Mental Health: The Soldier’s Final War
Correcting a common misconception, with a view from the other side.
Perceptions and Misconceptions
I feel compelled to dispel a common misconception: we don’t all have PTSD. I don’t want to diminish the severity or seriousness of what it means to live with PTSD. It’s a brutal condition, not only for the soldier living with it, but also for the family and friends who often find themselves helpless to assist those they love so much. I have seen firsthand the ravishes of PTSD in both family and friends. I will not elucidate the ramifications of this particular mental illness in this article. But I want to be clear: we do not all come home with PTSD. Many of us are blessedly unscathed. But we have all suffered and endured together. Because of that suffering and endurance, I have observed and experienced a very particular struggle with mental health: depression.
Compared to PTSD, depression seems more pervasive; it is even a bit insidious in its presentation. The insidious nature, however, often hides the grave consequences that arise because most of us don’t know how to deal with this depression. We don’t know where to turn. We feel weak and pathetic if we did turn to someone. Admitting your feelings, we’ve been told, represents pure emasculation — you’re a fucking pussy (that’s how we say it to each other). I have dealt with it the way most of us deal with it: repress, repress, repress. That repression presents itself in unique ways. Each way is a coping mechanism. For some it’s drugs, others prefer sex, most adore alcohol; honestly, all three hit the mark relatively often. It’s kind of like your body and soul is a dumpster, and as long as you fill it with enough trash, you never have to see the bottom.
That needs to stop.
Ramifications
It has been about three weeks, but I only found out a few days ago. It was by accident. I was thumbing through social media — something I rarely do; otherwise, I would have known sooner. I was in the airport, returning home from a work trip. Top of my search result: The obituary. A friend and fellow soldier killed himself. I took a seat on one of the handicapped benches. I wanted to cry but didn’t want to do it in public— otherwise I’d be a pussy. I rushed through the airport and got picked up by my better half. In the privacy of the car, there was no stopping it. I was safe from judgment: I cried.
My friend was a bright individual, passionate, gifted, intelligent, a ferocious friend, and all around smart ass. Staring at my phone, I immediately recalled the last text I received from him. He was teasing me about the stupid shit officers do. I couldn’t argue — it’s par for the course. So the joke turned into self-deprecating humor on my end. He finished by saying, “You know me so well.” That was it. The same day he killed himself. For the rest of that night, and the rest of this week, I have blamed myself. I was one of the last people to speak with him. How did I miss it? Why didn’t he tell me what was going on? How had things gotten so bad?If I knew him so well, how did I not know this? I continued to blame my blindness. Then I got home, uncorked a bottle of wine, and tried to figure out why.
Why We Do It: An Exploration of the Mind
There is a very particular mindset in the military because of the inculcation process that starts with Basic Training and continues until the soldier is discharged from the Army. To civilians it may seem as though we’re unthinking, unfeeling, hard-charging machines — we are. But not because of some genetic anomaly. No. We are made, not born. I’m sure someone far more intelligent than I am has written extensively on this topic. I’ll try to formulate a simple explanation here.
When you arrive at Basic Training any semblance of an identity is stripped from you. You wear a uniform that is dictated for you. Your head is shaved. Your PT shirt is tucked in. The color of your reflective belt is dictated. You must read, memorize, and recite the Soldier’s Creed. Every waking, and even sleeping hours are regimented, timed, and controlled.
When you begin Basic Training you are drilled over and over and over to perform rudimentary tasks as a uniform group. There is no such thing as individuality. Why? Because individuality may not get you killed, but it will get the soldier to the left and to the right of you killed. So, you stay within your lane. You drill. You obey.
