Army memories and thoughts

When I look back at my time in the Army, I am generally filled with pride. I look back on it with positivity but when I really think about it, most of the time I was in I hated my life. Strange how that works. I guess my mind has passively blocked out how much everything really did suck for all the reasons.

It mostly was not that bad. It was basically just a job while state side. I had a couple shitty leaders and a couple good ones. I had a number of good times as well. I still consider some of the people I served with as some of my best friends, even though we hardly talk these days as we have all kinda of moved on with our lives and transitioned into the civilian world and live all over the country.

Generally speaking, being in the military can be summed up with the phrases “hurry up and wait” and “embrace the suck.”

Trauma

Plenty of it from my time in but I think the one that sticks with me the most is likely the one that was also the least dangerous for me. It just happened first and before I had time to mentally prepare or anything. First deployment, I was in theater for maybe a month. Nothing much going on until some mortars fell and one landed about 30 feet from me. Luckily, it was a very small one and I wasn’t hurt, but it scared the absolute fuck out of me. Its something that still sticks with me the most despite again, being the least of all incidents I had.

Fun

I remember there were a couple people that I used to play tabletop games with, like D&D. We also played a number of card games like cards against humanity or munchkins and other geek type games like that. It was fun where once a week we would all meet up at one of our houses, order pizza and what not and just have fun. We were not the types to go out to the bars all the time, though I did go out to bars or clubs on occasion. When I was in Afghanistan, we even went to the chapel every Friday night and played games. I feel like it really helped with everything, especially since at that point I was mentally burned. This was my 3rd deployment and also the one my wife cheated on me.

Impact on my life

I am not one of those people that make my military service into all aspects of my life but it has had an impact for sure. Growing up, I was the kid that the kids who got bullied made fun of. I was very unpopular in school. It got a bit better after school but joining the Army I found tons of people I could connect with. I find it has also had an impact on how I dress. While I don’t look like I am preparing to go to combat, I find myself always wearing cargo pants, hiking shoes, a hat, sunglasses are ballistic rated and I often times have some sort of military themed t-shirt one, like from grunt style or one of those sites.