I have been home now for about a week. Going on a summer family vacation next week.
I'm just reintegrating back into the American middle class suburban experience.
It's odd but my life there seems like a fading dream. I know I was there and I have the medals to provide the proof to myself but it still feels detached from real life.
Stopping and thinking about it on a pleasant afternoon certain things do bubble up to the surface again. After all, it was one hell of an experience. I will remember the cold winters, the wet rainy season and that unforgiving heat. The unrelenting dust and foul smells. The rocket attack alarms and hurry-up-and-waits in the hardened bunkers. The ramp ceremonies sending someone home.
Raising the flag every morning at 0530 and lowering it to half staff as the sky above busied with jets and helicopters. Walking up the berm and looking out over the "wire" into the Afghan desert and wondering who those figures are on the horizon looking back at me really were.
I'm home again. It all seems to have been a dream.
I'm curious, is this how all us will feel about life in general when that ultimate end does come?