The Alien Within: Dealing with Change After War

I’ve spoken often about this.

Ray Bradbury, in his awesome book, The Martian Chronicles tells a story of astronauts who land on Mars. They open the hatch, step out, and find their hometowns waiting for them. Everyone they know is there. Their homes are there. It’s like they landed back home.

But they know they’re on Mars.

That’s how I felt returning home from the Gulf War. I stepped off the plane and into a place I knew but had somehow changed. And that didn’t apply to just the states, but even Germany.

I felt exactly like I was living that Bradbury story. I hit it right on the head when I told my counselor, “I feel like Richard Muniz didn’t come back. He never got on the plane and is still in the desert out there someplace. I don’t know who this is sitting in front of you. I have all my memories, but I don’t feel like I belong here.”

It was the first hint of what had happened. The world hadn’t changed. I wasn’t wandering through some alien landscape. I was the alien wandering through a familiar landscape.

I was the one who had changed. I’d gone off and seen things, felt things, done things, while everyone else stayed behind.

And I could do one of two things. I could pretend I hadn’t changed or I could deal with it.

I chose to deal with and explore what I’d learned and felt. I found out I did return from the desert. But I was changed, transformed into something I wanted to understand better. I wanted to know how it had changed me and, in many ways, for the better.

All in all, it’s been a fun ride figuring that out.

And it isn’t over yet!