A New Beginning

Life wasn’t always so picture-perfect for this Army veteran.

- Josh Marino

‘‘HERE, BOY!” I called out again. I walked down the cement steps behind the Army barracks and listened, hoping to hear an answering meow or to see a flash of black and white streaking toward me. But there was still no sign of the cat. Now I was starting to panic. While I had yet to name him, I had been feeding him for months. Seeing him had become the highlight of my day.

I could clearly remember when we first met. Sitting on these same cold cement steps that night, I’d been staring out into the darkness. Rain soaked through my pants, but I didn’t care. The only light came from the glow of my cigarette—my last. Back in my room there was a knife on the bedside table and a suicide note on my computer screen. I hoped that whoever read it first would understand why I had done what I planned to do.

Six months before that night, my unit had been deployed to the southwest of Baghdad. During an attack, a mortar had exploded 10 feet away from me, leaving me with a traumatic brain injury, a case of PTSD and a one-way ticket home. Since then, I had been living on base in Fort Riley, Kansas, but I wasn’t readjusting well. I was paralyzed by anxiety and struggling to get through each day. Mostly I was tired. I sat there on those cold cement steps just wanting to end it all. Tonight I will, I thought as I took another drag of my cigarette.

“Meow?”

I looked up. A black and white kitten with round green eyes looked back at me. His head poked out from the bushes a few steps away. He meowed again. Then, leaping from his hiding spot, he trotted right up to me. He was tiny and soaked, but he rubbed up against my legs. When I reached down to pet him, he leaned into my touch, purring.