Pre and Post.
It had been three days since the last time I had heard artillery fire.
The few seconds of anticipation that preceded the inevitable impact of unknown location. The seemingly endless minutes trying to become one with the ground as you shut your eyes and prayed. The closet huddles of men, trying to fit into a room meant for clothing and coats hanging from hangers, now a room of escape and desperation for human beings hanging onto life. The scream of the incoming round was exceedingly and forever more the worst part of modern warfare.
I have made bargains with the good lord above that I sure as hell hope I can make good on in those moments. I have prayed harder than I ever thought possible and mouthed words to a deity that I likely should not have said at all, I've cursed it, I've begged it, I've cried to it.
It was frustratingly little consolation when the artillery fell silent, because of the inevitable possibility of more, and more. The inevitable push from the infantry and armored vehicles that would come or was already upon us post-barrage. As we emerged from our fighting holes, our closets, our structures and readied weapons as quickly as possible, our only real consolation was the fact that we were so emotionless and dead inside from the dissociative nature of experiencing trauma that we performed our preparations as robotic as you could ever see any man do a proficient job in his work.
The last sustained barrage I had endured was one that rendered me into a state of numbness I couldn't seem to break. I had been back on familiar soil for a few days now and I still cringed and jolted at the smallest hint of a similar sound. It was the only time I felt anything of meaning, beyond the superficial gratification.
Everything had become "before the war", or "after the war". Life's hues and color variations had become one long shade of "Pre" and "Post". As fucked up as everything had been Pre, even still it was looked upon as a profoundly more enjoyable and meaningful time than the Post. I was so thoroughly burnt out in every way imaginable.
To this day I can't see the reason of point for life's self aware convolution that seems to completely debilitate me in every way imaginable. Every day of my waking existence since I returned from what had shook me to the very core of my own, seemed to blend together into a puree of anhedonic misery punctuated by intense guilt and remorse and ruminative thought loops of the what-if and why.