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S
CARES
I
didn’t quit the SEALs.
I might have, if my contract hadn’t still had a lot of time to run.
Maybe I would have gone to the Marines. But it wasn’t an option.
I had some reason for hope. When you come home and the
Team returns from a deployment, there’s a reshuffling at the top and
you get new leadership. There was always a chance our new head
shed would be better.
I talked to Taya and told her how pissed off I was. Of course,
she had a different perspective: she was just happy that I was alive
and home in one piece. Meanwhile, the brass got huge promotions
and congratulations for their part in the war. They got the glory.
Bullshit glory.
Bullshit glory for a war they didn’t fight and the cowardly stance
they took. Their cowardice ended lives we could have saved if they
would have let us do our jobs. But that’s politics for you: a bunch of
game-players sitting around congratulating each other in safety while
real lives are getting screwed up.
E
very time I returned home from deployment, starting then, I
wouldn’t leave the house for about a week. I’d just stay there.
Generally, we’d get about a month off after unloading and sorting
our gear and stuff. That first week I’d always stay home with Taya
and keep to myself. Only after that would I start seeing family and
friends.
I didn’t have flashbacks of battle or anything dramatic like that; I
just needed to be alone.
I do remember once, after the first deployment, when I had
something
like
a flashback, though it only lasted a few seconds. I
was sitting in the room we used as an office in our house in Alpine
near San Diego. We had a burglar alarm system, and for some
reason, Taya set it off accidentally when she came home.
It scared the ever-living shit out of me. I just immediately went
right back to Kuwait. I dove under the desk. I thought it was a
Scud attack.
We laugh about it now—but for those few seconds I was truly
scared, more scared even than I had been in Kuwait when the
Scuds actually did fly over.
I
’ve had more fun with burglar alarms than I can recount. One day I
woke up after Taya had left for work. As soon as I got out of bed,
the alarm went off. This one was in voice mode, so it alerted me
with a computerized voice:
“Intruder alert! Intruder in the house! Intruder alert!”
I grabbed my pistol and went to confront the criminal. No son of
a bitch was breaking into my house and living to tell about it.
“Intruder: living room!”
I carefully proceeded to the living room and used all of my
SEAL skills to clear the living room.
Vacant. Smart criminal.
I moved down the hall.
“Intruder: kitchen!”
The kitchen was also clear. The son of a bitch was running from
me.
“Intruder: hall!”
....
!
I can’t tell you how long it took before I realized
I
was the
intruder: the system was tracking me. Taya had set the alarm to a
setting that assumed the house was vacant, turning on the motion
detectors.
Y’all feel free to laugh. With me, not at me, right?
I
always seemed more vulnerable at home. After every deployment,
something would happen to me, usually during training. I broke a
toe, a finger, all sorts of little injuries. Overseas, on deployment, in
the war, I seemed invincible.
“You take your superhero cape off every time you come home
from deployment,” Taya used to joke.
After a while, I figured it was true.
M
y parents had been nervous the entire time I was away. They
wanted to see me as soon as I got home, and I think my need to
keep to myself at first probably hurt them more than they’ll say.
When we finally did get together, though, it was a pretty happy day.
My dad took my deployment especially hard, outwardly
showing his anxiousness a lot more than my mother. It’s funny—
sometimes the strongest individuals feel the worst when events are
out of their control, and they can’t really be there for the people
they love. I’ve felt it myself.
It was a pattern that would repeat itself every time I went
overseas. My mom carried on like the stoic one; my otherwise stoic
dad became the family worrier.
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