing is that social media makes other people’s opinions and stories almost unavoidable. Yes, I could follow the lead of a friend from middle school who posted this: “Ok. Won't be paying or looking at Facebook today. Forgot 9/11 is another day people decide to post without being in a cause or knowing about it... Represent minions!!!!!! Night till 9/12”

The thing is that today is not just another day for me, and many others. Today is the anniversary of an event that would shape my life in ways few people could have imagined. All conspiracies and politics aside, this event HAPPENED, and the following events directly impacted the course of my life. I was 22 then and only 6 weeks prior married a US Army Cavalry Scout. He was a cute boy with big blue eyes and a grin for miles, with quirky little gap between his front teeth. When we met 7 months before, he was just back in the states after tour in Bosnia. He had deployed straight out of basic training, and was not 21 yet on the day the towers fell. We moved to Germany the following spring where he was almost immediately sent to Kosovo. It was to be a 6 month tour, but his replacement unit was sent to Iraq as part of OIF 1, so they extended their mission to 9 months. From there, there were moves back to Colorado, a separation, reconciliation, a move to Texas and 2 more deployments to Iraq. By the time we separated, I was 30 years old. We owned a home and he was slated for a third deployment to Iraq. The TBI (traumatic brain injury), PTSD, migraines and back problems were so bad that he did not deploy, and was medically discharged before he turned 30. 

We haven’t spoken much recently, but he remarried a girl that lived next door to us in Germany. They separated and he moved back home and is living with his parents. He is on full disability and so many prescription pain medications that I know of at least 2 hospitalizations for near-over doses. That boy with the big grin and sparkling blue eyes is now over-weight, over-medicated and living in his parents’ basement. A man walks around with his name, his fingerprints and his DNA but little else remains of the boy I married all those years ago. He is not the only soldier out there, transformed by it all and I am not the only family member to suffer in my own right. The stress, the trauma, the loneliness and all the other feelings brought on by war are real, whether or not you personally wear the uniform. I think people forget that. I try to forget it, but to this day movie scenes that show soldiers in combat or coming home to their families, or anything else that resembled that piece of my life, bring it all back in a flood down my face. It’s embarrassing to cry at the sight of such things, but it looks too familiar and my brain can’t seem to tell time in those moments.

It took a few years but I moved on with life and am also remarried. I swore up and down that I would not get involved with another soldier, but here I am with a new last name and ACU’s hanging in the closet. My husband has been to Afghanistan three times, but luckily does not bear the same traces of war that ExH did. We are far enough removed from the Military community that most of the time it’s like any other job with a uniform. There are still quirks in his personality that developed because of his time over there, and I recognize them and am thankful they are less violent and more manageable than the things ExH came home with. 

My friend was right that people are posting all over social media that don’t know what that day was like for so many others. They were too young, or too far removed to have little memory beyond the images on television. They were taught to remember an event that was little more to their personal history than a really scary movie on a screen. Good for them. But for the rest of us, I think it is part of the healing to look back once a year and say, “I was there. I was present. And these things still matter to me.”