“The Destroyer” is a raw and haunting spoken ballad chronicling the life of a man forged in the fires of war, rescue, and relentless service—but broken in the quiet distance of home. Drawn from David Burnell’s personal journal and reflected in his book Built by Fire, this piece reveals the private cost of decades spent in secrecy, deployments, and sacrifice, where calling became armor and undoing.

This is not just a warrior’s story—it is a confession of the silence that crept in, the marriage that quietly fractured under the weight of duty, and the unseen toll of choosing mission over presence.

As the walls of their home cracked—emotionally and physically—he kept saving strangers, while losing the ones who waited. This was the season when the marriage began to fall apart. The pain, the absence, the fear of failure… became part of what he now calls “the destroyer.”

But with honesty came reckoning. With reckoning came change. And over time, healing returned—not easily, not quickly—but through the same endurance that once fueled the missions. There is no glory without loss, no redemption without truth.

This ballad stands as a warning, a tribute, and a quiet hope—for the ones who served and the ones who stayed, for those who broke and those who rebuilt.

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