Response to American Sniper demonstrates vast spectrum of war experience

I’m cleaning, like I do when I’m anxious. My husband Colin is thinking about shoes.

“Women and children,” he says. “You determine their intent by their shoes.”

We saw American Sniper earlier. All through the movie I fidgeted, like I do when I’m anxious. Colin sat rigid. Now he’s thinking about shoes.

“Women have no cause to wear shoes with tread,” he says. “So if they are, they are far more likely to blow you up.”

I say something like, “that makes sense,” because it does, and because I don’t know how else to respond. I often don’t know how to respond when Colin’s brain is in Afghanistan. I know his mind needs to dwell there for a while. It bounces between mountain passes and desert, between quiet conversations and the rumble of Humvee motors, or gunfire. Often it fixates on the suicide bomber who rammed his truck into Colin’s convoy. The young Afghan boy caught in the explosion. Colin’s gunner, his friend, engulfed in flames.

My brain goes to Afghanistan sometimes, as well, but to another time, another location, another mission. Colin served as an infantryman in 2006. My role in 2009-2010 as part of a nation-building Provincial Reconstruction Team was largely bureaucratic. However, when we met in 2012, Colin and I connected through our disparate war stories. We talked. He lent me his then-unpublished manuscript of war poetry. I shared an essay about redeploying. Our writing, our experiences, were drastically different. But they were also the same.

I discovered this connection, too, with my mother, who served as a nurse in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. When I came home from Afghanistan, despite the decades, borders, and job duties that separated our wars, Mom and I found common elements weaving through each deployment, and the aftermath.

In the weeks since its release, American Sniper has generated heated discussion of many colors: respect and admiration for what Chris Kyle and his family endured, attacks on his character, praise for the film’s raw and intimate portrayal, admonishment for lack of political context, rebuff for the use of the mythical/hero formula and appreciation for the same.

Perhaps the most impassioned debate comes from within the veteran community. I’ve seen numerous articles and social media posts from veterans proclaiming that the movie did not accurately represent their time in the military or in Iraq. Many express the valid concern that this contemporary war film will become the contemporary war film and will shape (or perpetuate) public opinion. Others rejoice that the movie has spurred conversation, regardless of the nuances.

The response mirrors war itself. War is a spectrum. Or more accurately, war is a complicated graph of various separate but related spectrums: of danger and comfort, of excitement and fear and humor and absurdity and friendship and guilt and shame and pride.

Veterans easily point fingers at those who had it worse, or better, or different.  We elevate some to the top of the heroism hierarchy. The rest are left muddling somewhere in the middle.

Kyle’s war certainly more closely resembles Colin’s war than it does mine. Still, Colin never engaged in urban combat (“urban” isn’t a term associated with most of Afghanistan). Colin worked directly with the local population, rather than viewing them solely through a rifle’s scope. He didn’t deploy multiple times. He didn’t leave a family at home.

But the movie left him thinking about shoes.

“I shouldn’t be sad,” Colin says. “I didn’t even come close to doing what Kyle did. But I did more than most, so it’s not like I feel insufficient. I don’t feel depressed. I just feel sad.”

I feel sad, though for different reasons. I’m remembering being on the other side, when my mom deployed and left me behind. I’m thinking about all the things I might have done differently in Afghanistan, all the things I might have done better. I’m trying to figure out what “better” would have been.

I’m also worried about Colin, because I’ve seen his sadness spiral deep and dark and lasting.

No, Kyle’s war was not Colin’s war. It wasn’t my war, or my mom’s war. It wasn’t anyone’s war but Kyle’s. Yet his narrative contains threads Colin and I, and many other veterans, can latch onto.

For the general public, American Sniper provides one perspective. One perspective, from one man, in his unique personal circumstances—and filtered through a Hollywood lens. One perspective cannot come close to a full representation of war.

But it helps.

As long as we have war, we need discussions of war, stimulated by literature, film and other mediums. The public bears responsibility for consuming and engaging with this art, in all its forms, from all its sources: veterans, journalists, civilians, Iraqis, and Afghans.

However, the onus is on veterans, too: for producing it. In order for the public to listen, read, view, veterans must speak, write, create. If we hope to achieve an environment in which veterans can have comfortable dialogue with non-veterans, where discussions of war are candid, not taboo and not sensationalized; if we hope to bridge the oft-referenced “civilian-military divide,” we, the veterans, must lay the groundwork. We must stop the finger-pointing and heroic hierarchies. We must put aside the pride and stubbornness and self-sustaining ideas that one type of soldier has more right to tell his or her story than another. We must welcome all narratives: familiar, traditional, and not. 

