MrBallen

At any moment they could come into this alleyway and I'm alone in this alleyway because they're dealing with this huge contact down there.

And so I have this like, I've been mortally wounded.

I can't pull my tourniquets to stop the bleeding off of my kit because I just was so weak from blood loss.

And so I can't take off the life-saving equipment.

I know I'm dying and it's not sad.

This is where I'm getting to with mortality and I tell people this story for this reason.

I was not sad.

It was shockingly matter of fact.

I was sitting in an alleyway anticipating that I'm like, okay, I should have died down there at the contact site.

Now I'm bleeding to death for sure.

Or if I don't bleed to death, the people that we are in the middle of a gunfight with are for sure going to come over here and kill me.

And so it was just factual, like my brain process that is like, you are about to die.

Hard stop.

This is in 2014.

I was 26 years old.

And the thought that was going through my mind, in addition to the matter of factness, as my vision actually went completely gone, I couldn't hear anymore.

So I'm like in this black void, but I'm still alive.

All I thought about was my wife, Amanda, and we had made the decision to wait on having children before I went on this deployment.

Like, oh, we'll have time, right?

And I was like, man, like, I guess we don't have time.