To this day I struggle with the duality between myself and Thu'Gel, the character brought to life by a desperate broken mind struggling to survive. He saw me through the warzone that concocted my childhood, but the effects are both devastating and far reaching.

Sometimes I'll be standing there, stolid and stiff as a statue, and the next moment I crush beneath the weight of something imagined. I may begin to shake, I may begin to sob, I may shut out the world entirely and stand in place, eyes closed, for hours.

I've come a long way from the days in which he controlled so much of my life. I accept him as a storybook character now, something that I have creative control over, something to be used to express myself, and not a tool to control my own psychology.

I wrote this paper as the final essay for my writing class, "The Journey of the Hero". We were instructed to write about what ever we wanted, but that she would prefer we write about how the hero's journey is reflected in our own lives. Of all the steps in the journey, the most important to me is the crossing of the threshold. It is the point in which we cross over a line that is drawn by fear. It is the exact moment when we feel the impact of our fears against our hearts, but push on regardless.

When I created Thu, I crossed a threshold consciously. When Thu became a living thing over which I felt had no control, I crossed a threshold subconsciously, and I was made to look inward farther than I ever could have looked on my own. I'm so very far from the end of my journey through this world, but I can't help but feel I've been made to follow the cycle more than a few times. It's part of why I've always seen the journey home as the hardest part.

Most everyone I've ever met has romanticized the role of the soldier, and why wouldn't they? It's in every movie, every TV show, every book and every video game. A hero, either alone or with help, conquers impossible odds through a combination of wit, cunning, brute force and tactics. But what happens when we reach that point of apotheosis, where we become the all powerful soldier? What cost is there to be something so impossible to stop? What happens when we stand alone at the front of the fight, and everyone is dying around us?

This is why I think it's harder to go from soldier to civilian than it is to go from civilian to soldier. The body and mind have to be retrained to understand peace, to cope with love and comfort, to know how to be at ease. How do you tell your body, your subconscious, to turn off the things that keep you alive?

As far as my body and subconscious care, leaving the safety of remaining anonymous is as dangerous as holding a grenade, pulling the pin, flicking the lever, and counting to ten.