The Scar of War And His Suicide To Escape It

Veteran Crisis Line
The Scar of War And His Suicide To Escape It 

He returned with a heavy heart. With a fierce storm raging in rain, thunder, and dark clouds. Memories of war collided beneath his chest. His lost brothers he could feel in the very bones of his soul. Nothing felt the same in this place he called home.

No words could describe the surmountable anguish that tore each second at his mind, creating a vast chasm. Loneliness slowly consumed him. Leaving him branded as a mental case, coming unhinged to reality. Drowning in the constant flavor of hops. Leaving no moment to be sober. Covering the storm with another, that if the fog became to thick to see, then his pain did not exist.

Flooded with anxiety of what he left behind in the chaos of war. He could not escape the nagging of all the thoughts he prayed to forget. Tarnished he felt, guilty, burdened, he felt far from a hero. Though each friend, each member of his family embraced him as one.

And on each night of his return, he sat at that foot of his bed. Holding dog tags and a picture of a lost brother. Both smiling wearing their uniforms against a dusty scene as their faces appeared young still. And each night he looked himself in the mirror. Eyes hollow, drunken in state, and voices would whisper. Tingling with a strange taught feel, as if something needed to be pulled from his flesh.

His skin was no longer his, his face, his mind, his heart, were foreign. They were left in the sands, in the stresses of combat, of violence. His entire existence felt cluttered, hopeless, an end is what he wanted.

And as nights passed, the edge to it all grew closer. Nights became more restless, nightmares became so vivid, he could taste the foreign air he once breathed. His bodied covered in sweat, his entire being on alert. And waking to such horror, he would quickly draw lonesome. For there was no one to hold, no one to speak to, at least in the confines of home.

And when these moments happened. He would reach with a trembling hand and grab his phone. With a finger shaking wildly over the numbers. As a voice whispered, telling him to call, to talk to a friend, to those who served beside him during such hell. But then, that one voice would be drowned by the thousand echoes of misery, of guilt, hate, and rage.

Self-loathing clouded his judgement. Closing his eyes and returning to bed, he would wake with a dry mouth an a anxious heart. Quickly repulsed by these feelings, he would find himself at the call of a glass bottle. Instantly a rush of euphoria would surge through him, a smile would find his face. But quickly fade to false dopamine that lined his system. Another bottle, another, and another. Till any sense of life became nothing but a distant flicker of light.

And in his compulsive need to escape his suffering. He found the edge to be at his feet, standing at it he looked down. Nothing but emptiness, nothing but darkness, but oh it felt so good. The release to nothing seemed so clear. To fall into the hollow, to become absent in existence, to no longer hear the voices that shriek. And as he stood at the edge, the voices screamed, they held with ferocious grip, the demons spread their long dark tattered wings and circled every thought he had.

This was it, his head became the hell he wished to escape, the horrors of it all played with rhythmic purgatory. Collapsing, saliva leaping from his mouth, "No more!" He screamed, reaching to his side. Wrapping his fingers around cold steel, tears falling with no intention to cease. Guilt, rage, misery pulled with no consent, bringing him to his knees. A barrel placed into his mouth, bottles laying at every floor of his home.

But in the shrouded bleakness of this moment, a sudden knock came from the door. He turned his head, and their, at the window of his home, peering in, his old team leader. Calling out his name in worry. 
 ---
Thank you for reading, I hope this piece brought something to your heart. For too many soldiers kill themselves upon returning home. If you know anyone that has been to war, whether they are showing signs of suicide or not, let them know they can freely talk to you about anything.  Veteran Crisis Line
If you have read any of my others pieces or this is your first, please grab a copy of 
A Man's Traveled Heart
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