I saw her today that young mother with her infant asleep in the pram and the playground was loud you know with the squealing and the constant thudding of feet and the mothers were gathered round the edge of it all just chattering away as if they were oblivious to the cacophony but she wasn't she was just sitting there on the bench looking at them with a kind of profound wistfulness a separation I recognized immediately a diagnostic symptom if you will of a particular kind of solitude... and I remember that feeling from so long ago from my own early days with the first one before the deployments before the real fracturing began It takes me back you see to when I was a raw recruit in civilian life after my first tour everything felt alien the small talk the casual intimacy people shared so effortlessly as if they hadn't seen things that make a person perpetually guarded you just sit there and observe the patterns of human interaction the subtle non-verbal cues the way they lean into each other with such unguarded trust and you realize you're performing a charade of normalcy to fit in but that the truth is you're always on alert always just a little outside a little detached a silent observer of the human comedy playing out around you and that young woman on the bench she had that same look in her eyes... a kind of mild anhedonia perhaps a subtle withdrawal from the immediate pleasantries of social engagement I wanted to tell her something you know just a whisper of recognition that it gets easier or it gets harder depending on how you define ease but I just sat there too you see a mirror image across time unable to bridge the gap the chasm that forms when you've been taught to compartmentalize to suppress to maintain a disciplined exterior no matter the internal turmoil... the infant was sleeping peacefully oblivious to the quiet drama unfolding around it and that's how it should be I suppose the world continuing on its merry way regardless of the silent battles being fought by those who watch from the periphery...