Thomas Wolfe, a Southern writer of regional fame, is most famous for this quote (and for the book about it.) Of course you can technically go home again, but can you, emotionally speaking? What about when you’ve gone through experiences that have changed you so drastically while away from home? I don’t know.
I have mentioned before that I was raised in Arizona, but I left that state more than 22-years ago. I left there a young adult with little experience in the world. I have not been to a war zone, but the last 23-years of my life have had moments of “battle” so to speak and times that nearly broke me.
What happens when we leave home as young adults and experience the hot pressures of life that transform us? We can go back home physically to that location, but everything is different. Somehow there is almost a cruel irony as you see the landscape before you set against the backdrop of your memories. The memories are deceiving to a degree… because you simply can not contain every detail. So you go home and the luster is lacking. During those intense trials of life we tend to idealize “home” and we use it as an anchor for our hope.
I have to wonder how much more this would be if I experienced the heat of battle. Away from home for the first time. My first time out of the Country. My first time ever witnessing death. I think we are foolish to ever think that a young man or woman can go away for 12 months or more, experience battle, and then come home unchanged. I am not saying changed for the worst, mind you! I mean just changed as a normal human response to experiencing such huge life changing events.
The home front needs to be stable but also responsive, and we have to accept that our homes will be affected. We have to go into war with our eyes wide open and then receive them back home with a fluidity that allows for changes. It’s alright. I don’t think that changed people are a disorder. I think anyone who assumes they should come home unchanged and unaffected is disordered.
Ultimately the only way to regain “normalcy” is to understand that the “norm” is always changing. It’s the deep framework of who we are, our faith, our values, our love for each other, that remains constant. That’s where the foundation lies and what ever is built up around it will be eclectic and will simply reflect the experiences we have had over the past 5-years of military life. We are who we are and there has been a lot of peace for me, personally in just embracing that concept.
In regards to Thomas Wolfe, I think in our mind exists a past that is one dose realism, another part nostalgia. After any time away, fact and fiction get mixed. Sometimes it was better, or other times it was worse. Add to this our new experiences, and who we are now. We can’t go home again because our world has gotten so much bigger.
Those who go into battle come back changed. To see death, poverty, experience the intensity of fire, and to take each step with a bit of uncertainty will change a person forever. I suppose this descent into and emergence from hell is a universal truth, the thing that can make soldiers from two opposing sides meet and talk 40 years after they were battling one another (WWII, Vietnam).
Similarly, I wonder about the “child soldiers” in Africa. Can they ever reintegrate as adults into a society without going through the same exact problems that our soldiers do –perhaps even worse? I think about combining the normal painful teenager experiences with that of PTSD.
Everyone who goes through or stands along the periphery or is part of that person’s community is changed by war. But it’s not necessarily all bad. Many take their experiences and work for change to help others.