Adjustment Back to Civilian Life

You’re over there, if you’re a father or a husband, you’re single. You’re like a single, one of the single guys over there. You’re on your own. You’re doing your own thing and everyone back at your house is, you know, you have nothing really to do with them because they’re in their own routine and you’re in yours and when you go back you’re still not over that. Takes quite a while to adjust to go back getting in to playing with the kids, and that, and even for the single guys, people say well they’re single what do they have? Well they have girlfriends, and just seeing the country, what we witnessed. And it’s hard to come back and listen to people say stuff, like you hear them complaining everyday and that’s like I tell my friends that were never in, I said the things I’ve been exposed to and had to do, like everything else is minor in life. Like taxes, people complain about that, and it is hard and it affects guys when they come back. They’re not the same because they just can’ ... people say, “Oh yeah I can only imagine, yeah.” Well you can’t because you weren’t there and it’s like one of the guys said actually that was in the section, they said, “Do you ever watch the news? ’ and he just basically said, “Why, we were the news over there.” So, it’s hard for people that have never like been away and exposed, see how the other side of the world lives, the third world countries especially in the middle of a war. I don’t know if anyone is really the same after coming back and seeing total destruction and death and I don’t, I know I’ve changed in ways. I’ve actually learned to appreciate life a lot more and not take things to heart. And it was kind of hard. I’m sure it affected my kids and my ex-wife, you know, and some of us still deal with it today.