So the war in Iraq is officially over. It has been one year short of a decade since it began.

This isn’t a political blog, so I won’t share my feelings about the justification for why we went to war, the reasons we were there for 9 years, and what our leaders should do now that it’s over. I will say that I was and remain opposed to the war and am very happy that it’s over.

I was 19 years old when the war began – one year shy of being a 20-nothing myself. That’s around the same age as thousands of soldiers who were shipped off to Iraq while I studied Communications and flip cup in a cozy enclave outside Boston. I turned 20, then 21, then graduated from college and spent the following six years defining my life in whatever way I saw fit. I struggled. I questioned things. I made a million choices.

My life from 20 to 28 was completely perpendicular to that of a soldier in the Iraq war, if that’s even a saying. We were parallel in age but completely opposite in life milestones. My life was entirely my own to direct. Their lives hinged on assignments, tours, and life-threatening operations. I cannot imagine their experience, no matter how hard I try to relate.

I do not have numbers or stats, but given the news coverage, I can assume that hundreds of them are now permanently injured, and even more will suffer from PTSD for decades to come. Many left in their first year or so of marriage, others missed the births of children or their first months of life, and even more delayed all those fundamental firsts of being a 20-something while they endured another list of firsts no one should ever have to experience.

I wonder how they would define being a 20-something in America? I wonder what they think about dating or hooking up? What’s their feeling on how the economy has affected our coming-of-age in America or how different today’s post-grads are from those ten, twenty or thirty years prior? What is their feeling about how they spent the first eight years of their 20s? How is it that they want to spend the next?

I don’t have an agenda or thesis statement for this post, I just felt compelled to say something about who these soldiers are and what they’ve given up as we mark the end of this unprecedented time in our country’s history. There is a group of people whose personal history is forever changed because of their time in this war. In many ways those people are my peers, and yet I could not feel further from their experience over the same exact years I lived.

All I know is that I could not have survived what they survived, which is why, on this momentous end to a momentous time, I am eternally grateful.