When Twenty Years Vanish

Forgive my redundancy; I’m still hung up on the anniversary of my deployment to Kuwait and Iraq in 2005. We had our twenty-year reunion last weekend, and I laughed and smiled until my face hurt. It was great seeing so many people I hadn’t seen in two decades. I’ve been fortunate to stay connected with many of them since that deployment, but it has been an active pursuit.

I’ve tried to keep people in touch by organizing camping trips, the documentary we filmed, and, lately, semi-regular monthly dinners at a local Mexican restaurant. Connection is a phone call, text, or Facebook message away for most of us, but many opt not to reach out. Life goes on. We all get busy, and then we look back on the lost years. Nostalgia whispers her sweet lies about better times, and we languish in an unfulfilled, lonely present.

One conversation that stood out to me at the reunion was about the relativity of time. When we deployed, most of us were between eighteen and twenty-two years old. A year in a foreign country, plus another four to six months in training on either end, seemed like a lifetime. The year dragged by at a painfully slow pace. Many of us felt like that time away from our “real world” set us back from whatever trajectories we thought we had for our young lives. Now, years pass like blurry ghosts on the periphery of our sightline. Where does the time go?

I turned forty-two today. My mind still thinks I’m the same twenty-two-year-old kid. I blinked, and the last twenty years have gone by. In some ways, those years feel wasted, and I chide myself for not being further along on whatever path I once imagined for myself.

That brings me to another theme that kept coming up during the reunion. People asked me about my books and other ventures, and they seemed to think I’m doing better than I am with this creative miasma. I guess, from the outside looking in, I can see how the things I’ve done may seem impressive. But that old imposter in me rises when people say these things. When they refer to the books I published years ago, I dismiss the accomplishment by pointing out that I self-published, as if that cheapens it. The same goes for my weekly articles, videos, films, and all the other media I’ve scattered across the internet for two decades.

I’m prolific, but far from a success story. To date, most of these projects have cost me more than they’ve earned—at least in a financial sense. Yet, to be vulnerable and understood may be worth more than any money I could have made. Still, I work toward the dream of one day making a living with my creativity. I still believe it will happen, and I’ve come close a few times. I’m a storyteller, and I vacillate between mediums to express those experiences. I’m itching to film and photograph more ideas, for example. My pen never has time to dry; I pray it never does.

The day after our reunion, I had an immovable lump in my throat. I couldn’t explain the feeling to my wife. Later, I tried talking with my brother, Shawn, and my best friend, Daniel—both of whom were at the reunion and on that deployment—but I still couldn’t find the words. I just ached with immense sadness. It was something like déjà vu mixed with a crushing weight of grief I couldn’t articulate. Although I spend much of my time telling stories, there are some I try to push down. There are moments I wish to forget. Those memories kept bubbling up all weekend.

I can’t even fully explain what they are, other than feelings of having traded my youth for some ideal I’m not sure I even understand anymore. I long to be half my age again, full of the vigor and possibilities of youth. If I’m lucky, I’ll get at least another twenty years on this planet, and I can imagine looking back at my current age and lamenting how good it was then. It was an emotional weekend, to say the least.

R.A. Salvatore once said, “Nostalgia is possibly the greatest of the lies that we all tell ourselves. It is the glossing of the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some, it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and of source, but others, I fear, take these altered memories too far, and because of that paralyze themselves to the realities about them. How many people wonder for that past, simpler, and better world, I wonder? Without ever recognizing that truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them.”

There were never “good old days,” just memories refracted through a broken lens we pretend projects the perfect truth. Those years weren’t lost, and it’s an error to long for a time that likely never existed in the first place. Still, I pray the next twenty years don’t pass nearly as fast. I’ve got a lot of living to do and stories left untold.

_______________________________________

Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

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.