Humans of New York: In Afghanistan I spent so much time imagining what it would be like when I came home

    I've always been someone who is incredibly sensitive to violence. Even in war films, I get nervous and disturbed by fake blood and fake guns. I can't watch Saving Private Ryan anymore because of a specific scene where one of the characters is stabbed. So reading about a war veteran's experience in battle was as gruesome and shocking to me as I expected. But what I didn't expect was how disturbed I was by his story of coming home. 

    The veteran's retelling of arriving back from his deployment to basically no one without a warm welcome was so cold and shockingly real that I really felt for him. If the carnage of war isn't enough to handle, the level of isolation that comes with it -both physically and mentally- is something I don't think I'd handle well. 

    I'm not somebody who believes deeply in worshipping soldiers or thanking people for their service. I think the United States is a villain that uses freedom and liberty as excuses to drain innocent regions of their resources, killing innocents in the process. Additionally, I think many in the military are examples of an exploited proletariat who enlisted in the military for promises of pension and subsidized education. We turn poor people into soldiers, and then mask this heist by calling them freedom fighters.

    I guess my point in mentioning this is because... I don't have a lot of love or admiration for veterans of war, sympathy more so than anything. I bet they're all fine individuals, but blanket respect feels to me like I'm condoning the behavior of our military. So it takes a lot for me to think of a war veteran as a hero, because more times than not, I don't think the United States is the good guy. But this story really made me feel sympathy for this medic. Knowing how hard it must be to integrate him back into a world completely different from the one he left must be traumatizing in its own right. And I certainly felt that when he described it. 

https://www.humansofnewyork.com/tagged/Invisible-Wounds#7