Taking Stock

Taking Stock

The last couple of weeks have been interesting to say the least. There were definitely some really good days, but I would be lying if I said most of them weren't rough days. A lot has changed in my life over the past few months, all in all these changes have been for the better, but to quote Vanilla Sky: "You can't have the sweet without the sour." As I continue to grow and learn and embark on this journey of learning to feel like a human again, I have to come to terms with the sour. I've slowly been doing this, and I can't lie, dealing with the sour has been one of the most terrifying paths I've ever gone down in life. Just finding the courage to speak about some of the demons from my past has been an incredibly daunting task. Even more difficult, is owning up to my mistakes and making an attempt to correct them. As with a lot of people, my first response with much of this has been to get mad and try and place blame elsewhere, this seems to be a natural semi-unavoidable process. That's just it though, it's one single process, it has a beginning, a middle, and then if accepted and dealt with it has an end. This paves the way for a myriad of other processes to have their beginning, middle, and end. It's these other processes that I am just now beginning to see the value in, they are showing me that angry, negative, and volatile reactions do not have to be my only way of thinking. That's been a mountain in and of itself to start climbing. But I have learned, at the end of each day, good, bad, or indifferent, I am solely responsible for myself and my actions.

I spent the better part of my adult life in combat, training for combat, training others for combat, and laying those to rest who had experienced much of the same emotions and feelings that arise from such a life. While most of you were going to college, getting jobs, getting married and starting families I was memorizing, rehearsing, and testing myself in the tactics and techniques of surviving a war. Despite being an artilleryman I learned early on that when it comes to fighting a war, that would not be the only skill set I would be called upon to utilize while I fought for the freedom of an oppressed people on the other side of the world. While you studied for finals, I studied the ins and outs of M-16's, 240-Bravos, the M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun, the Mark 19, the Law of War, the Geneva Convention, etc. etc.

Many people will tell you that we went into that country out of a presidents hurt pride, to sink our claws into the corporate monster that is fueled by oil, and a plethora of other conspiracy theories that aren't even worth mentioning. Who knows, maybe those were the secret reasons our politicians sent us there. But for those of us who actually went, who spilled our blood, sweat, and tears in the unimaginable heat of that sandbox, we stayed and fought and many gave their lives on that sand for different reasons. We did it primarily for each other, we did it for the pride of a people back home, we did it for those Iraqi's who came to us with tears in their eyes, thanking us for freeing them of what seemed an unchangeable lifetime of terror and oppression. We did it because deep down, we knew it was the right thing to do. I've always struggled with the critics of America, especially those Americans who negatively refer to us as the "World Police" who have no business sticking our noses in the business of other countries. Here's how I look at it, I break it down to a smaller scale: If you are a single human being, which you are, and while walking down the street one night you stumble upon a dirt-bag, or group of dirt-bags beating and raping a woman in a dark alley are you just going to say "that sucks, but I'm not the police so I'm just gonna continue on my way and expect that someone else will deal with that eventually"? Or at the very least, are you going to pull your cell phone out of your pocket and call the police, or if you are physically capable are you going to intervene? Only you can answer that question, but I'll bet that you'd do something in an effort to stop it. Well guess what? We as Americans elected our officials, we gave them permission to act as our voice as a whole, they were voted into the offices that they hold and those offices carry the heavy burden of making decisions such that may put our Military in harm's way. And guess what else? That is the purpose of a Military, of having an Army, it has been since the dawn of time, to be put in harms way in defense of an idea or way of life, or group of people who otherwise aren't capable of fending off an aggressor. Furthermore, that 1% of Americans who serve, choose to do so willingly these days. There is no draft or required term of service to be a member of society. So go ahead, call me a mercenary or war monger, but at the end of the day I know I chose to place myself in harms way and would gladly give my life defending those who are incapable of defending themselves, regardless of where they hale from, America or any other country on this floating rock called Earth.

However, I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Having spent roughly one third of my life in a combatant mind set, my ways of thinking and handling things changed dramatically. Some of these changes, and the depth of their grasp on my mind were oblivious to me. Some of them I was just not willing to admit to, and some of them I was painfully aware of, but scared of what dealing with them might mean, professionally, personally, and publicly. So I did my best to bury and ignore this new mindset which was the predominate mindset in my life. I faked my way through day to day emotions while secretly not really feeling anything at all but anger. My brain didn't so much care about my emotions, that was for my soul and my heart to deal with. My brain learned how to survive. It adapted, improvised, and overcame the obstacles that it felt hindered my chances of survival. That became my only way of life, survival. My brain figured out what was useful, and not useful to accomplish the daily task of survival. And if I understand things correctly, to some extent it re-wired itself almost solely for that purpose. It knew true happiness and sadness were not effective tools for responding to threats, however, anger and adrenaline were. It sort of shut down the pathways to these other emotions to make sure it was always fully capable of utilizing the effective tools and responding to the day to day threats, real or imagined. Our brains can't distinguish between the two, hence a noise or sound causing "flashbacks" or improper reactions to seemingly normal stimuli.

So, as I was saying earlier, I'm finally learning to process all this stuff in a better and more positive way. It took years to develop the survival mindset, I cannot hope to undo it in a matter of days, weeks, or even months. And to be honest, I don't think that it will ever necessarily be completely "undone." But I am learning to change this survival mindset, to feel emotions again, I work every single day to do positive things and surround myself with positive people, to re re-wire my brain to a positive mindset, but it is a mountain that I am still climbing. I have set backs, I get over stressed and don't always handle that stress as well as I should. But five months ago, these same stresses would have triggered a complete shutdown withdrawal that would have kept me in that perpetually negative mindset. Now, yes, they set me back, but only just a little, and not completely or any where near as negatively. Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up when you do fall down. And as tough and terrifying as it has been and continues to be, I refuse to stay down. It might take me a couple of rough weeks to get back up, but thankfully, as I cannot mention enough, I have this amazing group of people who care about and support me, and each and every day they put out their hand and offer to help me either get back up, or stay up. Even if that just means understanding that sometimes I need to come over, not to see them, but to use their pitbull as a pillow for a while and to eat some tacos with that amazing starry eyed blonde girl and be on my way.