Coming Home

Homecoming, after an extended stay in a war zone, is not merely a return—it is a crossing of thresholds between two profoundly different realities. One is etched in the immediacy of danger, in the choreography of survival where each moment matters, and the other is composed of stillness, of domestic rhythms that unfold across days and weeks instead of seconds. For those returning from conflict, the transition is often marked by a dissonance that is difficult to explain: a quiet disquiet, a sense of culture shock not unlike that of an alien returning from a different planet. It is a feeling of being both relieved and displaced, of coming back to a world that once felt familiar but now appears impossibly distant.

The Dislocation of Peace

In a war zone, the mind adapts to the logic of conflict. Hypervigilance becomes second nature. Danger is constant, even in silence. There is a clarity to this world, a brutal order to its chaos. You learn to live in the moment, to read every sound, every movement, to measure your steps with care. You operate on urgency and necessity. And amidst the danger, there is also a kind of purity—comradeship forged under fire, decisions stripped of pretence, a directness in human interaction that is rare in civilian life.

But this clarity dissolves on the journey home. As the plane lifts off from the forward operating base or the vehicle reaches the border, a subtle shift begins. The armour—both physical and psychological—starts to fall away. You are no longer a combatant or a civilian seeking to survive. You are returning to a life that runs on appointments, small talk, and errands, where the stakes are different, where people are concerned with things that once seemed ordinary and now feel surreal.

Reentry Into a Slower World

The shock of home is not just about the absence of gunfire or the presence of family. It is about time. In conflict, time is compressed. Decisions must be immediate; reactions are reflexive. In peace, time stretches. Days are filled with choices that don’t carry mortal consequences, with plans made weeks in advance, with problems that cannot be solved by instinct or force. For a returning armed forces veteran in particular, this expansion of time can be unsettling. The urgency that once guided every action is now misplaced, leaving a void that peace does not know how to fill. For a civilian living in a conflict zone, the effect is similar if less pronounced: life in a conflict zone has a rigid routine, as you live from each day to the next. Life outside a conflict zone is altogether calmer and more predictable, and this can feel distinctly unsettling.

Even conversation feels different. The stories told at dinner tables or over coffee are not stories of ambushes or near misses. They are about promotions, school performances, kitchen renovations. You want to listen, and you try, but part of your mind is still wired to evaluate threat, still seeking context in the background noise. The contrast is not merely emotional—it is existential.

The Double Vision of the Returned

Perhaps the most profound effect of coming home is the development of double vision. You begin to see the world through two lenses: the person in a calm environment, and the survivor in the war zone. You watch your children play in the yard and your heart is full—and yet, a part of you wonders what you would do if this were Kabul, or Kharkiv, or Fallujah. You shop for groceries and marvel at the abundance, but some part of your brain catalogues exits and potential threats. You hear fireworks in July and your body tenses before your mind catches up.

You are here, but not fully. You walk among people who do not know what you know, who have not seen what you have seen. And though they love you, they cannot fully understand the weight you carry, nor the strange ache of missing the people you worked or fought beside—the family of circumstance forged by war. There is guilt in that too, in missing the war, in remembering it not only for its horrors but for its stark sense of purpose.

Home as a Place You Must Relearn

Homecoming is often romanticised: the hugs, the tears, the warm meals, the return to one’s bed. These are real, and they matter. But they are only the surface. True homecoming is a process. It is not the act of stepping through a front door; it is the slow rebuilding of a sense of belonging in a place that has changed while you were gone—and that you, too, have changed in ways that may never fully be undone.

It is relearning intimacy without the buffer of danger, relearning patience when the stakes feel low, rediscovering the ability to make plans not just for the next hour, but for the next year. It is allowing yourself to be vulnerable again, not because your life depends on it, but because your heart does.

The Unfinished Return

The culture shock of peace is not a failure to adjust; it is the evidence of depth. It shows that war leaves traces, not just on the body but on the clockwork of the mind. And while those traces may never fully vanish, they do not preclude healing. In time, the urgency of conflict gives way to the texture of life—a child’s laughter, a partner’s quiet strength, the smell of coffee in the morning, a walk in the evening light without scanning for danger.

But for many veterans, homecoming is less about “going back” and more about building something new. It is not a return to the old self, but the creation of a new one—one who remembers the war, who honours it, but who chooses, daily, to live in peace.

Finally, for many of us, the loss of adrenalin is too compelling, and we're itching to get back into the action as soon as we can.