I Served In Iraq. I Thought I Emerged Unscathed — But 20 Years Later, I’m Still Not The Same.

The author in February 2004. “I was finally on my way home from my deployment to Iraq,” she writes.

I’m not the typical veteran who served in Iraq that many people might imagine — and by that, I mean I’m a woman. I joined the Army when I was 22, days after 9/11. It seemed like a good way to pay for school and end a relationship I couldn’t manage to leave on my own.

The recruiter promised I’d be stateside fixing computers, and I’d never see war, but driving into Iraq on day two of the initial invasion,…