I’m sure some of you reading will think, ‘Well, I would be different. I would subvert, or thwart the Drill Sergeants.’ You’re wrong. You’re wrong because there is no I, there is only we. Part of this inculcation process demands that you have a Battle Buddy. This is someone who must go everywhere with you. Even to the latrine. This teaches co-dependence. You rely as much on your Battle Buddy as he relies on you — you have to. Having a Battle Buddy also ensures you don’t stray outside the lines: if he gets in trouble, so do you, and vice versa. I have witnessed the clever and cruel methods soldiers have employed to physically and psychologically torture those who strayed outside the lines. Sleep? You won’t get it. Food? Stolen. Locker? Ransacked and destroyed because you decided to be the shit-bag who got everyone else smoked (physical punishment) for hours. All of these techniques lead to something else: bonding.
Bonding forms among soldiers because there is a definite in-group and the other does not survive. Once each soldier has become a part of the in-group, he has become the machine you see. As the bonds grow stronger, a final element is added to the mix. Soldiers are assigned tasks and purposes. Those tasks don’t necessarily matter. A task might be sweeping and polishing the floors for hours, or running missions, or PT. Every task has a purpose, and every purpose feeds back into another greater purpose. It’s a purpose so great that every moment is dedicated to it, and every soldier has taken an oath to do it— defend America.
These Bonds
The bonds that form among soldiers become incredibly strong. I have seen blood oaths and pagan rituals used to cement these bonds. Usually, larger and more difficult training exercises end with a Crucible, from which everyone emerges exhausted, crushed, starving, and miserable — but decidedly closer. Struggling, suffering, bleeding bind us. I can look to my left and right and see that the man standing next to me has suffered as I suffered. Because of the suffering, I feel a sense of respect and honor towards him and for myself. This sense of honor and respect strengthens our sense of community. We belong. We are dedicated to our country and we are dedicated to the men and women with whom we serve. We have a task. We have a purpose.
Year after year, this mindset and these cycles continue and constantly build upon each other. I belong. I have a task. I have a purpose.
Then It’s Gone
After years of service, sacrifice, and belonging, something changes. The Army discharges you. This is usually a very happy time. We all talk about the amazing things we’re going to do when we get out of the Army because we will be free! No one to report to. No task. No purpose. Except the purpose we give ourselves.
That’s our greatest error.
I remember getting out. I was so excited. I had scraped and saved my money because I wanted to travel and play poker. I was going to use all the things I learned and do it my way. No one to give me orders. No one to dictate every hour of the day. My life. My way. I was Frank Sinatra and the world was on my string!
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones” — Truman Capote
When I left the Army, suddenly I was accountable only to myself. Previously, I was always accountable to someone else. That accountability gave me direction. It gave me a task and a purpose. The task and purpose I assigned myself, however, was vague and relatively unenforceable. If I didn’t want to do something, there really wasn’t a reason to do it, except because I wanted to. Few things in the world are as feeble as that mindset.
I found that the structure I hated so much managed to warp how I functioned. I was no longer the man I was before the Army. I honestly believed I would be. I would simply go back to being who I was — just more training and experience. I was not.
Stepping Back
Before the Army I was not an 18 year-old out of high school. No. I was an Ivy League Grad, and I had a Masters Degree from another Ivy League school. I had a career. I was used to leading and managing people, making companies incredibly profitable.
So, when I say I was lost — that feeling was entirely new. I didn’t lack the ability. I had lost it along the way. More correctly, it was removed and replaced.
For roughly the first 18 months out of the Army, I fell into a really deep depression. I couldn’t make myself do anything. I felt fractured, like a broken mirror someone holds together with masking tape. In fact, I couldn’t even look in the mirror because I loathed what I saw. I hated myself. I failed to reconcile the person I saw in the mirror with the person I believed and knew myself to be. That dissonance distorted my self-perception, especially my perception of self-worth. Unfortunately, no one could tell me how to fix it because I never reached out to anyone. It was my secret, my suffering. I held tightly to the inculcation I had received. I couldn’t be weak. I couldn’t be a pussy.
