My Greatest Fear

My greatest fear is not going home. It is going home and finding out that I like it more here than I do at home. I hope that this fear is never realized, for my wife as well as myself, for my sanity. The past two years has been one long lesson in which I have learned more about myself than I ever thought possible. The past few days I have spent in recollection of the choices that I have made that have brought me to this point. The question that has been at the forefront of my mind is why am I still here? I can't seem to find an answer that I can accept. I tried to say that it was for the money, the college, patriotism, to give my wife a life that she could not have otherwise. None of these answers can quell that nagging thought. I may never be able to give myself an answer that I find truly acceptable. I find myself thinking that I may have done this for all the wrong reasons. If all those reasons were wrong, then what are the right reasons? Are there any? My mind constantly nags me, telling me I have wasted the past two years of my life, but I know I have not. The past week has been the longest of my life, as I know the next two will be even longer. I am anxious to go home, but at the same time am reluctant, as I wonder how my friends, my family, will look at me. If I will ever be able to sit at the table on Thanksgiving and not feel like an outcast, a stranger in my own home. Will they ever be able to comprehend the things that I have been through, my experiences? My memories? The sound of the car bomb going off, seeing the mushroom cloud, wondering if that is all or if they are going to try to hit the camp again? The sound of the first mortar hitting the ground in the distance, wondering if the next one that hits is going to result in a an officer knocking on my wife's door, a flag being handed to her with an officer quietly whispering these words into her ear: "Mrs. Hatfield, this flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation." I wonder if it would have been worth it, laying my life down in a foreign country that is most likely going to return to the ninth level of hell once we leave it. I wonder if it was worth the lives of those we have lost, SPC Walters, SPC Casey, and many others. Maybe in thirty or forty years I will be able to sit down with my grandchildren as they ask me about Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully I will be able to tell them how proud I was to be a part of the change, how I helped them improve their countries, how I did my part. I truly hope that is how this turns out, but I have my doubts. I hope that I can find an answer to my nagging question, but I fear I never will.