Homecoming

Home is supposed to be the place you strive for. You work and dream to survive to see it again to enjoy all of its comforts.  But when you can't enjoy the things you should, you enter an especially sad place.  No joy can come to you for reasons you don't know.

I wasn't in this state necessarily because "bad things occurred" overseas, although they did.  I was sad and lonely because I felt empty.  Something was missing.  Fun, danger, excitement, purpose, drive, friends, explosions, intrigue, exotic lands.  All were gone.  I had a great time in Iraq and I missed it.  Wake and mow the lawn?  Why?  Fuck the lawn.

I never really came home.

Robert Shaw, "Homecoming," in Justin Hudnall, Julia Dixon Evans, and Rolf Yngve, eds., Incoming