I’ve Been in a Warzone My Entire Life

I didn’t serve in combat. I didn’t enlist.

I was drafted.

Into a war that no one will ever make a movie about. A quiet, domestic, slow-motion apocalypse that took place in kitchens, hospitals, and the echoing silence between late-night phone calls.

My battlefield? A childhood marked by medical charts and empty pill bottles. My barracks were hospital waiting rooms. My weapons were a charger, a hoodie, and an emergency overnight bag that stayed packed for years. Always ready. Because the next crisis was always coming.

There was no enemy, not one I could punch. Just the math of genetics and bad luck. Cancer. Mental illness. Diabetes. Addiction. Depression. Stroke. Organ failure. Apathy. The cruel, repetitive script of decline.

My family was a foxhole. The kind that collapses in on itself.

The phone was a landmine. Every buzz meant another hit. Another collapse. Another body to brace for. You ever try to breathe while you’re waiting to find out if someone you love is alive or dead?

It’s like drowning, but slower.

Sleep? Sleep was a fantasy. You don’t sleep when every hour holds the potential for a 1AM voicemail. When someone you love could be bleeding, seizing, breaking down, or breaking up—again.

People think PTSD only belongs to soldiers. That you have to wear a uniform to earn the tremors.

But I’ve had years of jumping at sudden sounds. Of flinching when my phone lights up. Of tightening my jaw when someone says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Because sure. Talk. But I already know what you’re going to say.

And that’s the part nobody wants to admit:

You can live through a war and never leave your living room.

You can become a veteran of a battle no one saw but you.

And still wake up every day in the ruins, trying to make a life out of what's left.