At some point during the latter part of the The Real World Brooklyn, Ryan Conklin decided it was time to share with the roommates some scrapbooks he had made of photos from his time in Iraq. He felt that by showing them the photos that it would make more sense to them about who he was and how he got to be that way. Or as he described it, "My quirky little, sometimes serious, sometimes absolutely crazy, all in the moment, living life, best I can every day, type person."So Ryan showed Baya Voce and Sarah Rice two of his scrapbooks. He showed pictures of bad guys, including one who had a bloody lip ("Somebody didn't like him.") He also showed scenes from missions where his group would fly on helicopters from place to place to search houses for weapons, bombs and more bad people. He showed a photo of a pit that he explained that they would use at night when it got cold, as they slept outdoors, where 4 or 5 guys would sleep snug together to keep warm from each others' body heat.
Ryan felt that Sarah and Baya's viewing of the scrapbooks was a good thing as it gave them a picture in their head of what Ryan saw in Iraq, or at least the sanitized version of it.
Ryan noted that he keeps his scrapbooks relatively clean, which is to say, not containing gory photos of the effects of war. Things like body parts, dead bodies, burned bodies, are subject matter than Ryan doesn't keep in his books. He does that because he wants to be prepared to show his scrapbooks to anyone that wants to see them and not have to worry about whether people will be able to stomach seeing his pictures.
He does keep a collection of the gory photos on his computer and will show it to people who have an interest in seeing them. Ryan believes the photos to be sick but interesting. He views them as evidence of an event in history and with him being a history major and a student of military history in particular, he is keen on keeping them as a record of what actually occurred. He showed Baya and Scott Herman some of the photos. He felt it was probably a sharp notice to them of what combat is actually like.
Through his showing his photos, Ryan demonstrated that he wished he could communicate to others what his experience was truly like, and optimistically he feels he is able to accomplish that in some small degree, but in the end he recognizes that only through the actual hearing, smelling, seeing of the terrible sights he has beheld could anyone surely know of that which remains a dreadful memory residing in his mind.
It doesn't bode well then for those wishing to understand Ryan, as he advises, "That was a big chapter in my life, obviously. And if you don't understand that chapter about me, then you'll never understand me." It becomes harder to think about understanding him when professes, "Hell, half the time, I don't even understand me."
