Dealing with Duelality

Well this one promises to be rather weird but it's a very personal one, so bear with me please.....


I've just recently learned to deal with my first deployment to Iraq. It really messed me up a lot more then I let anyone know. I didn't let anyone in, not my friends, not my family, and not my wife. About five months into this deployment I finally talked to my wife about some of the things that were bothering me from my 2003 trip to the old sandbox.

As far as a little backround I have a drunken alter ego named Biff Calhoon. Now I won't go into his antics because that would limit my Oregon stories. They are all blogs in and of themselves anyway. He's the ass that shows up whenever I get blind stinking drunk. Everyone who drinks has one of these mostly harmless other halves. It's the being that has no inhabitions that comes out and makes an ass of us in front of our loved ones. Good times.

When I went to Iraq in 2003 it rocked my world. I was seeing things I never thought I'd see and doing things I never thought I was capable of doing. It really was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had. Definently the most liberating experience I've ever had. It was, however, a double edged sword. I started to imagine that I wasn't Mike at all. That the person doing these things was in fact Biff Calhoon. It really kicked in after my platoon was ambushed on April 13th 2003. I stayed as "Biff" untill I redeployed. Unfortunatly, when I returned home my social and intimate life completely crumbeled away as my first wife left me and I found out that she had had relations with my childhood best friend, and best man. I know I know, you're thinking that this is worse then daytime television. It gets worse....

I PCS to Germany in a morbid funk that I perceived myself as Biff all the time. I was really detached from everything that I was doing and I was really having a hard time dealing with some kind of survivors guilt from the ambush. You see I had this weird feeling before we left for Iraq that I would lose my left eye in an explosion over there. When we were ambushed the man in front of me turned to me and his left eye was gone and blood was flowing like a waterfall from the socket. I was stuned and guilt ridden that this man got the wound that was intended for me. I started to think that my left eye was in fact evil and the cause of all my problems. Biff was all for cutting it out and I was not willing to hurt myself but I was still already about half sold on the idea. I would sit in my barracks room by myself at night fighting with myself about what I should do about the eye. Luckily I got through it without mutilating myself.

Now on this, my second tour of the sandbox, it's like the veil of darkness I was under just up and lifted. Now all the confidence and self assurance that was Biff's major traits are back with me. I feel great about myself and no longer feel like I need to have an alter ego to blame shit on. The weird thing is though that now that I feel whole again I'm having a hard time dealing with what I perceive as two personal experiences for the last three years. It feels like I'm trying to stuff six years worth of experiences into the three years it actully happened in. It makes me feel odd when I think of how totally different I was when I was "Biff". Twilight Zone stuff right there. Makes for interesting story telling and since I find the funny in everything the stories will all have a dash or twelve of humor in it. I know this is not a very funny story but the personal ones usually aren't. Thanks for listening all who read this.

I'll see you all further down the road.

Mike