Waiting to Wake Up

We came back.
They turned on the lights.
Waved flags and home made signs and banners.
"Welcome home," they said.
We traded in our weapons for wives and girlfriends. We traded body armor for name brands, Camelbacks for beer bottles, boots for sneakers, the staccato rhythm of large and small calibers for whatever's new on the radio.
But we're still waiting to wake up, because there's a large part of ourselves that we left there. Somewhere along the way, it became home. The heat, the stench, the glaring sun reflecting off the sand. The knowledge that today could be the day. In the least safest place on the planet, it was the safest place to be.
"It's over," they said. "You're back home," they told us.
But what do we do now? Because it isn't home. We can't be who we were when we left, because we aren't those idealistic innocent kids anymore. We buried that innocence in the sand when the lifeblood spilled from our friends and we watched their souls drift into the sky. We can't be who we had to become back there, back home.
It scares people.
They call us crazy, psycho, murderer, baby killer. "Why are you acting like that?"
"This isn't the Army."
"Don't think like that."
"You're not there anymore so stop acting like that," they yell, hiss, scream, and tell us.
We can't be who we were.
We can't be who we were made to become.
So what are we? Where are we?
We're not there, and we're certainly not here.
We're ghosts-shadows-stuck in limbo in a 3D vivid dreamscape, nodding, smiling, pretending.
Waiting. Patiently waiting to wake up.