The nights don’t blur from bottles, they sharpen from the ghosts. I don’t wake with a pounding head, I wake with a war I never left. People tell me, time heals. But time just circles back. I’ve learned to walk steady with shadows at my six, the way I once walked patrols never sure if the quiet meant safety or the storm before it broke. I don’t crave the numb anymore. I crave silence that isn’t loaded, a room without echoes, a morning that doesn’t feel like the end of a mission gone wrong. The sober things for me are the scars I trace when the house is still. The clarity is in knowing that what I fight now lives inside, and there’s no armory to raid, no weapon to clean, just the stubborn will to stay on this side of the trigger. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe it has to be. Because while I can’t forget the fire, I’ve got someone worth walking through it for. And these sober things the steady breath, the open eyes, the daylight that still breaks are how I win a war that no one else can see.