The Void

The void looks a lot like a patrol route.

Same roads. Same dust. Same feeling in your gut before you even step off.

We’d roll out early convoy lined up, engines humming, quiet in that way that isn’t really quiet. You check your gear again even though you already checked it twice. Weapon. Mags. Comms. You don’t say it out loud, but everyone’s thinking the same thing

Not today.

Then you move.

Eyes scanning everything. Trash on the side of the road. Parked cars. Windows. Hands. Always hands. You learn real quick that anything out of place is the place.

Sometimes nothing happens.

Those are the ones that mess with you later.

Because your body never stands down. It just holds that tension for hours, waiting for something to break it.

And when it does, it’s fast.

Too fast to think about anything except what you’ve been trained to do.

Contact front. Return fire. Move to cover. Call it up. Someone shouting directions, someone else already acting on them. It’s controlled, but it’s not calm. It’s just… practiced chaos.

Then it’s over.

Just like that.

And you’re left standing there, breathing hard, trying to piece together what just happened and who’s still with you.

Convoys were worse in a different way.

Long stretches of road where every second felt like a coin flip. You stare at the same stretch of ground so long it starts to blur, but you can’t look away. That’s where it hitsfrom underneath, from the side, from somewhere you never saw.

You learn to read the road like it’s trying to kill you.

Because sometimes it is.

And then there were the houses.

Stacking up outside a door. Waiting on the signal. That split second where everything slows down and speeds up at the same time. You already know once you go in, there’s no halfway.

Breach.

Clear left. Clear right. Move.

Room by room. Corners first. Shadows. Closets. Anything that could hide a person or a weapon. You don’t see a home you see angles, threats, movement.

People inside blur together.

Some scared. Some angry. Some unreadable.

You don’t have time to figure out which is which.

You just keep moving.

And afterward, when it’s done, when you’re back outside and the air hits you again, there’s this moment where everything feels slightly off. Like you crossed into something and came back out, but left part of yourself behind without realizing it.

That’s the part I didn’t see at the time.

How each patrol, each convoy, each house chipped something away.

Not enough to notice in the moment.

But enough to add up.

Now when I step into the void, that’s what I see.

Not just the firefights. Not just the noise.

The routine of it.

How normal it all became.

How I learned to move through it without hesitation, without question.

That’s what stays with me.

Not just that it happened

But that I adapted to it.

And some part of me never stopped operating like I’m still there.

I didn’t step into it, I stumbled into it

The void’s been there the whole time. I just kept moving, kept stacking days, deployments, anything to stay ahead of it. But it doesn’t chase you. It waits until you slow down.

And now I’m here.

It’s not quiet like people think. It’s loud in all the wrong ways. Not just noise memory. The crack of rifles, the thump of outgoing, the snap of rounds getting too close. RPGs tearing past like you can feel them before you hear them. You don’t forget that. Your body doesn’t let you.

I can still run through it step by step.

Where I stood. What I saw. What I did.

Contact wasn’t confusion after a while it was routine. Return fire. Move. Clear. Keep going. You don’t think about who’s on the other side, not really. You think about angles, cover, your guys. That’s it.

That’s how it starts.

Then one day you realize how easy it’s gotten.

How fast you switch it on.

How nothing in you hesitates anymore.

I remember the men we lost. I remember exactly where some of them fell. Those spots don’t leave you. Doesn’t matter how far away you are now you can still see it like you’re standing there again.

And I remember what came after.

The anger. The need to even it out, like that was something you could actually do. We found the ones responsible. There wasn’t a speech. There wasn’t a moment where it felt like justice. Just action. Just the mission continuing like it always does.

But that doesn’t close anything.

It just adds more weight.

There’s one memory that doesn’t file away with the rest.

A kid. Too young. You can tell right away, even before your brain catches up. Everything in you knows something’s wrong, but everything around you is moving too fast to stop it.

And then it’s over.

Just like that.

No clean way to carry that one. No way to square it with anything you thought you understood. It just stays there, playing on a loop you don’t control.

That’s when things started changing.

Not all at once. Not some big moment.

Just small things.

How I reacted. How I didn’t react. What stopped bothering me. What should have.

You come back, and people think it’s the explosions, the firefights, all of that. And yeah, that’s part of it. But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is realizing how much of it made sense while you were in it.

How natural it felt to become someone who could operate like that and keep going.

That’s the void.

It’s not just what happened over there.

It’s the version of me that existed there and never fully stayed behind.

I keep looking for a line, something that says this is where it ends and everything after is just memory.

There isn’t one.

It’s all still here.

And the hardest thing to face isn’t what I saw

It’s that I was part of it.

And I don’t know how much of that ever goes away.