I was finally able to walk around after a year

Today marks five years since I was ordered into military confinement while deployed to Iraq in 2010. It all began in the first few weeks of 2010, when I made the lifechanging decision to release to the public a repository of classified (and unclassified but “sensitive”) documents that provided a simultaneously horrific and beautiful outlook on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I felt that the Iraq and Afghanistan “war diaries” (as they have been dubbed) were vital to the public’s understanding of the two interconnected counter-insurgency conflicts from a real- time and on- theground perspective. In the years before these documents were collected, the public likely never had such a complete record of the chaotic nature of modern warfare.

In 2010, I was considerably less mature than I am now, and the potential consequences and outcomes of my actions seemed vague and very surreal to me. I certainly expected the worst possible outcome, but I lacked a strong sense of what “the worst” would entail. When the military ordered me into confinement, I was escorted (by two of the friendliest guys in my unit) to Kuwait, first by helicopter to Baghdad and finally by cargo plane.

After a few weeks of living in the cage and tent, I became extremely depressed. I was terrified that I was not going to be treated in the dignified way that I had expected. I also began to fear that I was forever going to be living in a hot, desert cage, living as and being treated as a male, disappearing from the world into a secret prison and never facing a public trial.

After being transferred back to the US, I was confined at the now-closed military brig at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. This time was the most difficult for me overall, and felt like the longest. I was not allowed to have any items in my cell — no toothbrushes, soap, toilet paper, books, paper and on a few occasions even my glasses — unless I was given permission to use them under close supervision. When I was finished, I had to return these items.

After public outcry regarding the conditions of my confinement, I was transferred to medium custody and the general population at an army prison. It was a high point in my incarcerated life: after nearly a year of constantly being watched by guards with clipboards, I was finally able to walk around.

It can be hard to make sense of all the things that have happened to me in the last five years (let alone my entire life).