“I am not the same man.”

I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed with this ongoing fright. Even now that I am home my thoughts and memories roam to the days where I was in a foreign land, fighting for the freedom of man. I committed acts in the name of a nation and that was my only justification. It's over now or so they say, but who is to say we went the right way? How can something in the name of good create memories that now challenge for what I once stood? I'm not the same from when I left. I am filled with guilt, filled with regret. I see countless faces in my dreams opening their mouths to scream. Innocence, innocence. How can I claim to have acted in a sense when my actions created a presented tense that made it nearly impossible for those afflicted to have a defense?

“I am not the same man.”

I have seen far too much in life, images that bring about strife. I cannot erase the memories. I feel my heart constantly bleed. The past mixes with the present and there is not a day where I don't lament. So many days, so much time spent. How can life ever go back to being pleasant? We went to fight a war but I came back with so much more. I came back with memories of pain and an air of shame to my name. I went to fight in the name of freedom and I came back with trauma to my Eden.

“I am not the same man.”

I left as a man who was complete, but look at me now. Piece by piece. See the fear that I have with me every day, how the past has become my today. I look around this place and thank God we're still in his grace. I pray that one day I can forget and be blessed with an outset. I fought in the name of my country but I don't expect you to praise me. War is not an event to be praised, don't stand there and be amazed. No matter how it is phrased, this is not how a nation should be raised. Once so tall and so strong, I now find myself living in the wrong. Remembering those acts of war that have my heart completely torn.

I can assure you now that I am not the same man.