Disconnected

Timmy Lyons
Nov 5 · 3 min read

After blacking out my way through the night celebrating my discharge from the Marine Corps I drove up to my sister’s apartment in Raleigh. The ceiling fan and I had a staring contest majority of the night. I woke up that following morning and drove to the Community College to take a placement test and quickly realized that after 4 years of service I still had no idea what math was.

That Monday I started class. That Thursday I moved in with my sister’s boyfriend. He had a house in the next town over and was nice enough (well my sister probably told him to) to let me crash upstairs in the extra bedroom.

I stayed up that first night drinking and looking at old deployment photos and videos. I can’t really say “old” considering some of those were taken a few months prior. Once the whiskey was gone I drove to the gas station and got some beer to start round two. I headed back, parked, and turned the car off outside the development’s community center just down the street from the house.

I sat there for hours staring into the night out of my Acura’s windshield. The Carolina humidity was the only thing keeping me, the beer, and the cigarettes company. In that heat I felt like I was in the back of an MRAP again. The turret gunner standing to my right making the grass grow with the .50 cal. The VC screaming on the radio. The driver steering us into position. My hand white knuckled on the door handle. My team and I giving each other one last nod as we prepare to exit into the fight, hearing bullets ricocheting off the truck’s armor.

I swung open the door and the sounds of war stopped. My car interior lights flickered on. The dark night was gone and replaced with my reflection in the windshield. A Marlboro Red smoked down to the filter glued to my bottom lip. Eyes bloodshot with bags under them that resemble dumbbells. I closed the door and stared into that drunken face until the lights slowly dimmed and faded away. I repeated the process a few more times before heading home.

As the best my drunk ass could, I stumbled back into the house keeping quiet enough not to wake up my new roommate and tried to steal a couple hours of sleep before heading to class for the day. That first month of school I must have done this a dozen times.

As I’m writing this years later I still can’t tell you why I did that. The inner poet I suppose being wannabe dramatic. If I had to guess it was due to the emptiness I felt. Those first few months after getting out were full of nothing but disconnection. In those final moments before swinging open the door and the lights exposed my new found reality, I felt connected again. It’s safe to say that’s what all veterans miss.

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