You'd have thought the affects of the war might have passed by now, that I'd be back to my old, pre-war self. But I'm not. My close friends and family have noticed I'm  changed in a fundamental way.

A year ago this month, on May 12, I returned home from a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan.

Like many citizen sailors and soldiers in the reserve and National Guard, I don't much look like a warrior. That is, until September 2010, when I was called out of the reserve into active duty.  I packed up my life, left my family, and shipped over to the shadow of the Hindu Kush with the United States Navy.

I'm a public affairs officer, so though I carted around some weaponry and wore cammo, my main task in Afghanistan wasn't in the infantry. Instead, I worked at headquarters as the director of media outreach, briefing reporters and editors to combat the daily lies and misinformation spewing out of my Taliban spokesman counterpart, Zabihullah Mujahid.