That's good. Congratulations on having a plan and sticking to it.
I wasn't bitching to receive some kind of pity. The military has some wide ass cracks it lets its men fall through. I mentioned before there were multiple suicide attempts on my ship. It's pretty life changing to see what's essentially your extended family suffer from a collective nervous breakdown. In that group I was one of the lucky ones. Half the guys ended up getting kicked out of the military without their honorable discharge. They mostly got "under honorable conditions", one or two might have gotten a worse discharge because towards the end my command had started sending people who attempted suicide to NJP. (I got redesignated as an Electronics Technician. The rest of my career, other than the training which was like going through boot camp again, was pretty fun and easy.)
Submariners are tough, the shit we did, not very many people would or could. I've spent more than two months without seeing the sun. Worked a 12 hour shift with pneumonia, and gone days without sleep to keep up with maintenance and watch standing. In 2008 we won the "Battle E" flag for some incredible stuff I cannot talk about at all. In 2009 we managed to get out of a shipyard availability on time and under budget, which was a god damned miracle. We had a lot of pride in what we did, and did it fucking well.
There's a certain ideal we have for our military members. It's a nifty way to save ourselves from empathizing with them. Either they're heroes and don't need empathy, or they're weak and don't deserve it. I ended up pushing myself way beyond my limits trying to avoid being seen as the latter. It's not a good way to live.
That's why I brought up my past in the military. Because the worst thing we can do for the kids in our military is pretend that they just need to tough everything out. They do need to tough some stuff out, obviously. It's a hard life you sign up for. Overcoming adversity is one of the most valuable life skills you can learn. To this day I'm a fucking rock star in a crisis because I've done hundreds of drills and been forced to think and act in the clutch.
There are a lot of tough strong men out there though that snap because they'd rather die than be seen as weak. That is what I consider dehumanizing, making men terrified to ask for help, making them feel ashamed for doing it. Making them hide behind an ideal they can't live up to.
And I've been all over. Ft. Hood, Ft. Leavenworth, Ft. Gordon, Ft. Sam Houston, Ft. Jackson, Ft. Carson, and Ft. Knox stateside. Twice to Iraq, mostly around Baghdad, Falluja, and Abu Ghraib. Once to Kuwait and the U.A.E during Desert Storm. Deployed three times total.
Never to Viet Nam, tho. Sorry, booze.
Sounds like you had a long, illustrious career. I've had very little experience with Army folks. All I know about them is they can make each other do pushups, and wear glow belts everywhere. If I had it to do all over again, I'd join the Air Force. But wouldn't we all.
