Ryan had just turned 21 years old when his reserve unit was deployed to Iraq. He had just asked his girlfriend to marry him and was in his final year of college. Ryan didn't worry too much about the war, though. Ryan was an optimist and as far as he was concerned everything happens for a reason. The IEDs seemed to be everywhere. The makeshift explosives turned marketplaces into blood-soaked scenes of carnage. They also waited on the desolate roads that ran across the desert. One exploded right next to Ryan's passing humvee. The shrapnel proliferated Ryan's flesh and infection set in around the metal scraps. Ryan's leg had to be amputated. "It will be ok. Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan" Said a teary-eyed Ryan when he woke full of drugs and with one less leg. When the army returned Ryan to the world, they left him unemployed and addicted to painkillers. Ryan was in no shape to resume school, but he held onto his sunny disposition. &quo
This is a collection of anecdotes from the fringes of reality, a tapestry stitched together from our dreams as well as our nightmares, from the fears that haunt the collective imagination. These are the symptoms of the sickness known as the human condition.