The Stories We Don't Tell

Some stories live in the spaces between words. In the pauses when someone asks, "What was it like over there?" Stories that press against the inside of my skull like trapped birds, trying to fly but bound by promises I made long ago.

For years, I carried them alone.

Not the sanitized versions I could share: the mountains were beautiful, the work was hard, and I did my job. No…not those, but the real versions. The ones written in dust and blood, in split-second decisions that altered the course of lives, in moments so raw they still taste like copper and fear twenty years later.

The ones about the boy who used to wave at our convoy every morning until the morning he didn't. About the family huddled in the wrong building at the wrong time. About young men barely out of their teens on both sides, bleeding out in rocky valleys, calling for mothers who would never know where their sons died.

You learn to live with locked rooms in your mind. Doors you can't open, not even for the therapist who's trying to help you make sense of nightmares about places you can't name, people you can't acknowledge, things that happened but didn't happen.

Untold stories change how you walk through the world.

Every conversation becomes careful navigation. You develop a second language made entirely of omissions. Master the art of saying nothing while seeming to say something. Learn which truths can breathe in daylight and which must stay buried.

It seeps into everything. How can you explain why certain sounds make you dive for cover when you can't describe where you first heard them? How do you grieve for people whose names sit heavy on your tongue? Their families believe different stories. Cleaner stories. Stories without mountain passes and midnight operations and the weight of a knife in your hand.

But there are other stories…even darker ones. The kids who were caught in the crossfire. The men and women who were just trying to live their lives when war came to their doorstep. The ones who didn't deserve what happened to them. You don't talk about them. Can't talk about them. Won't talk about them.

Some memories are too heavy for words, some guilt too deep for confession. The silence becomes its own kind of prison.

The silence holds everything. The missions, the close calls, the faces of the dead. The inside jokes that kept us sane. Moments of unexpected beauty in forgotten valleys. The profound bonds forged in places most people will never know existed.

It holds the unbearable things too. The girl's pink backpack in the rubble. The old man, who reminded me of my grandfather, was caught between forces he didn't understand. The mother's wail while holding her dead child…that still wakes me up some nights. It’s a sound that transcends language, that needs no translation. These are the stories that live in my chest like shrapnel, working their way deeper with each passing year.

So you learn to translate.

To find ways to carry the truth without speaking it. The weight of a bourbon glass becomes a prayer for brothers whose names I whisper only to empty rooms. A photograph of mountains holds memories I'll take to my grave. You write in metaphors. Speak in symbols. Live in the space between what happened and what you can say happened.

Sometimes at the grocery store, I see a child the same age as the ones I saw over there. Same bright eyes. Same boundless energy. The same trust that the world is safe. My hands shake. I abandon my shopping cart and walk to my Jeep until I can breathe again. This is the tax on survival, seeing ghosts in every innocent face.

Twenty years of silence create their own gravity. The stories have crystallized in the dark, become something harder and sharper than mere memory. They've become part of your bones. And bones don't give up their secrets easily.

But slowly, carefully, you learn to speak again. Not everything…some doors will stay locked forever. But enough. Enough to feel human. Enough to help others understand that the weight you carry comes from more than what you did. It comes from all the things that live in the silence between words.

You become a keeper of ghosts. A guardian of memories that few will ever hear. You learn that some truths are too heavy for casual conversation, too complex for simple explanations, too sacred for anything but the deepest trust.

In that silence, you find a different kind of truth. The truth of carrying weight that can't be shared. Of honoring promises made in dust and darkness. Of living with rooms in your mind that will always stay locked.

Some stories can never be told. But their weight speaks volumes to those who know how to listen to silence

For all those who carry untold stories, whose memories remain unspoken, whose truth lives in the spaces between words. Your burden is seen, even if your stories can never be fully known.