Shell Shock

Its 3:30 in the morning, long since the sun has gone down, and like clock work I am awake and sleep is far out of reach for me, most likely till the sun peeks in the sky again.
My wife sleeps next to me, and her gentle breathing and raising of her chest makes me feel envious, for I will not reach that kind of peace tonight. Old memories are reminding my they are still there and they are still angry.
I push the covers off of me and I swing my legs to the floor, and I feel the rouch fibers of the carpet scrape my bare feet. I feel tired but not the kind of tired that can lure you back to bed; its kind of a mentally exhausted tired, and that kind never, really, goes away.
I place my elbows on my knees and rub my slightly balding head, hoping I can rub this feeling away, or at least sooth myself to some degree.
I look about my room, which is illuminated from the moon and stars outside and casts a blue hue about the room.
I hate nights like these, honestly; when the world is so quiet, I feel like the only person alive in the world, and it is a painful lonely feeling; the kind that pulls on your heart and leaves you feeling desperate and terrified at the cold silence
But these memories, these things that echo in the dark hallways and rooms of my mind; they torment me when I am at my weakest, and it looks like I am at my weakest, tonight.
Since the war ended in 1945, and I was sent home from my tour in the European theater, I have always woken up in middle of the night covered in cold sweats, shaking, hot, wet tears moistening my eyes and cheeks; feeling on the verge of balling my eyes out and unleashing unsaid sadness and rage on my lonely bedroom, in my blue light.
My old memories wake from their slumber and attack my mind with a vengeance and I am left trying to make logic out that illogical experience, but I can never seem to make it make sense, not to me, not for them, not for anyone.
59 years I have lived with the painful memories of my service in the army, and shell shock has long since passed, but for some reason the exhaustion and the pain from the experience seems to never have left me.
So, some nights when I am in the right, or wrong, frame of mind my body dozes and my haunting memories awaken and let me know they are still here with me, like an old friend, always here to comfort me always there when I need it. But this friend is neither a real friend nor a comfort to me; instead it is the reason I have always had a hard time returning to who I was before the war.
I look to my bedside and reach for the half full cup of water that my wife places there every night before she goes to sleep, and I take a sip, hoping the cold wet liquid will shock me back to the present, instead of sending me back to Bastogne.
I remember the cold winter nights of Bastogne, and the memory itself is enough to send shivers up and down my spine and make me feel like I have traveled back 59 years to the foxholes of Belgium, those damned, lonely foxholes. Where there was no line, no separation from life and death. It was all right there, the dead the living, the living dead, everywhere. I feel like I am still there.
The random shellings that made the trees that concealed and protected us were blowing up around me; men were getting shot and hit with the 88’s. All those men, some of which were my good friends, gone in the blink of an eye, no so long, no fare well, just gone. I lost my best friend in the Bois Jacque, and a number of other men I had become close with; and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to forget their faces. I still see them, looking at me for help, looking at me in agony, but I sit there, frightened and helpless; until the life is out of their eyes.
I still cry for those men, and on some nights I still cry for me. I look at the wounds I had procured from that time, and they have all healed; scar tissue has since grown over and all you can see is a small reminisce of a bullet hole and some shrapnel. Those wounds have long since healed, but the pain remains the same, and it shows no signs of going away anytime soon.
I have always prayed for amnesia, I pray to not have a single memory; I would trade in the dearest memories I have just to forget the painful ones of those days. It has never happened, so I must try and cope with all the things I have seen and been through, but by golly, it never gets better. The tanks are still patrolling, the bombs are still going off, the guns are still cutting people down, and it just never goes away. So, at night, from time to time, I dream about the things I don’t let my mind think of when I am conscious, and I wake up in middle of the night, shaking and covered in cold sweat, and I remember the war.

My wife is still snoring, I don’t think I can sleep but I want to be close to her, I want the comfort of her warm body close to mine; she is the only thing that can keep me in the present and keep me from going back to the cold unforgiving winters of Bastogne.
I lay back down and I am happy to find that my pillow Is very welcoming to my throbbing head. I grab Marie around the waste and I pull her close to me and let her body warmth envelope me.
Some nights I am still there. I am cold and hungry, scared and exhausted; talking to a man I won’t see till I die. I feel the same emotions I felt while I was there, but its hard for an 82 year old man to handle it the same way.

It has been a struggle, sometimes I don’t think about the war at all, and some days, its all I can think of. Some days I cry, some days I don’t. Its funny, I left the war 59 years ago, but the war never left me. So I carry not only the physical scars of the war, but the mental ones as well. The war ended for some, but it has never ended for me. I am still there and I am still scared, fighting for my life, and it has never ended, not for me.