Some things you see can't be unseen.
A wartime sketch, pen on paper, the only artwork that I did on my first deployment.
When I was drawing it, I didn't really know what I was drawing or why.
Up until then I had never drawn anything that could be considered "dark."
Those who look at my artwork now might think that is the only type of art that I do, but it wasn't always such, and it began with this drawing.
I remember paying careful attention to detail, thinking about shading and light, but it's not like I sat down and said "I'm going to create something grotesque."
I know that at that point during the war there were things that were happening and events that I was having to process that were really troubling.
I lost my religion on that deployment and have not found it since.
I think that I was becoming aware that the eyes were windows of the soul, and just as we can let in the sight of beautiful things, and be elevated, so we can also let in visual "demons" who might possess us, perhaps for the rest of our lives.
The more distance I get from this, the more I think that is true, and seeing this piece of artwork that I created right in the midst of that chaos binds it in a certain ironclad honesty for me.
I entered the war a Christian young man, with peace in my heart, and when I left the war, my heart had become a battleground.
My convictions and beliefs had all been shattered.
I did not become a "bad" person.
If anything ever since then I have doubled my efforts to live a life of accountability.
However, for me it is now very much a solitary struggle.
I no longer feel god or angels watching over me.
When I get out of bed and choose to live another day, and to avoid doing evil, it is not because I fear god's judgment but because I have seen evil and know the bottomless depths of despair into which it can drag us.
There is evil living inside of me, and the fight to subdue it and rise above it is real.
Evil is not a shadowy shape under my bed.
Evil is mankind, and the choices that we make or fail to make.