More narratives facilitate both a greater public understanding of war and increased opportunities for each individual veteran to find a story—or a thread—to which he or she can relate.

“I’m sad,” Colin says again. “I don’t quite know what to do with that.”

Eventually, he settles on sleep. The next morning he decides to join a support group at the VA.

The limits of “therapy”: Some writing on not writing

I left the Air Force, I moved across the country, I enrolled in grad school, I started a blog to write about war. But I never said writing about war was easy.

I said it was therapeutic. And it was. Until it wasn’t.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when that shift occurred – I think it’s been shifting for a while – but it manifested itself in a very unattractive emotional breakdown last week. In the midst of my crying/nose blowing/self-pitying incoherent sob-infused mumbling, I had an epiphany: writing about painful experiences is painful.

Okay, that wasn’t really an epiphany… it’s pretty self-explanatory: Writing a personal account of a traumatic event means reliving, re-engaging, re-imagining said event. Of course it sucks! But writing also means processing, intellectualizing, making peace with the event, essentially ripping off the Band-Aid and exposing the raw wound so it can be treated properly. So you can heal.

Writing is proven effective in promoting healing after trauma – proven through my personal experiences and through legitimate scientific and psychological research. Cognitive Processing Therapy, one of the main methods currently being used to treat PTSD in military veterans uses writing as a key component; it’s a direct antidote to the PTSD tendency of “avoiding people or experiences that remind you of an event.” (My boyfriend, Colin, chronicles his personal experiences with Cognitive Processing Therapy in a blog series for Copaiba.org)

What I realized, though, as I writhed on the floor of my boyfriend’s car (seriously), is that there’s a limit to how much healing can take place within the delicate balance of reimagining and intellectualizing. Too much of the former too soon following the event, or within too short of a timeframe, and the brain can’t progress to the latter.

Looking back, I think I tipped the scale during my final assignment last semester. I wrote a piece about my first experience with death in the military; a friend was killed when the aircraft he was piloting crashed in Afghanistan. Understandably, it was a hard piece to write. But the event had been gnawing at me . . . I knew I had to process it, and writing was the best way I knew how. It was painful, but I had a deadline, so I gutted it out, vomited everything up on paper. As happens with vomit, the result was a bit messy.

Armed with feedback from my class, a few weeks ago, I set out to clean up the mess. But I couldn’t. Literally. Not only could I not write any more about the event, I couldn’t even think about writing without feeling physically ill. When I wasn’t feeling ill, I was feeling terrified because I was reminded of the last time my psyche forced me to stop writing – In Afghanistan, when I slipped into my own version of the Dark Ages and wasn’t sure I’d ever find my way out.

The emotional breakdown came later, when the same ill feeling crept into other efforts at other pieces. From there it was a short leap to doubting the validity of my future plans, cursing my lack of focus/motivation/organizational skills, the malicious cycle of getting upset over getting upset, dubbing myself a failure, writhing on the floor of my boyfriend’s car.

They say if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But what if you don’t like lemonade? What if you’re allergic? What if you can only drink small doses and life just so happens to give you a crapload of  lemons?

Maybe I need to wait for my lemons to ripen a bit (though patience has never been my strong suit). Maybe I should just throw some away, try some apples instead.

Maybe I shouldn’t be mixing school (or indeed, my future livelihood) with “therapy.” Maybe I shouldn’t put so much pressure on myself to be productive (and gag the inner voice that keeps telling me it’s the whole reason I’m here!). Maybe I need to stop defining productivity in terms of numbers of pages – and numbers of pages that directly apply to my now very scattered and incoherent thesis project idea (see previous parenthetical).

Maybe I should forget about maybes and what ifs, have a glass of wine and go to bed.

If it was that easy – if anything was – this blog would be pretty lame. 

PTSD: The new four-letter word

The acronym is familiar to me, as it is to anyone who has access to mass media in the western world and can read, watch and listen to how it’s “breaking” young men and women returning from military deployments. It’s familiar to me as a veteran, who has known and worked with many whose records bear those letters. I witness every day how it colors the words and actions of someone I love.

But recently, PTSD hit me in a new way.

