On “Transitioning”
An Email From an Iraq Veteran
Hi, Im a 17 year old girl Making a Documentary based on PTSD in soldiers as part of my college work. If there is any way you could be of help, (answering questions honesty) id be grateful
Thankyou
Kind Regards
Veteran: I’d be happy to help you however I can.
Girl: Thankyou sooo much! If possible could you answer this question? Was the transition between soldier and civilian hard? If yes, why? Can
you describe (if not too painful) what it was like? Thankyou again
Veteran: The transition from being a soldier in combat to being a civilian is hard. It is worth mentioning that making the transition from civilian life to combat is easy. I know you didn’t ask this question, but I’m telling you anyway. Pretty much 100% of the people I’ve ever spoken to about my combat service have been shocked to hear me say this. I’ve told them that if it were them, they would see how easy it is too. They all disagree with me because they want to think that I am different from them, but they are wrong. We’re all the same. Humans are built to fight and survive. Put a human in a situation where she needs to fight and survive, she’ll do just fine. She’ll find a way and she’ll make that transition almost instantly. But once that switch has been flipped, it is not easily unflipped.
Coming home is a motherfucker. “Transitioning” back to civilian life? There is no transition. You never really transition. You either learn to cope or you kill yourself.
When veterans, and civilians who care about veterans, discuss this topic, they usually refer to it as the “civilian-military divide”. You can think of it as a wide gap between the experiences of the veteran and the experiences of the civilian. They want to connect—mostly it’s the civilian who is making an effort to find an empathetic connection with the veteran. A lot of work is being done to bridge this gap, but I’ll let you in on a secret: it will never be bridged. The gap cannot be closed. There will always be a gap. But that’s okay. Veterans will usually easily understand other veterans, and civilians will try their very best to understand veterans, and many will do (and are doing) a pretty decent job, but there is not a way you can directly bridge this gap. It’s a frustrating predicament. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dangerously naive and will ultimately do more harm than good.
I want to tell you what it feels like to transition back to civilian life, but after trying over and over and over again at social gathers and in casual conversation I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to explain what it’s like. Not directly at least. The best way I can think to explain what it is like is like this:
Imagine you worked really hard in high school and after you graduated you got accepted into a fantastic Ivy League school. While at this school you met so many people who were so smart and motivated and brilliant and with them you learned more than you ever thought you could learn. You had incredible experiences, created imaginative work, and made bonds with so many different types of people in so many different ways. You had no idea there was so much that could be experienced in life, you never knew you could feel so much, and so deeply. You grew up, you matured, you were sharp, and mostly you learned how to really care. Now let’s say you graduate, and you move back home for a while before going out into the world and deciding what to do next, like get a job. But when you get home, the entire world is a kindergarten class. There are all these ridiculously little chairs and little desks. There’s a teacher who is older than dirt and sucks at her job and you can’t get her attention to ask her what the hell is going on. Everyone is 4 or 5 years old. They can barely speak English, yet alone talk to you about all your new passions and experiences. When you do try to talk to someone, they just cry, or walk away, or babble stupidly. One kid just peed his pants, another actually shit himself and won’t stop laughing. The best part of the day is art time, but everyone just finger-paints badly and makes a mess, all the activities are meant entirely for small children and you are bored out of your mind because the entire world has suddenly become one huge kindergarten class and there isn’t one single person you can talk to in an adult voice or about one single thing you care about. Now do this for days. And weeks. And years. It never ends. So you try to act normal, you try to fit in. You try to act like you enjoy finger-painting and you try to act like you enjoy sing-along time and you try your best to not be rude or impatient with Susie when she talks to you about her American Girl doll. But it’s all an act. You still know you’re trapped in this fucking kindergarten class and you have to either learn to assimilate or go mad. I doesn’t matter what anyone says—an adult will never have a meaningful connection with a pants-shitting kindergartener.
This transition is probably something akin to overcoming addiction. The way Alcoholics Anonymous approach it is by first admitting that you are an addict, then working your way from there. I think that once you’ve been in combat and you’ve gotten The Addiction (and trust me, it is a powerful addiction), you have to first realize that coping with The Addiction is a life-long process. It’s this dark companion you will always have. And if you’re smart and healthy about it, you’ll look for real ways to live with it. It’s different for everyone, but it almost always involves years of therapy. In my humble opinion, I think the best thing for veterans to do is to find an occupation or a hobby where they get to make something. I’m a writer (sometimes), but these days I’m a software engineer.
Being a soldier is about service. True service is something that is done for its own sake and once you’ve done it there is no record of it; nothing persists. That’s the nature of service and that’s what makes it great. You do it for the fuck-all of it; you do it for glory; you do it for duty; you do it for love; you do it because someone’s gotta do it and you feel like it might as well be you. Service is one of the greatest things you will ever be able to experience as a human: helping other humans. And when your service is complete, it is my opinion that the person who has served should turn to something creative. Something that persists. Something that exists not just for it’s own sake but the sake of something else. You’ve served. Now build.
Jason is the author of the memoir, Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq, published in 2005 by HarperCollins.
