laura_don

The days blur into a haze of patrols and paperwork after that first session, but the memory of your hands on me lingers like sand in my boots—gritty, inescapable. I catch myself replaying it during do

The canvas walls of the therapy tent fluttered faintly in the hot desert wind, a makeshift office slapped together in the middle of a forward operating base where the air smelled like diesel and dust

A week slips by in the relentless grind of deployment, the kind where sand creeps into every seam of your life and the sun beats down like it's personally offended by your existence. I've been buried

You sit across from Captain Greer in the cramped behavioral health tent, the kind of makeshift setup that smells like fresh canvas and stale coffee from the mess hall. Deployment life in this dusty co