Healing old wounds

Healing old wounds

As you know by now, the disclosure found under my “About Me” section applies as always.

I spoke about perusing this in my first article of the year. Well I want to assure you that this is not merely an idea spurred by the emotions of the moment that fell by the wayside and no follow through.

To update you, I've been exploring the idea of therapy for a while now, and have just been waiting for my next doctor appointment this coming week to discuss options.

As luck would have it, I backed into an opportunity to heal a wound that had been hurting me for years. You see, it was back in 2002 while on an active-duty, stateside deployment that I became convinced that I needed help. Some of the things that we dealt with in terms of stress and my feeling about the deployment truly brought out the worst in me. I have never felt good about how I acted and how I was during this deployment. Its a burden of guilt and remorse that I've been carrying with me for a very long time, and its something that even eight years latter I think of several times a week.

Anyhow, purely by chance I came across a reunion group website for members of my old unit. Through this I easily spent over 30 hours reconnecting with long lost friends. It has been a very wonderful thing being able to reconnect with them, and as I posted repeatedly on my facebook page, I now understand what the author of the phrase “The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.” was talking about.

I posted a letter on the site which I am about to share with you. But before I do, I want to qualify my remarks. I state and restate this repeatedly because it is some important to me that all people but ESPECIALLY veterans understand. I do not seek to portray myself out to be anything more than I am. I served stateside at Ft. Knox. All things considered, it was a relatively cushy mission compared to what all of our brave soldiers where and are doing overseas. I hold those who sacrificed so much more than me in high respect and reverence. I don't want to insult them by acting like I was some kind of hard core Audie Murphy who seen and done it all. It is a manner of personal honor to me to not do this. Plus no one can stand that guy at the end of the bar at the VFW who talks like he spent six years in the woods wasting VC but you later find he out only drove the Sergeant Major around the base in Asshole Arkansas and was later medically discharge for stubbing his toe walking into the NCO club after 6 months in the service. I do not want to ever be that guy.

So without further ado here it is.

First and foremost I want to thank the creators of this page. It has allowed me to get in contact with so many long lost friends that I assumed I would probably never see again once I left the military.

More so than anything, it has allowed me to get in contact with some of the soldiers and veterans who saw and had to deal with me when I was at my absolute worst as a human being, to ask (and thankfully receive) forgiveness for how I acted during that deployment. I have realized for a long time that during that deployment I was what I hate more so than anything: an extremely selfish & snot-nosed punk. I've thought about those days so many times and carried around deep feelings of guilt and embarrassment for how I acted, for easily 7+ years. To get some closure on this, has been a great relief for me.

One more remark qualification before launching into my next point. I don't see or seek to use the medical conditions I have as an excuse for anything. I hold myself responsible for my own actions and expect myself to adhere to the same standards of ethics and morals that everyone else holds themselves accountable to. The knowledge of my conditions only helps shed light on why I found certain things more challenging than others did.

My point. I've come to realize that the main reason I acted like such a bitter, angry punk during that deployment had a large part to do with feelings of shame and embarrassment for not serving overseas and truly going into harms way, while many of our 11 Bravo brothers were fighting and dieing over there. Clearly, I did not handle these feelings well.

The feelings only intensified for me when I left in 2003. Not many people know that the decision not to re-enlist actually was a very difficult decision for me because of those feelings and the knowledge even then, that I would be saying good-by to some of the best and closest friends I would ever have. The other secret that no one really knew about, was that in reality I could not re-enlist. No I didn't get a bar-to-re-enlist. But I was at high risk of getting one come the next physical.

My psychiatric problems had become very obvious towards the end of the deployment. So much so, that Cepek and the company commander actually ordered me to get some help out of concern for my welfare. Unfortunately the Army had very little to offer in the way of treatment, and that dept was really geared finding and discharging soldiers that the Army felt they could no longer trust with weapons. There was no way I was going to be truthful with the doctors once I realized this. However, I did make a promise to myself to get help through the civilian world once we got back home.

So while it wouldn't actually be until about Sept 2009 that I would finally get the correct treatment that has had the effect of changing my life for the better. I did go to a doctor when we got home and was on anti-depressant medications starting as early as Dec 2002. Because of this fact, if and when the 148th did get the call to deploy again, I would have been faced with getting tagged as medically undeployable at best, or medically discharged at worst. I had looked into this at great length and found no way around it. And that made me feel like much less of a man to put it mildly.

Its really only been within the last year or so that I've come to realize that I should feel no shame in not serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. As soldiers, seldom do we get to chose our missions. We only get to chose to serve and serve honorably. That while I may not have heard a shot fired in anger, I should feel some pride in the fact that I did get the opportunity to serve in some capacity. That there is some honor and pride to be had in being able to say that "I was among the first ones to answer the call to serve after the 9-11 tragedy" and no one can take that away from me.

Again, not in anyway trying to make myself or events out to be more than they are. I'm just saying we should take a little pride in what little we did do on that deployment. But its taken me a very long time to realize this.