The Demon

I found myself curled up in a fetal position on the bottom of my bath tub. While the cold water from my shower ran over my body, I cried. I cried for my husband. I cried for my kids. And I cried for myself. A demon that we had locked deep in a closet, under our house, in our basement had crawled his way out. And that demon was taking over our home. He was tearing our family apart by the threads and I felt helpless. As that demon visited with our friends and screamed in their ears, the secrets we had locked away with him started pouring out, and our family and friends were shocked, mortified, and fearful. I cried in that shower for hours. I felt afraid. I felt alone. And I felt ashamed.

I'd heard many things over the years about that demon. I'd heard about his love of wrecking homes and breaking up marriages. I'd read articles and books about how he destroyed the soldiers he possessed. He'd drive them to drinking. He'd drive them to hurting people they loved. He'd even drive them to suicide. That demon always crept out of the soldier slowly and painfully, leaving shattered glass on the floor of the soldier's home and broken promises and injured memories in the hearts of his family and friends. I'd heard it all and I thought I was prepared. But nothing could have prepared me for how evil that demon truly was or the turmoil that he would leave my family in his wake.

Maybe my lack of preparation was a product of how naïve I truly was. I knew The Demon existed, but I never knew he could exist within my husband. During the long nights he spent at war, I would lay in bed and tell myself how bored he must be. He sat on a base in a hot desert playing cards or board games with his brothers. Yes, I would tell myself that war was something our media had fabricated and our soldiers were save. It made the deployments easier. It made those countless weeks between phone calls and letters seem so much more manageable. And it was easier to pretend that his time overseas was a vacation than it was to admit my husband was at war. Maybe because I pretended everything was fine it made my family an easy target for that demon. We were easy prey.

I don't exactly know when The Demon possessed our family. I have spent many hours trying to pin point the exact moment he crawled into my husband's ruck sack and got a free ride from the middle east to our American home. Was it on that first deployment with the marine corps when his mentor was shot down in the streets of Fallujah? Maybe it was that third deployment. I've heard rumors that my husband saved a convoy by risking his life somewhere in the mountainous country of Afghanistan. I'm sure either one of those instances could have invoked The Demon. Or maybe it was one of the many encounters with the Taliban. Or maybe, my husband picked him up during one of those moments he doesn't talk about. The ones that keep him up at night. I don't know when The Demon found my husband and I guess, it really doesn't matter when. It just matters that he is here now.