@veinsofwar continued from here.
He’d had his experience with being NUMB, hardly feeling anything at all & it was a place he NEVER wanted to go back to. There was something so terrifying about not caring about anything, not wanting to live & not wanting to die. It was a RUSH when he finally came back, the feelings all but flooding his soul in a way that made him hurt, made him CRY. But that was the reality of the war he now found himself within & he’d be damned if he ever let himself get that way again.
He doesn’t answer her at first, brows only furrow & gaze DROPS to the ground as he brings the cigarette back up to his lips. A long drag & dark hues raise to meet with her own, shoulders lifting & falling into a SHRUG as he tries to put all that he feels into words. But he isn’t even sure if there’s a PROPER way to do that-----he wasn’t eloquent like Webster, or transparent in the way he felt like some of the others.
In fact, Joe was NEVER one to open up about his feelings at all. His blatant SARCASM was a mask for something more, something DEEPER & it was that veil of security that he hid behind, that tricked everyone into thinking he was okay-----but was anyone REALLY okay anymore? Was this something they’d ever TRULY recover from?
“Pain reminds me that it’s real. That it ain’t just in my imagination, you know?”