Do you just ever write about your emotions?

She asked me if I ever wrote what I felt or if I just stuck to the stories. I had. From time to time I would open up and express my love, my hate, my confusion in the relationships I had. I also wrote about my anticipation, my fear, my anxiety of going to war and not going to war. Except now I did now want to touch those emotions. I didn’t want to feel anything. I just wanted to put out my novel and my short stories. I didn’t need to tap into those feelings. They were always there.

She hated the fact that I didn’t share my feelings with her, or anyone for that matter. Sure with love and relationships I am sure she could help me work through my problems. But, with war, combat, she had no place. No one close to me did. They didn’t know what to say to the fact that I was scared that I would not be able to train my guys properly. That I was scared that I might not bring some of them back.

Very few people can tell you how to deal with the recurring dreams of not, physically, being able to pull the trigger, or when you must rush to stop the killings of friends and family and you are stuck, no weapon, no equipment. Helpless.

I have sat here for six years on the sidelines. Every minute I spent training, I have invested 100% of myself into it. I know nothing of combat, but I have been to every practice. I sit here on the bench of the biggest game of the year, third string, and now I am being called up. To ensure my men do their job. To kill the enemy and win the hearts and minds of the population. To bring everyone of them home alive. It’s a terrible amount of pressure.

Yet, it is only here, in the dark, that I show my cracks for in the morning I awaken to throw on my uniform. I do everything I can to prepare my men, mentally and physically. That is the easy part though. It is gaining their trust in my leadership that is the hardest. Maybe it is due to the slow pitches we have received in training, that makes them believe that our job is a little too simple. It might even be the fact I myself have no idea about the essence of combat therefore, any remark I make sounds as though it comes straight out of a text book.

I do not know what it might be; all I am aware of is how it shakes me during these nights. Alone and constantly harassed about what I feel.

She wants to know what I feel. Well overall I feel nothing, because in the morning, in the woods, the swamps, the mountains, all my mental and emotional fortitude is dedicated to them. I don’t have the luxury to decipher what is going on inside me.