As of last week, I’m donating my body to science. (Incrementally, by way of Veterans Affairs research studies.) My initial study is investigating brain functioning in veterans with diagnosed stress disorders and/or traumatic brain injury. I spent a day clicking blinking computer boxes, memorizing words and pictures, and counting backwards by threes (by FAR the hardest!). The study also involved a lengthy psychological evaluation. As I prepared for that section, I settled into my chair, ready to rehash what I’ve been discussing with social workers, psychologists, and my unwitting creative writing classes for the last two years.

I talked. The psychologist nodded, scribbling notes onto a series of pages. She prompted me, I kept talking. Then there were no more pages and I had nothing left to say, and, flipping back through her notebook, the psychologist said, “Well, you’re definitely still exhibiting symptoms of low-grade PTSD.”

???????

This was not something I’d been told by the previous social workers or psychologists. This is not the diagnosis reflected in my VA disability rating, which proclaims me a sufferer of Chronic Adjustment Disorder . . . Is that the same thing?

“No,” the psychologist clarified, “they’re definitely different. What I get from you is definitely PTSD.”

Definitely PTSD. Not an official diagnosis, really. An opinion rendered in a non-treatment capacity, one of many professional opinions I’ve received. The outlier. But hearing those letters with my name brought an onslaught of emotions:

Affirmation – so that’s why I feel and act the way I do. Maybe I’m justified, after all. (Followed quickly by . . .)

Guilt – what right do I have to be linked with PTSD? I, who spent most of my deployment behind a desk, who was never shot at, who never shot at anyone, who was never blown up, who made it home safely with my entire unit. So many horrible things I didn’t experience. How can I be associated with veterans who did?

Weakness – maybe I am linked with those who suffered more, and because I suffered less but had a similar reaction, that makes me weak. They say everyone has a breaking point, maybe mine came sooner than most. Maybe I was never meant to be a soldier.

Fear – if I do have PTSD, what does that mean? There are so many things that scare me about that acronym, about the complication, the destruction it can leave in its wake.

More guilt – how can I fear the things in others that I myself embody?

Ultimately, I know I’ll be okay. I know I’ve come a long way in the two years I’ve been back from Afghanistan. In many ways, I think I’m stronger. I know I’m stronger. Those four letters are merely scribbled in a research notebook. They hung in the air for a moment over a table in a VA testing room, then disappeared.

But they seeped into my consciousness, where they’ve been gnawing at me, making me think about how we view PTSD as a society – something that has colored my perspective more than I’d like to admit.

Despite living on the fringes, I don’t understand PTSD. Most people don't. My boyfriend, Colin, had been lecturing on PTSD for a couple years before he was officially diagnosed. When we started dating, I was hesitant to get involved because of those four letters. Conversely, I was convicted by my fear. If anyone can understand a veteran’s emotional state, shouldn’t it be a fellow veteran?

PTSD is scary because it is unknown. Until recently, no one talked about it; military mental health care has always been shrouded in stigma. Now, it seems, as soon as the military is beginning to acknowledge the inevitable mental and emotional affects of war, the issue is being sensationalized outside the military, and veterans are stigmatized by the civilian community.

Lack of knowledge breeds misrepresentation and misunderstanding – two things the media is famous for propagating.

In the latest example, on April 19, “Dr.” Phil (quotations added), aired a show titled “PTSD Takes Veterans from Heroes to Monsters.” As if the title weren’t enough, it came with this melodramatic ad. Following heated response from the veteran community, the show’s name was changed to “Heroes in Pain,” post-broadcast. But the message was already out. As they stressed in public affairs training, the initial message is the one that sticks.

Before Dr. Phil’s show, military mental health advocacy faced another hurdle when U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales became the new face of modern warfare after allegedly massacred 17 civilians in southern Afghanistan. For many, Sergeant Bales has come to represent this generation of veterans: broken, unstable, a hopeless tragedy.

Veteran unemployment continues at an unprecedented rate. There is no denying the PTSD stigma plays a role. In the minds of employers, the “impressive military resume” we were all promised upon enlistment is being weighed against an imagined mental health resume.

No one wants to hire a Sgt. Bales. No one wants to associate with the likes of those profiled on Dr. Phil: the drug addict, the husband who beats his wife, the one who set his wife on fire.

To Dr. Phil’s audience, I’m Frankenstein.

To civilian employers, I’m a loose cannon.

To the VA, I’m damaged goods.

Amidst these messages, how am I supposed to view myself? How are veterans dealing with the emotional scars of war supposed to respond to military messages encouraging them to seek help when seeking help might lead to a diagnosis, and a diagnosis might lead to labels and disenfranchisement?

