This is not a real disorder and it is usually considered part of PTSD. This is not a scientific paper and I am not a psychologist or a doctor. I am a veteran. I was (and will always consider myself) an Army Infantry soldier, an NCO, who did two combat tours in Iraq. I have not finished college, I do not have a degree and I have not done a study on this subject. I am merely sharing what I and several of my fellow veterans have discussed and discovered about ourselves. I would not consider myself and expert on any subject except for the subject of me. Because I am a veteran who has and does experience these things I feel that I am qualified to talk about the things which I am about to share.
Returning home from service in the military especially as a combat veteran whose job was combat is a difficult and scary thing even if we do not know it when we separate from service. This is a difficult thing because we go from one world into another completely foreign to us. This world, that of a civilian, is one that we came from but when we step back into it, it is not the same as we left it. Rather, I should say that to us, because we have changed, it is not the same. Many of the things we knew so well we find are not so and many things we were blind to we now see clearly. We come into this world outside of the military alone, with little to no support, and with little to no understanding from others.
I asked myself, what are we as veterans afraid of, what causes us grief and pain, what makes us feel alien in the world that we were born into? There are many things. We fear being abandoned, that our friends, family, society and government will or have abandoned us. We are afraid of being alone and misunderstood partly because that is exactly what we are a lot of times. We can be in a crowed and still feel alone and this feeling is not based on emotion or recent events. It is a constant feeling. We are killed inside because we feel that we do not have a battle to fight and we are afraid that we will never matter like we did once, that we will never make a difference like we did when we were in uniform. We always feel different, separate from those around us, we don't fit in like we once did and we know that in part we never will. We are a different kind of breed and we are afraid that we will never be accepted and that we will never find our place in this world.
More than fear we have constant reminders that we are different. Our scars, both those visible and those unseen, remind us of who we were and who we continually want to be again. The media demonizes us and politicians call us terrorists. We hold on to our tags, tattoos, uniforms and pt shorts and remember the when and why. We drive the streets, go to the grocery store, and go to work every day surrounded by people who have no idea what is going on outside of their little life and their biggest problem is Starbucks making their caramel macchiato with whole milk instead of soy. We see a world full of people who believe they are owed a life and that others should take care of them, people who lack motivation and drive. They preach political correctness and then march in an effort that would undeniably undermine the power of this nation and would bring about the demise of our political system and those things that i would say are right and correct.
We came from a world of order, discipline, honor, violence, testosterone and high standards. Violence of action is one of our creeds. We live, eat, breath, work, and fight side by side. Phrases like "You never leave your wing man" and "Always take a battle buddy". We are never alone and we are better together. Out here most everyone only looks out only for themselves, and very few know the meaning of self sacrifice or pushing each other to make all of us better.
The problem we have is that we have from a society where we were not only able to be, but were expected to be at our very best, to push ourselves past where we ever thought we could push ourselves. We live for one another, we work to improve ourselves and each other, we push to get to the next level, and we believe in something more than ourselves. These are things that we very rarely find our here in what we call the real world. Honor, discipline and the higher virtues are not found here and thus we are foreigners in the world that we decided to fight for and protect and what's worse is what little is left of this nation that we love is slowly falling victim to political correctness, racism, narcissism, and entitlement.
We feel like we are a minority, we are in that we are a small number who have served, in this nation of ours in that we still believe in hard work, honor, personal responsibility and liberty. We, by our own choice, lived in a socialistic society, the military and waited for the day that we were free again. Free again, meaning that we weren't free. We ate, worked, moved, and lived when and how we were told, we got paid the same for different work. We had pay, health care, dental, meals provided and work that we had to do. It was not freedom and it was a sacrifice we were willing to pay to secure liberty for ourselves later, our friends, family and our posterity. Now we see the people around us willingly giving that liberty away for security, social programs, and self esteem. We feel that we are a minority in our belief in higher virtues such as freedom. We are not wrong to feel this way. We are called terrorists, war mongers, and extremists when in truth we believe in what this country was founded on. We are not extremists in our beliefs. In fact we are quite the opposite and we are demonized for it.
It is not that we just feel that we are alone in our own country, state, city and community, we are largely alone. Beyond the political and social ideologies, we have experienced many things that the majority of people have not. We have lived a life others can not fully comprehend, we have seen atrocities and done things that many can only imagine and not understand. We see the world differently and there is no way we can fully share what we have seen or lived with those around us and so we keep it to ourselves and recognize it in each other in a simple look. We are alone and the love and acceptance of friends and family and the fellowship found with others like us are the only comfort and help we have once we are home.
When individuals join the service we experience a culture shock and it is severe. The thing that helps the transition is that we are with others experiencing the same change and we walk into that life surrounded by those who have made the change already. There is support there and we motivate each other and strengthen one another along the way. When we get out we experience another culture shock but there is no mutual suffering, no assistance from the people who surround you. Instead, if we act like we were trained to, if we live the way we learned to to survive and to succeed we look like arrogant, assholes instead of motivated, confident successful individuals. So, our character is demonized in part because we threaten the status quo and thus we are either treated as a problem or we have to learn to dull our light to survive and be successful in this world. Again we are alone and now bottled up having to be less than we are.
This is a real problem that we all face in some level. This is a begining of an explanation of what troubles us. The problem goes deeper but I hope that you can now see a little of the problem that plagues us. No we will not conform completely because we are better for the experiences and the standards we believe in. Instead of expecting us to change maybe, just maybe, we should be allowed to succeed and use our motivation and skills to better our work place and communities. Instead of trying to make us conform maybe we should be unleashed and see what great things we can do.
