To My Younger Self — Don’t Join the Army
To myself from myself-as-the-parent-I-wish-I-had-had
Dear Younger Self,
If the Time-Witch calculated correctly, this will arrive when you are about 17, getting ready to join the Military, but before committing to joining the Army.
You should read a short story called By His Bootstraps or another one called All You Zombies. They’re the same story, but only one gets a film. It doesn’t have any clues for the future and this isn’t a true bartender scenario. I was just reminded of it, and it’s a good story.
I don’t have any advice. I don’t even have warnings. What I have is what you needed and wanted. You weren’t jealous of your friend’s vacations or her mini-fridge or her car. You were jealous of her confidence that came from a lifetime of affirming love. I never stopped believing that passage from the Psychology textbook about the baby monkeys. Both things about the baby monkeys. First, the one about physical comfort. More importantly the one about the more confident monkeys raised by expert caregivers.
I don’t think parenting or any other factor can change your entire personality. It might, but I choose to believe that you are your authentic self unless something extreme happens. You have your moral compass mostly developed already. It might change gradually, but it won’t fall apart.
If you choose to join the Army, it will be as an interrogator, not as a cryptologist like you hoped. If you join the Navy, maybe you’d get to grow apart from your sister gradually, like normal twins, instead of being split in half all at once. Either way, you will be yourself and the self that you are is valid.
Your humility, empathy and consideration for others are all great things about you. Awful people will inevitably take your vulnerability as an invitation to abuse, and will say, “We’re trying to help you.” No one is trying to help you set boundaries by pushing your boundaries. People who care about you respect when you say to stop. They don’t dry-hump on your roommate’s bed in order to help you practice being assertive. They do it because they enjoy harming you without consequence.
You never went into someone else’s space after they told you not to. It’s not because they didn’t let you. It’s because you chose not to.
People with any kind of privilege — white people, middle-class and upper class people, men, people with more attentive parents, athletes, more attractive people and anyone who sees themselves as the default — don’t realize their lives are just a little easier. In my opinion, those kinds of people are constantly trying to convince themselves that they earned their privilege. I think they believe they have discovered some secret to success and that explaining their secret to everyone else will solve every problem.
You won’t be alone. Every non-default person will be given unwanted advice by privileged people. It’s not something you’ve done wrong. You can see so many things that they don’t. What’s important is that I know, and you know, how capable you are and how hard you’ve worked to get here.
There are people like you that want to feel heard. They are the people who need someone to listen. You will save the lives of at least one person by being able to listen. In my timeline, I went to college and was sexually assaulted in college. If you go to the military, there’s plenty of chance you will also be sexually assaulted there. It’s not a fault of yours that you are vulnerable. It’s the fault of a society that doesn’t value most of the people in it.
I regret joining the army. It wasn’t what I really wanted. I felt obligated to stick with it because my recruiter did his job. I never found out what being an interrogator is really like because I was three pounds over the weight limit when it was time to ship out, so I was DEP-lossed. In your time, the Navy has a higher weight limit and that won’t be a problem.
I can’t promise that life will be any better if you stick with the Navy instead of the Army. Your sister had three healthy kids, so working on the reactor of an aircraft carrier didn’t do anything to her fertility.
I can promise that you have lived a unique, remarkable life and no matter what happens, you will have a remarkable legacy. I can promise that I won’t be ashamed of your decisions because I know you did your best. I know your character. I know your intentions. No matter where you end up, I am proud of you.