A new debate, discussed in this article, questions whether a name change would help alleviate the stigma around PTSD. Replacing "disorder" with "injury," for example, communicates that healing is possible.

Whatever you call it, the truth is, PTSD can be scary. It can manifest in ways which, when sufferers don’t get needed treatment and therapy, can lead to violent outbursts like the extreme examples above. These examples are hard to ignore when they scream at us from every news broadcast. But they are the exception. There are many more like Colin and me than like Sergeant Bales.   

Mental health will always be an issue in the military. Just as combat is in the job description, emotional and mental strain are among the expected side effects. Mental health is a bigger issue than it needs to be because we either don’t talk about it, or we talk about it in the wrong way. We ignore it, or we sensationalize it.

On either end of the spectrum, the ones who suffer are the veterans. And they have suffered enough. 

The sound of silence

First, an apology. I’ve been terribly out of touch. It’s not just you; it’s everything. I guess that’s what happens when you’re falling in love . . .

I’ve had a bit of an epiphany in the last couple weeks. It has to do with my last entry. And it has to do with the object of my love-falling, who you may know through blog post infamy. Since I’ll probably be referencing him frequently now, I’ll just go ahead and call him Colin. Because that’s his name.

Anyway, what I’ve realized is I like to talk. I know what you’re thinking: Lauren is loud and obnoxious and always has been! This is true. Or it was . . . until Afghanistan.

Before Afghanistan, I was a pretty gregarious, bubbly person. Probably annoyingly so. I told my parents everything. I told random strangers more than they cared to know about the Air Force. I also wrote about everything – it was my way of chronicling my thoughts and feelings, and, if I was stressed, of shaping my stressors into something tangible, something manageable.

At some point during my deployment, I stopped talking. Not entirely, of course; I don’t think I’m physically equipped to do that. I stopped talking about my feelings. As I got disillusioned and worn down, as my feelings turned more negative, I withheld them because I didn’t want to worry my family back home. On the extreme end of the spectrum – the end you’re often on in war – if I were killed, I didn’t want them to think that I didn’t believe in what I was fighting for.

For similar reasons, I stopped writing. I had been keeping a blog, and I could no longer find non-worry-inducing “spins” for my entries. I ran out of ideas. I ran out of steam.

I ran out of words.

Hello darkness, my old friend

It took me almost a year to find them again. It started with my initial visit to the Mental Health Clinic at my home base, Hurlburt Field, FL. Social workers have a way of getting you to talk, and mine started picking away at my silent veneer. One I began to open up to her, I was able to ease into talking to my parents. I called them once and prayed they weren’t home so I wouldn’t have to tell them that I was hurting. They didn’t answer. I was relieved. I cried myself to sleep. Alone.

The next day, I finally told them. The ball started rolling. Hesitantly, I let it roll to other relatives and friends.

Graduate school applications – a writing portfolio – forced me to find my written words again. They came slowly at first, then stumbling over one another, eager to break out of the dark places they’d been forced to hide.

I've come to talk with you again

When I got to grad school, I was faced with a new hurdle: talking to strangers. And not just any strangers: civilians. I would have kept my mouth shut and my pen capped if I had a choice. But I’d already chosen nonfiction writing. (Awfully silly for someone who doesn’t want to talk about feelings).

I will be eternally grateful for the amazing reception from my classmates and teachers at Emerson. If their response had been different, I might have shut down again. Who knows where I would be now. Silent.

But they were interested in my words. They were appreciative. They were supportive. They wanted to hear more. So I kept talking, kept writing. I started another blog. I got more positive feedback, and it was like oil in my rusty machine.

Because a vision softly creeping

Then I went to Chicago for a writing conference, and met other veterans, including Colin, who like to talk. I was inspired by their openness; I realized I’m part of a veteran writing community that’s gaining traction and getting louder. I added my voice. And my machine got a new engine.

That engine propelled me through my last two blog posts about the March 11 Afghanistan Massacre. The incident hit me with a bombardment of complicated emotions, and instead of burying them, I talked. I wrote.

And I realized that talking is important.

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

After my initial massacre post, I got my first ever angry comment. I’m strangely proud of that – I’m officially a controversial writer! I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to be controversial, to go against the “party line,” to exercise my First Amendment rights. I think that just might be my favorite amendment.

