I LOST MYSELF IN A FAR AWAY LAND
“Some of us come home from the military and look fine on the outside—but inside, something’s missing.
I didn’t know how to explain it back then. It wasn’t one thing. It was pieces. Pieces of my soul that got left behind in places most people will never see and never understand. You learn how to operate, how to function, how to keep moving… but you don’t always learn how to feel whole again.
For a long time, I carried that weight quietly.
Then I picked up a camera…
Out in the woods. On ridge lines. In the cold. In the silence. No formations. No timelines. No noise—just breath, light, and space. Behind the lens, I started noticing things again. The way fog lifts. The way light breaks through clouds. The way the earth doesn’t ask anything from you except that you show up.
Each time I pressed the shutter, it felt like I was reclaiming something small but important. A piece of awareness. A piece of calm. A piece of myself.
Photography didn’t fix everything. Nature didn’t erase the past. But together, they gave me a way to rebuild—slowly, honestly, on my own terms.
HighontheMountainPhotos.com
If you’re carrying that same hollow feeling, know this: you’re not broken. You’re just in the process of finding new ways to put yourself back together. Sometimes it happens in conversation. Sometimes in movement. Sometimes quietly, standing alone in the middle of nowhere, learning how to see again.
This is how I found my way back—one step, one breath, one frame at a time.”
- Matthew Stevens, Iraq War Veteran USMC
#TheIraqWar #USMC #PTSD
#FindingMyself #Military