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The choice | The Washington Post
by thenewgreen

    The war veteran wakes up at 11 a.m. and spends the afternoon alone studying, and so it is not until early evening, during her shift at the restaurant where she works as a waitress, that the first lie of the day is required.

    “Everything okay?” a colleague asks.

    “It’s fine,” she says, and the lying is underway.

    ABOVE: Diana, a 27-year-old Navy veteran, says she was sexually assaulted while serving in Afghanistan. A quarter of female veterans deployed there or to Afghanistan say they have experienced sexual assault, according to a recent VA survey. Lie after lie: This has been her life since coming home last year from Afghanistan — the daily maintenance of a thousand little fictions to keep everyone from finding out what happened over there.