In a way, every writer aspires to be provocative, to incite thought, conversation, even criticism. To promote understanding. To present a new perspective. Speaking from within a community comprised of less than 1% of the American population (I’m talking about veterans, not Wall Street), these aspects are even more important. As Colin often says, in order for civilians to understand veterans’ experiences, veterans need to start talking. It’s easy to blame civilians for being “ignorant,” but the only cure for ignorance is education, and education can only come from the educated.

Like it or not, it all starts with veterans.

And the vision that was planted in my brain

After my last post, one person told me that this was the first time I’d really dug below the surface without skirting around the issues. I wasn’t conscious of that at the time, but looking back, I agree. Skirting is much more comfortable. And frankly, I’m trained to skirt. In public affairs, I learned how to tap dance around controversial topics, to answer questions in that artful roundabout way that sounds good but doesn’t actually answer anything at all. And like all military members, I learned to, in many situations, keep my mouth shut.

Now, it’s a constant struggle to keep it open. Still – after more than a year in the “civilian world” – I have to continually remind myself that I don’t need to censor my words. When you’re living in a restricted world, you don’t realize how easy it is to internalize the restrictions. (When you’re outside a restricted world, you don’t realize how beautiful your freedom is.)

Still remains

In response to the post, fellow veterans told me about some of their own demons, of their manifestations of the demons I mentioned. They told me about their struggles readjusting to life and their families after deployments. Some have spoken with therapists. Some are reluctant. One called my blog a form of therapy.

There is no more powerful motivation than the thought that my words can reach into dark places within others and help light a spark of healing and understanding.

People called me courageous for being willing to talk, to be controversial. I don’t feel courageous. I feel like I’m doing what I need to do. I have been blessed (cursed?) with a passion – and, I like to hope, a talent – that spurs me to action. It makes me talk. Then talking feels good, and I can’t shut up.

Within the sound of silence

Beware: Before long, I may start screaming.

Because that’s who I am, and that’s what I do. I’m a talker. I’m a writer. I’m a breaker-of-silence. And that’s kind of cool, because the silence needs to be broken.

I just hope people are ready to listen.


“The state of birth, suffering, love, and death are extreme states—extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge.

It is for this reason that all societies have battled with the incorrigible disturber of the peace—the artist.”

~James Baldwin, The Creative Process


Interspersed lyrics from “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

Veteran-Writers and the surprising benefits of stalking

Last week I stalked someone.

For those of you who don’t know me, I do this a lot. Don’t worry, it’s not as creepy as it sounds (at least that’s what I like to think...). I’m just being resourceful! That’s what Google is for, right?

Anyway, last week my stalking victim was Colin D. Halloran, a former Army Special Forces Infantryman, Afghanistan veteran, poet and veterans advocate. I learned that Colin and I would both be at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference last weekend in Chicago, where he was signed up to lead a panel about helping veterans transition “from Combat to College” through writing programs. Because I’m in the midst of such a transition myself, and because I’m a writer, and because I get giddy when I meet other veterans, I was intrigued. So I stalked Colin. And, perhaps against his better judgment, he was receptive.

Colin and I met the first day of the conference. In the great tradition of writers (and military veterans) everywhere, we talked over drinks. We exchanged the basics: time in service, job titles, home stations and deployed locations. We discussed our respective MFA programs. I complemented Colin on his "very un-Army" blazer and bowtie. Then, for some incredible reason, he trusted me enough to bare his soul, allowing me to pick through it in the pages of his unpublished book of poetry. The fact that he opened himself up to me two hours after we met (and after I’d stalked him!) is a testament to the veteran connection.

Now, I’m first to admit that I don’t know much about the craft of poetry. I just know how it makes me feel. And reading Colin’s poetry felt like he was reaching straight into my soul. It felt like he had inserted a device into my brain that chronicled my thoughts and fears, sorted through and unscrambled them, sucked them out and fashioned them into something tangible and accessible and – against all odds – beautiful.

It was awesome! And kind of frightening. How did this unassuming guy I just met understand so much about me?

I’ve felt a similar bond with other veterans; people who “get it,” who've “been there, done that,” who can relate to all the complicatedness spinning around in my head. It’s wonderful reassurance that I’m not alone.

Meeting a veteran-writer, as it turns out, is a double-whammy. Here’s someone else who knows what it’s like to feel a piece of writing bubbling up inside you, the manifestation of an experience trapped for too long in the past. Someone who knows the wave of relief and the drain of exhaustion that comes from finally letting it out. Someone who used to deny the big hunk of his identity that’s wrapped up in his veteran status but doesn’t anymore because of his writing. Someone who understands the power writing gives him over his experiences and tries every day to harness it. Someone who writes because he has to.