When You Fall, Pick Yourself Up
I was only able to fix myself because I hit bottom. I do mean the bottom. I was single. I had gotten fat. I stopped taking care of myself in any meaningful way. I was unshaven and my hair was long and in desperate need of a cut. Then I went through a one month losing streak at poker and lost a small five-figure sum. I remember driving home one night — the road was long and winding along a river — I remember thinking all I wanted to do was swerve off the road and drown in that fucking river. I believed no one would miss me or even notice.
Somewhere in the bottom of my soul I heard the desperate screaming of a man in agony. In a panic I booked a trip to Amsterdam. No planning. No idea what to do or see. I just went because I had an intense feeling that I needed to escape myself or I was going to kill myself.
It was exactly what I needed.
While thousands of miles from home, I managed to find new people, and make new friends. I met some amazing people and I learned that the death I felt so deeply was of my own making. Through a process of mimesis, I learned to be like other people. I learned to be human. I slowly shrugged off the shell I had spent the last several year constructing. I found a new freedom! I discovered how to be me. Through this month long trip I re-discovered myself. Then a spark of creativity — a business idea. Slowly, I was able to add new pieces to my life. I was able to find new purposes. And because I was telling my new friends what I was planning to do, I was suddenly accountable for both my words and actions.
To solidify this upward trend in mood, self-respect, and purpose, I reached out to friends at home. I wanted to continue what I had discovered over seas. I met old friends one at a time. In these coffee get-together sessions, I opened up. I found that I could reconnect to my feelings. I could destroy old barriers and walls. In their place I created new connections with old friends. That was the freedom I needed. I found my sense of self.
Bringing it Full Circle
The life of soldiers post-service is alienating, foreign, abstract, painful, even soul-crushing. There exists an imaginary, though divisive, sense of them (civilians) and us (military). They cannot understand us. We can never be one of them. This attitude creates a chasm for those exiting the military because of one last change — we are no longer one of us. We become veterans and are now miraculously divorced from our own brethren because we are free and no longer suffer as we once suffered. This cruel twist of irony isolates veterans from friends, family, and military. We are men without continents and no longer part of the islands we called home. We are forever adrift, seeking and hoping to find a new sense of belonging, a new brotherhood.
That brotherhood almost never forms because we divorced ourselves from our emotions and sense of humanity. We divorced our humanity because killing another man requires removing humanity to accomplish a brutal task. Without that humanity, however, we will forever fail to connect to the humans around us. Isolation is our only consolation.
When a man stays isolated for too long without a task or purpose, he finds that life no longer possesses any value. As a soldier who no longer lives with a task and purpose, life loses all value. Death becomes a reasonable solution.
Looking now at a picture I took of my friend only two days before he killed himself I cannot see the sadness he must have felt, but I know it exists. I know he must have buried that sadness deep within his heart and hid it from humanity so that no one — not even a fellow veteran — could suspect the darkness he carried.
I wish I could bring him back. I wish I could tell him he’s not alone and that this too shall pass. But I can’t. Instead I get to regret that I missed it. I missed his suffering. I can, however, tell you this story so that you may succeed where I failed.
What We Must Do
The task of saving the lives of veterans falls heavily upon all of our shoulders. Reach out to the veterans you know because they will not reach out to you — they’ve been trained not to. Let them know that you may not have suffered as they suffered, but you love them and they provide an enriching source of pride and honor for the country you call home. Ask them to talk and then listen. They will not open up immediately, but eventually they will. Then let them know that their new task and purpose is to shift from defending this country to demonstrating their leadership, integrity, and honor. Let them know that they possess the power to accomplish incredible tasks and they will forever remain a guardian of freedom and the American way of life because they are American soldiers.
One Final Note
According the the VA, approximately 20 veterans kill themselves every day — almost 50% higher than the national average. If you can reduce this number by 1, you have literally saved a life.
Can you rise to the challenge and save just one?
(This is for you, my friend. I’m sorry I missed your loneliness and desperation — I’ll never forgive myself. Wherever you are, you are missed. Thank you for all the memories. I hope to make you proud.)
