The Fear We Carry

“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.” – Patton

Those lucky enough to have children have probably heard it before—“My dad isn’t scared of anything.” It’s how they see us, standing ten feet taller than everyone else.

Then came the question that caught us off guard. “What are you afraid of?” She had just met the guys from my time in Syria, and one of the girlfriends giggled, whispering that we don’t ask those kinds of questions. I glanced around, confused—not just by the question, but by the idea that there were things we weren’t supposed to ask.

“Senior, what are you afraid of?” I asked, taking her hand, a silent reassurance that even as an outsider, she belonged here.

He hesitated. “Honestly, I haven’t thought about that in a while.”

We’ve all been shot at—some in war, some in the streets we ran as kids. We’ve seen what IEDs and EFPs can do to a body. Yet sitting around the fire, no one could say what they feared.

Dying?

Being shot?

Blown up?

Watching your friends die?

The question was waved off. The fire faded to embers, conversations to murmurs, steps to stumbles. We said our goodbyes, dragging each other to truck beds and passenger seats.

Senior carried me to the car, his grip firm in a final embrace. “Clay,” he said softly. I looked up. “I’m scared of the ones I didn’t bring home. That I wasn’t good enough.”

Collapsed in my seat, I whispered, “I’m scared I’ll never be enough to make up for what I’ve done.” Her eyes welled with tears, the weight of fear settling in—the kind that lingers, unspoken and heavy, the kind that changes how you see the world forever.

It makes us human. It’s the weight we carry, the reminder that we care, that we still have something to fight for. Fear means we have people we love, responsibilities we hold, and memories that refuse to fade. It’s not the absence of fear that makes us strong, but the ability to face it—and to keep moving forward despite it.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what truly defines us—not the battles we’ve fought, but the ones we continue to fight within ourselves.

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Clay D is a father and veteran of 5 war zones with 9 combat deployments, 3 brothers KIA, and 1 Divorce. Most of his adult life was spent in the Middle East & South East Asia.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.