When I get remembered, it will not have been
for busting up a bar fight --
or even kicking in doors in Fallujah.
It'll be for choosing the right path
when it could have been so much easier
to go down the wrong path, to let myself get bogged down
by feelings of insecurity or anxiety
and, ultimately, let it kill me.
[Reading:] "'God's House.'
One lone building covered in gold,
surrounded on all sides by ramshackle houses..."
My name is Laurent Taillefer.
I am a handyman by day and a student by other days
and a writer by night, and I'm a Veteran out of the
United States Army, Alpha Company, 118th Infantry.
When I got out, I was so sure
that I was going to have a short life that I even
found jobs that would create that.
The guy I replaced, back when I was a bouncer at a strip club,
had been shot.
And if I wanted to be honest with myself, I'd say
I kind of expected myself to get shot.
The pay was so bad that I ended up quitting that job,
and I started at a different strip club.
The second one had almost entirely
Veterans working as the bouncers.
And after a while of being there, I realized
that all I really wanted was the camaraderie.
That was really what I missed, to be around Veterans again.
I was just longing for other Veterans, a lot.
God, the worst day was, I went to a bar.
I ran into a buddy of mine who I haven't seen since Germany.
The only thing that he wants to talk about is,
"Oh, did you hear about Hernandez?
Yeah, Hernandez didn't make it."
And, "Oh, Enriquez, Enriquez is getting liver surgery.
They think he may have been exposed to radiation
while we were down range."
And, "Weren't you with him?" and this and that...
I don't know -- I don't have liver cancer.
Why would you even put that thought in my head?
And my response to that was to go home, I fell asleep.
When someone woke me up, like, a day later,
I got mad at them, got drunk, and slept for two days.
I didn't leave the bedroom.
So, that's three total days gone
because I ran into a battle buddy.
I had a couple of friends who wanted to make believe
that they were psychologists, and I thought that was
helping me, at the time, to have them say,
"You don't need help, you're fine.
You just -- come on, let's have a drink."
That's not psychologizing, that's not even helping.
Once I separated myself from my friends, I was all alone.
And then I needed somebody.
And that's when I went into therapy.
My friend had died in Iraq, and I was torn up.
When my psychologist heard about Soto,
I realized I had never introduced that
"Oh, he was a best friend of mine.
Oh my gosh, we spent every waking hour together in Iraq."
Soto was larger than life.
After he died, everything was temporary,
everything was so close to the end.
[Sighs]
My psychologist recognized that my story about
how I was blown up, my, you know, various land mines
or getting shot at, that wasn't really what was bothering me.
What was bothering me was survivor's guilt,
where, for me, the shame is being alive.
Not really that they died, but my continued existence
is an affront to them.
That's just your own mind playing tricks on you.
Once my doctor got me to face that,
I think that's really the turning point.
I decided, if I am going to be alive
and if Soto cannot be alive,
then I'm going to have to do it for both of us.
I'm going to have to live a long time,
and I'm really going to have to make the most of it,
the way Soto would have, big.
We are not just getting an associate's degree, no!
We are getting a full bachelor's degree
in exactly what we want we want to do
because we are going to be famous at it.
If it takes forever to be the best writer,
I will do that forever.
Soto would want that for me.