Break your Heart to Kill part 1

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

-Brian Turner

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient
because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.
Sa’di

Its the first thought when I sit up in bed, bolt upright. Next to me my wife is snoring gently. Where's my rifle, I think, even though I dont own any guns anymore. The rifle will always be in my mind.
Pills dont help. Therapy doesnt work. Nothing works because I have a story stuck in my brain, a story incomprehensible to most people. The kind of story you have to live through to get. When I was asleep I was back in the embassy. When I woke up I was here, in Texas, but during the act of waking I was in both places for the briefest of moments, thinking too myself, where's my rifle, that M16A2 that never left me side the entire time I was at the embassy.
I should have a good life. Maybe that means that I do have a good life. I have a wife that loves me and bore me a son. I have a steady job that pays my bills on time, and gives me enough loose change in my pocket to have a little fun from time to time. I am not homeless. I am not an alcoholic or a drug addict, and I do not have to spend time in prison or the county jail. I am not inpatient at a mental hospital. and last but most importantly, I have not taken my own life.
Is that what life is, then? A collection of negatives? All those things I have mentioned before, my brothers are. All those things I talked about, my brothers have done. When they look at me and grin and say no Ra-uuul, its with a lop-sided grin, the kind that zombies where. The kind the ghost wears underneath her blue burqa, walking on the remains of the dead we carried. None of this makes sense yet, I understand, but stick with me and it will.
Maybe I can share it with you, this story. It starts on an airplane.