In moments of deepest darkness, we are the monsters called forth. We are the devils summoned to bypass pleading with God for forgiveness. Beckoned and summoned, only to be cast out and crucified in the light.
We are what the world demands of us. We are what we must be so the world can exist. We are the necessity, swiftly discarded in the wake of success. We shoulder the burdens of Atlas so the collective conscience may float as lightly as a feather. They grovel at our feet in despair and spit in our faces after the conquest is won. We are the means to their end, traded for an end stripped of means.
We are the shadow before brightness. Forsaken for what we did in darkness so that others might bask in light. Our presence in the warmth relies on forgetting the unforgettable. They stand in our triumph and demand we renounce all we were asked to do. Payment comes at the cost of our dignity, forcing us to grovel and beg as they once did. To relinquish what we hold dearest—our honor—and kneel to their cowardice, so they might be absolved of guilt and shame.
Asked for the impossible, we cannot escape the shadows. Forever exiled from the kingdom we created and preserved, we become the monsters they feared, haunted by the demons of a past they cannot comprehend. Left to torment ourselves for their peace, the world gasps in astonishment when we seek solace in fermented forgiveness, court devastation, or embrace suicidal solutions.
We are the forsaken saviors, bound to the darkness, condemned for eternity, and shackled by our loyalty to the call of others.
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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on January 14, 2025.
Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.
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.
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