Not dealing with reality had reached a realm of not just pushing my thoughts aside but adding distractions. Unfortunately, these distractions were present during the deployment, too. I had grown up so much during my time in the military, but in so many ways I was still the juvenile I was before I joined.
It’s hard to explain the threshold a soldier crosses after a long day of combat. During a firefight, the adrenaline and autonomy of my training was a lot like the sensation I felt when I played sports. The adrenaline from game day made warm-ups seem like they lasted for hours. Sometimes waiting on the fight was worse than fighting. When things finally kicked off, I was ready to start doing my job and eliminating the threat. Things changed when we got back to our COP at the end of the day. This was nothing like going back to the locker room after a game. I think we all did our best to act cool, but it seemed like everyone took at least a few minutes to just stare at the ceiling and try to bring our heart rates down. My impulse was to numb and ignore. Maybe that wasn’t entirely wrong. We faced life and death every day, and if any of us stopped long enough to absorb that, it could cause a split-second hesitation that could get someone killed the next time we went out. My mistake was choosing to distract myself in ways that compromised everything I was fighting for. And one day, while using my iPad, Paige discovered it all.
Figuratively closing my eyes and plugging my ears did not work for long, and I found myself seeking distraction outside of my marriage. This included conversations that married men should never have. Conversations that went from taking the edge off after a long day of fighting to opening the door to adultery. Conversations that went from just catching up with a friend to photos and dialogue that I knew would break Paige’s heart. Conversations that I planned to never bring up with Paige because I vowed to never let it happen again after God gave me the second chance at life. As Paige held this in front of me, I realized it didn’t matter how much I wanted to change if I wasn’t willing to face my mistakes. With proof in hand, Paige confronted me: “How could you do this? Why would you think this was okay?” But I had nothing to say for myself. I couldn’t even explain why because I personally didn’t understand why. With what little free time I had, why did I choose that? At this point, I could only think that no one would find out, and now that I had been given another chance at life, I would never make that mistake again. Thus, there was no need to volunteer the information. But as I sat there silent and guilty as charged, I realized that other people were drowning in the wake of my decisions. I felt so stupid for not having more to say, but I had my own system shock when the truth was audible coming from my wife’s mouth. I didn’t know how I could just go into autopilot with something so harmful.
Paige asked me, “Josh, what if you had died? What if I found all of this out after you were dead? Can you imagine carrying on with your life learning something like this?” She brought up a valid point, but I just didn’t think that was going to happen. It was an amplified example of what I had always done. I didn’t worry about skipping my college classes because I didn’t like to think about failing. Then I failed. I didn’t worry about partying too much because I didn’t like to think about how it could hurt my future. Then I ruined my future. War paled in comparison to the problems of an immature college student, yet I repeated the same self-medicating pattern. I fell into a temptation that in hindsight looked like the biggest betrayal of trust in my marriage, but in the moment it did what it was meant to do: numb, deaden, and distract. Numb people can’t think about consequences, which makes the chances of repetition impossible to avoid.
Paige said it felt like we were living a lie because we spent all of our time making everyone believe we were a team that was getting through this recovery together. I still felt like we were. I don’t know what I would have done without Paige advocating for me and helping me reach my goals. In a lot of ways, it confused us both. Since the day I met Paige, I have been in love with her. Even in my most selfish times, I never wanted to live life without her. But secrets like this looked like I didn’t love her at all. But I did! She was the single most important thing in the world to me on that deployment. As Paige paced around the room crying and barraging me with questions, all I could think was, I have never wanted to be with someone else. I have never stopped loving you. I just didn’t want to think about Afghanistan while I was in Afghanistan. But how could she believe that? It sounded stupid just thinking it. So, I just kept my mouth shut and apologized whenever I could. I didn’t know when I could have talked to Paige about it, but I wished so much that I had. I was angry at myself for allowing something like this to come up when I was trying to figure out life after losing a brother in combat. It would have been awkward, but I wish I would have just said
