AFGHANISTAN — I can never go back, but it doesn’t let me leave. It latches on to you like an addiction, mentally and physically, and tears you apart like a ravenous dog. The jewel of the orient, along a highway of silk, into the graveyard of empires.

It gnaws at you, especially when you know you can’t go back, mustn’t go back. Yet you go back, like a bad habit, finish a mission started but never completed. Always passing it along to your relief/replacement. Not knowing if they will ever be as good as you see yourself.

You want to go back to finish what was started for the ones who have fallen, not wanting all of the past 20 years to have been in vain for the sacrifice by them and their families.

Every time I left I’d say I’ll never return, I’ll find a new job; but never did. Like my addiction, “I quit, and never again,” but always going back.

A bad compulsion that eventually became exposed to the truth and justice at the barrel of a gun pointed at me, and my family as they slept. I had turned into the monster just like the ones I fought in Afghanistan. Unable to return on my next mission and finish honorably, I ended in shackles with a stain I cannot get rid of. Head hanging low unable to comprehend why I let myself fail. Why I didn’t do more to help myself instead of walking down the path of destruction I made.

Failing to do my part and seek help for a habit that was getting out of control. Not letting someone, any one, help me. All the tools, weapons, and loving support were there, but I spurred them away. Saying, “I can handle this.”

This war I have been fighting; long before Afghanistan became part of my vocabulary. Fought long before the Soviets were there.

Afghanistan is the “graveyard of Empires,” but for me it is my mind. Trying everyday to stay out, and in the light,

locked up by the Commonwealth in an institute of supposed “Corrections.” Trying to resurrect something; salvage the positive from this disaster I created.

I was headed back to “The Stan,” but ended up here! Locked away from society, thrown away, seen as a worthless cause, my honor stripped away by my behavior.

Is it possible to return with honor? Salvage something of my life left, and the family I hurt so bad? Make something good out of all this?

Working day by day, one step at a time, working the steps, seeking the counseling, having faith, and soldiering on.

DERECK
CLF Member, incarcerated in VA