I want to apologize ahead of time. I feel like this going to be a little long and that I'm ging to babble.

Hi, I'm Wayne. I'm 29 and live in Chicago. I served in the Air Force from 1999 to 2003 as a Spanish Linguist and, as a civilian, with the Iraq Survey Group from 2003 to 2004.

I joined the Air Force just to do something, I wasn't patriotic or gung ho. I took to it though. I left basic as an honor grad and really liked being in the military. I spent most of the time in Texas, but was sent to the Pentagon in August 2001 to work on a project to extradite Mexican druglords called Dominant Chronicle. I was scheduled to attend a training on Quantico at the DEA building September 10-14th. Myself and six others met in the Pentagon parking lot each morning wearing civilian clothes. We were told to not advertise that we were military. On the second day, we were told by the instructor that something had happened and that we should check in with our unit. Classes ended abruptly and everyone piled into rooms with tv's. When the second plane hit, everything changed. Sirens began going off and lights were flashing. A loudspeaker told everyone to report to the armory to be armed. The six of us didn't know what to do. At the armory they wouldn't issue us weapons because we didn't have licenses to carry. Another plane hit the Pentagon and we didn't know what to do. The war had started and I didn't even have my uniform on. I was in a room trying to call home and the dorr locked when the threatcon went up. I yelled and banged on the door until someone came and let me out. Myself and these six other people were the only ones in the military and they wouldn't give us weapons and we didn't have our uniforms.

The loudspeaker said that another plane was heading that way and that we were evacuating. The entire building ran to the parking lot. When the six of us sped off base we didn't know where to go. We fought about it; someone wanted to go to Andrews, someone else said that it was probably being evacuated too. Our cell phones wouldn't work. We convinced a passing military convoy to let us in, showing them our military ID's and saying we'd been recalled to the Pentagon. We made it as far as Arlington and they wouldn't let us go any further. We went to the apartments where some of us were housed and most of our mission was in the lobby. We were told that, because we were TDY, that we were restricted to our quarters. I asked to go help dig and they told me that I couldn't.

Everything changed. They moved the mission to Crystal City, and everyone wore their boots with their blues "just in case." Everyone wore a ribbon and a flag flew from every balcony. I went to six funerals and we would sit in front our apartments burning candles. Deli's would give me free sandwiches when I was in uniform. I never got to go back into the part of the Pentagon where my desk was, they said that everything at my desk was gone. I felt like I'd been cheated out of what would have been a death that would have made me worth remembering because I had to go to a random training.

When I went back to Texas, I couldn't relate. Everyone had a story about how long it had taken to get on base that day. I spent about four months drunk. I found a package containing a medal from the Pentagon for me in the mailroom and used the fact that it wasn't formally presented to me as an excuse to start a fight. I was sent to rehab for alcoholism at Fort Gordon. I stopped eating while I was there and they decided that alcohol wasn't the problem. The word 'ptsd' started being thrown around, and I spent the remaining year and a half of my enlistment in therapy. When the war in Iraq started, I volunteered to go. I kept saying 'better me than some poor guy with a wife a kid.' At the last minute, after I'd been issued my desert gear, my mission decided that they couldn't spare me. I left two months later when my enlistment ended very bitter.

A few weeks after getting home I found out that a friend from high school had been killed in Iraq, leaving behind a wife and baby. I felt horrible, like I should have been there instead. I decided that I needed to go. My training and security clearance got me in the Iraq Survey Group as an intelligence analyst. I was going to look for the weapons of mass destruction. I pictured myself riding atop of humvees, up front, through the desert, which is exactly where my friend had been when hit by sniper fire. It was strange, I was a civilian, but accruing reservist time. I did desert training at Fort Bliss and Fort Benning and was issued every item, except for a weapon. When I left, I volunteered to go "up front" to the green zone. They wouldn't let me and sent a bunch of others who didn't want to. I spent the majority of my time in Qatar, and a few days in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Afghanistan. My exposure to battle was nothing, a few RPG's fired over the wall in our general direction, mortar sounds that never made it over the wall, a "car bomb" coming onto base that never blew up. An opportunity came up that "wasn't for everybody," and I felt like I had to volunteer. Better me than someone else. I spent the last five months in the desert writing summaries of confiscated torture tapes for the Department of Justice. One morning I woke up and realized that I was there to support a lie, that it wasn't something that I was going to be able to be proud of when I was older, that I wasn't going to die there in a way worth remembering. I quit and left that day.

I came home and tried to start a normal life. I lucked out, a publishing house decided to print my emails home as my memiors in a book called "Somewhere In The Middle." And now it's been just about four years.

Since I've been home, I've almost gone with the Scientologists to help with tsunami relief, I balked when they began trying to teach me about their religion a week before I was scheduled to leave. I came up with a plan to go help with the hurricane in New Orleans, I couldn't figure out how I'd find gasoline to get back and didn't do it. I began the process to join the Naval Reserves as an officer but chickened out after the offer when I realized I'd have to lie about my disability benefits. This week I I've been trying to figure out how to sell myself to a magazine as a war blogger to go over and write about the troops. I can't stop thinking about ways to go back to the war. I've been seeing a VA shrink every week for two and a half years. And I still don't sleep. When I do, I wake up at least every hour. If a girl stays over, I don't sleep at all the entire night. A relationship with a girl I thought I would marry broke up because of this in January.

I constantly doubt how I feel. I don't know if it's real or if I'm making it up. There were episodes of abuse when I was younger, and I worry that is the problem, but that I want this to be the problem instead. I feel guilty. When I was in the service, the Air Force therapist said that it was PTSD but that he'd call it chronic depression so that I wouldn't get booted, but I don't know if he was right. I worry that I'm trying to fool everyone, even myself. I didn't do anything. I never fired a weapon in combat. I missed everything, I feel guilty about it, and I feel ashamed that I even consider ptsd might be the problem. I feel like I don't deserve to think this is what is wrong with me. I can't bring myself to read up on PTSD on the internet, because I'm worried that the more I know about it; the more likely I am to make it be the problem subconsciously.

An aquaintance who heard about my book approached me the other day and asked me if I had been in the war, and I didn't know what to say. I don't know whether or not I'm allowed to consider myself a veteran of the war or not. I said yes, because I didn't know how to explain it all to him, and he told me that his brother had come back and was messed up emotionally. I told him that it's a horrible thing and that I've seen a shrink for two and half years and that there's no shame in it, and that he could call me and I'd help him with the process as I'm a VA expert. But I feel like I'm lying.

I was motivated to come and find something like this forum because I watched Cloverfield tonight. I thought I would love it; a science-fiction/disaster movie sounds great to me. But when I watched it, I felt like the whole movie was about people afraid and helpless and not knowing what they're supposed to do. I kept tearing up. Then I felt bad that I kept tearing up; that I don't deserve to feel like that as I haven't done anything that should allow me to feel like that. I hate that I drift off and I hate that I feel tears behind my eyes. I feel like I've fooled myself into playing a character and I don't know how to just put it down.

As much as I don't know or trust my feelings, I do know that I'm tired of feeling like this. Whatever it is, I want it to go away.

I've thought about trying a group, but haven't been able to find any tonight on the web. If you know of one in Chicago, please let me know.

And again, I apologize for this being so long and sappy. I felt like I just needed to write it out tonight.

Wayne