Even though we’re newly acquainted, I’ll be brash and assert that Colin D. Halloran is pretty amazing. Despite suffering from PTSD and a knee injury that forced him to be medically evacuated from Afghanistan, he wants to go back to war. He wants to pick up where he left off, to complete his “unfinished business” supporting his unit and serving his country. Amazing, right? But when I told Colin that, he shrugged it off. It’s just part of the job. Such a Special Forces response.

Colin’s poetry is profound. (SPOILER ALERT: If you stick with this blog post to the end, you’ll have the distinct pleasure of reading a piece!) Beyond being a darn good writer, though, he hopes his writing will help others. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it already has.

A former public school teacher, Colin gives readings and speaks to teachers and student populations about the unique challenges veterans face when transitioning to a school environment. He advocates writing classes in particular as a way to create a safe space where veterans can find common ground and begin to intellectualize their experiences.

In his AWP panel, Colin stressed that civilians can’t understand what soldiers have been through until soldiers understand what they’ve been through. That’s where writing comes in. Colin has been there. I've been there. We’re still there, hovering somewhere along the spectrum of healing and understanding. I imagine we’ll be hovering for a long time. Maybe forever. Hopefully moving, slowly but surely, in the right direction.

Hovering sometimes can be disconcerting. But it’s always nice to know I’m in good company.

Shout out to Colin’s fellow AWP panelists, more amazing people doing important work:
Christine Leche, a writing professor at Austin Community College, who teaches veteran writing courses. She has spent several months teaching soldiers in deployed locations and is the editor of a forthcoming anthology of veteran writing.
Charlotte Gullick, head of the creative writing department at Austin Community College, who has taught veterans.
Kelly Dalton, a Navy veteran and discourse community specialist.

Shout out to my traveling buddies Shannon and Krysta.

Shout out to AWP for supporting the wonderful world of literary dorkdom and to Chicago for being a cool town.

Now, as promised, a poem, courtesy of Colin D. Halloran:
(Watch an Colin Read an excerpt from this poem here)

THE SECOND STORY WINDOW DOESN’T SEEM SO HIGH

Or maybe it does.

I find it hard to know just what I think these days. I cannot trust the thoughts I think I think – I think.

In war I thought it all was so uncertain, but uncertainty was guaranteed. But here, college, and of all places freshmen Psych class, where certainty should be ensured by class lists and start times, I’m uncertain once more. And this window doesn’t seem so high.

I wouldn’t think of jumping (though clearly I just did). And if I can’t trust the thoughts I think I think should I put faith in the unthinkable?

Other students are looking out the window too. This window with a perfect view of approach routes, of the roof of the buildings across the street, of the main intersection. The seventeen cars that have passed. The three that have done so twice. Are the others noticing these things too? Are they aware how high it is? Or isn’t?

My peers (though it somehow seems unfit to use that word – I never complain about the weight of my backpack), they daydream. They gaze, detached, out the window because out there is not in here and in here there is a woman talking, droning, about drinking. Alcohol.

I drink alcohol. Beer mostly, but never the cheap stuff. I was cursed with a palate. Sometimes wine. This palate is developing. But that’s out there. And out there is not in here. I cannot drink in here because in here is school and out there is not, though I learn (and maybe more). And in here, here being school, there is a woman talking about alcohol.

Some guys (boys?) have stopped looking out there and begun to pay attention to this woman. She has asked who in here drinks alcohol out there. These fellows think they’re cool. I can tell because they nudge and do the “bro-nod”. Chuckles. I indicate, more reverently, that I can be counted in this category.

She moves in.

Questioning, frowning. Why? How? Fake ID? I must be wrong. This is a class for freshmen. This is why she is here. To talk to first years about their first years and the dangers we’ve been warned of since 7th grade.

But the dangers I’ve faced did not come from college bars, from darkened street corners. The four years that separate me from those wedged into desks around me carried me to places they only see in books, on TV. No streets for corners, no college for bars. Just violence from an unknown enemy. That was always certain.

So now I sit, and think the thoughts I think or dare not to, and while those around me dream, I can’t help but notice that this window doesn’t seem so high.

YOU CAN STALK COLIN TOO!
Read samples and purchase his forthcoming poetry collection here
Visit his website
Follow him on Facebook
View his blog series from Copaiba Press: "Witness", "Speak", and "Heal"

HAPPY STALKING!