Being A Veteran

On April 24, 2013, I was a veteran. I served 12 years on Active Duty and 3 years in the Army National Guard. My time in the Army was sometimes troubled, and my leadership abilities when I first hit Sergeant were abysmal. I was just a Sergeant, not a leader of Soldiers. I only mention this because a failure at the Drill Sergeant School really changed my outlook on leadership. I started leading, caring, doing, and executing as the Lord intended. So when I left mentally broken the first time in 2013, I was a changed person. I was never the go-to man for most anything, and I spent some time adjusting to the reality that I had no missions, no purpose. I tried to find it, and found it more or less in gaming. I like to train people, and it was gamers who had no military experience, and then I more or less found my purpose in life, I suppose. I didn’t think of it then, and think of it now, though.

But what is it like to be a veteran? Veterans like to gatekeep and tell civilians, “You don’t understand”. There are some basic things a veteran shares with civilians, at least in my eyes. Camaraderie is first and foremost. Friendships and relationships are formed in a stressful environment, and so you meet a wide variety of people, and are expected to work together to a shared goal. Most veterans, not all, are pretty motivated to do tasks. I mean, there are those who don’t do anything but whine and complain, and while I do complain, I rarely whine about things; I just accept it and drive on. There’s a mission out there for veterans, and they find it in their shared (in some way) military experiences while serving together. While branch (we won’t call the USMC a branch, at least not yet) differences exist, there is the shared misery of getting screwed over by your superiors, the government, and in my case, Big Army. Military life is and can be hard, and I sometimes look down on those who complain while serving a few years. Or wear a Grunt Style t-shirt when they didn’t even deploy. Yes, even I gatekeep to some degree.

But they served, and that’s a shared mystique of military service. With me being trans, finding veterans who are trans, or LGBTQIA+, is more of a priority than non-military trans members. The fight is the same, but fought differently, and so on. It’s just that we know how to prioritize tasks and see what the next mission is, and so on. Maybe this light entry will shed some light on the “military bro/girl” attitude, but overall, it’s shared weirdness, shared hardship, and shared (in some cases) fighting in a conflict, somewhere, somehow. I don’t look back on my military service as a bad thing (I couldn’t have gone crazy a couple of times, though, definitely didn’t miss that), and really don’t regret the MOS I chose. I didn’t know what was going on, and a former friend, with whom I had lost touch, said I was crazy. But I learned my job, and in Afghanistan, did my job, picking up the fact that I brought most of my Soldiers home (two of them were in a different FOB out of my direct or indirect control at a point in the deployment) without losing anybody, which is something to be proud of. Sure, I got an award for it, but that’s not the point of surviving a deployment. Save the medal chasers for the Commissioned Officers, though I know a few that did what they were supposed to do, and still got a good award to brag about on their resume.

But it’s less about me, but it is about me. Being a veteran does confer some benefits, though it seems that those benefits are being messed with, and the current administration tends to err on the side of screwing those (as any administration really) who fought for the right for them to sit on their ass and screw us over. Doesn’t make sense, and shows that as veterans, the fight isn’t always on the battlefield, but at home. I don’t know if this entry helped you understand, but if you have questions, reach out to a vet, maybe try to get to know them, and understand their perspective, as we’re generally seen as useless and more or less a necessary evil to abuse at the whim of whatever administration is in power. I do hope this current admin implodes, though. The screwing over is redonkulous, which in veteran speak is worse than ridiculous, because it’s also stupid too. And I remember a vet on a Discord call saying something is “gay”. If a veteran says that, I’ve said it too, it means it’s dumb. Being gay isn’t dumb, but military life is unfiltered, and a certain way of talking about things that make no sense, because the military doesn’t make any sense at all. And that, as a veteran, makes me glad, I’m out, but also wish I was in too, as sometimes civilian life isn’t that great, and I think Joe Haldeman made that point in The Forever War. Civilian life is worse for a career military man because some of the job skills just don’t translate (like Infantry, other than like a security guard or contractor) into civilian life, and regular life is BORING sometimes, as you try to find things to do, like I do every day. I gotta stay busy, or I’ll lose my mind.

If you got something and it made sense, good. I don’t think I convey my points too well, and I gotta find a punchline, but it at least should show you the mentality of at least one veteran. It’s more of a me entry, but maybe you’ll get a point from this, that we’re all coming out of the military with issues, and sometimes civilian life is wack, and unfortunately, I’m too old, and too mentally dependent on psych drugs to remotely have a chance of returning into the fold. If I could, I would, though, because really, I miss war.