The Alien at Home: Navigating Changes in Life

I’m going to go ahead and tackle this one. I’m going to do it from the perspective of not only a veteran but as combat veteran. I’m also going to approach it from the POV of the lead character in my novels. This is stuff that happens between the ears, and I invented him to explore and understand those changes in myself.

Somehow, it’s easier that way.

So here goes. In my first and second novels, (The Cross and the Badge and Life on Mars), Will Diaz makes the comment. He feels like he’s in that Ray Bradbury story where astronauts land on Mars. They pop the hatch, and there’s their hometown waiting for them.

Will Diaz has come home, but home feels alien to him. It’s a place full of people he knows, but they’re somehow different.

What’s happened is very simple. Will went away. He went through a process that changed him. We call this Basic Training. He learned to push the envelope and to do the impossible. Then he was trained to do a job. After that, he become part of something bigger than himself called the Army.

Here’s a short list of the things that happened to him:

• He worked narcotics and got to see the worst side of the human race.
• He worked Investigations which wasn’t as bad, but was close.
• He experienced triumphs.
• He’s done what everyone said was impossible.
• He’s fallen short.
• His dreams have changed.
• He experienced mind numbing defeats.
• His children grew up.
• His spouse left.
• He lost old friends.
• He gained new friends.
• He moved to a different country.
• He fought for his life and sanity.
• He saw war.
• He got sick.
• He got tired.
• He lost his career.
• He finds himself in another war.
• He stopped running and embraced Jesus.

And then some people think he’s lost his mind.

What they don’t get is Will isn’t the person he used to be.

And it’s a little while before he realizes the truth.

The world didn’t change.

He has.

They aren’t the aliens.

He is. He’s the one who opened the hatch into a world he doesn’t belong on anymore. But he has to live there. If he landed on Mars, then he has to become a Martian.

He left everyone else behind and they remained who they were. In a sense, they’re living in a time warp where nothing changes.

And that’s what a lot of people don’t get. When you leave and come back, you aren’t the same person who left years ago. You’ve been changed by whatever has happened to you.

Yet, they still see you as that person from years ago. They try to make you fit in with their memory of who you were back then. They may even try to make you fit back into the life you were living before.

I’m probably taking this out of accepted seminary teaching, but here goes. Jesus said in Mark 2:22 – “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

I think you see where I’m going with it. You can’t fit back into your old life. And if you try, it’s not going to work well for you.

Will Diaz puts it this way in one of the books. “I left a square peg. Now they try to put me in the same hole. But I’m not square anymore. I’m round. I don’t fit into their hole anymore.”

Plain and simple. You’re different now.

Embrace the difference.