Dreams can be rather sobering.

[BayouBengal07]

I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamt I was a soldier in Iraq. We were in a rocky sort of area, looking across a dried riverbed of sorts at a bridge. There were insurgents crossing the bridge, and we were firing on them to no effect. One even charged our position, and I didn't have the ammunition to fend him off. Someone else took care of him, and in my anger I grabbed a gun, stood up, and fired on whoever was crossing the bridge. Ends up it was a family. I remember it being in first person. Two kids, a boy like 15 and a girl maybe a little older, darting in and out of the fire. Before I could react I hit their mother. I remember her figure in the black chador they wear in the Middle East, five or six bullets slamming into her before she fell to the ground. I dropped my gun, horrified at what I had done. I started crying. The rest of the dream (besides all the weird stuff your mind throws in that cheapen the effect) was me at dinner with some family friends after I came home, crying and begging them not to let me get sent back to Iraq.


Not to cheapen the efforts of our soldiers (I've never been there so I can't say what its like or claim I suffered trauma) but it was interesting to feel it unlike my conscious mind could.