The weight of what happened in Afghanistan lives in the stories I can't tell. Twenty years later, I'm learning that some truths are too heavy for words, too sacred for anything but silence.
There are words you write when you think you're dying, stained with the dirt and blood of the moment you thought was your last. Sometimes you live to frame them.
The bonds forged in combat resist translation to civilian life, leaving veterans caught between two worlds that speak different languages of connection. Even with therapy and genuine effort to open up, some experiences remain too profound and terrible to bridge the gap between those who were there and those who cannot imagine.
