In the year after his return, Blaufus repeatedly enrolled in college classes and then dropped out. He got married four months after coming home, to a woman who left him shortly afterward. Looking back, Blaufus says the war changed everything.
“I understood I could die any day. So I was constantly doing stuff that a 24-year-old shouldn’t be doing. I bought a house ”” I didn’t even look at the house before I bought it. When my marriage ended, the need for everything ended along with it.”
That house has now fallen into foreclosure.
Blaufus has been hospitalized twice since he got back for acute post-traumatic stress disorder.
The list of things he can’t do is long: sleep, eat in front of other people, go running or hiking. He even had to re-learn his favorite thing: playing the guitar.