A continuation of my November 11 story

For everyone who read my Veterans Day story — the blast, the mission, and the things we faced in Ramadi — thank you. I never expected the response it received. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, it’s in my deployment file:

But what most people don’t understand is this:

The war didn’t end when I came home.

It just changed uniforms.

After Ramadi, I went through one of the roughest periods of my life — and none of it happened in Iraq. This was the part no one saw. The quiet collapse. The internal bleeding that doesn’t show up on any X-ray.

Within 24 months, my life became a storm:

• moved to Germany

• deployed into combat

• came home broken

• got divorced

• moved back to the States to pick up my kids

• PCS’d to Fort Hood

• buried their grandmother

• got remarried

• PCS’d back to Germany

• raised three kids alone

• battled PTSD

• got hit with financial pressure

• and tried to build a home from nothing

It wasn’t a movie.

It wasn’t a “thank you for your service” moment.

It was survival.

While I was trying to hold a new family together, I was losing myself in ways I didn’t recognize. PTSD hit me in waves that felt like drowning. Night after night, the memories hit hard — the losses, the guilt, the things I couldn’t save, the mistakes I couldn’t undo.

There were days I felt worthless.

Days my mind collapsed inward like a tunnel with no light.

Days where loneliness became its own battlefield.

That’s the war no one prepares you for.

And while I was fighting that internal war, life was throwing everything at me on the outside — finances, family conflicts, instability, and people who had no business being in my life making things worse. Looking back, it felt like I was being pushed into my own breaking point.

But here’s the part that matters:

This was only the beginning.

The next chapter isn’t about Iraq.

It’s about what happened after — the stalking, the collapse, the fear, the confusion, the isolation, and the fight to keep my family intact while my own foundation was crumbling.

This is Part 2 of my story.

👉 PART 2: THE RETURN FROM RAMADI — A SOLDIER’S UNSEEN WAR

🔥 Episode now posted below

🔥 Part 3 coming soon: THE SHADOWS FOLLOWED ME

🇺🇸 PART 2 RELEASETHE RETURN FROM RAMADI: A SOLDIER’S UNSEEN WAR