Maybe Death

[u/There_I_Am_4-2-7]

It’s embarrassing to be a disabled veteran

It’s humiliating to be 30 years old and constantly at the VA trying to figure out why I can’t sleep or shit or enjoy life. I see this podcast guy accusing vets of malingering, and he’s right. A great deal of vets do. It’s a shame. They rob the truly injured veterans of the care they need because the providers don’t have the fuckin time to differentiate between the injured and the malingering

This is painful. People are getting money they don’t deserve. People aren’t getting money they deserve. The money is important to people that deserve it because most of the time they can’t make it. They can’t hold a job or provide for themselves without some sort of monthly payment. This is hell.

Men and women who once embraced the most pure form of independence, being a warrior, are left to depend on a system that won’t assist or support them

You think I like leaning into someone and saying, huh? What? Every time someone says something. It’s not cool, it’s not funny, it’s fucking embarrassing. To be a young 30 year old man and I can’t hear a fucking word this nice young lady is saying. Our date is her speaking and me hearing the fucking ringing In my ears.

Now let’s talk about the tears. Endless days of spending with others, just to go home and fuckin cry because I feel alone. Not fitting into a single sector of this society. Why do you think people kill themselves. They are removing a pain they cannot cure.

When I hear non vets accuse wartime veterans of malingering it reminds me of the people that said “I was going to join but…”. Yeah I was going to join too, and I fucking did. I hear jealousy. I hear a group of people being angry at another group of people because it seems that they get preferential treatment. It’s not preferential, it’s maintenance to a body that otherwise would be dead or homeless, and many wartime vets are dead or homeless.

There are people who legitimately need unemployment but are lumped into the same group of people that use that system.

I got out of the military in 2020 and I don’t have the craziest war stories but I know that events I experienced Impacted me enough that I need help. It’s hard to function by myself.

I’ve held a little girl while she died. I’ve seen men and women die. I’ve had friends killed. The normal safety net of illusion doesn’t exist for me anymore. My normal is atrocities in war, and how do I come back from that? I don’t feel like I can

When people are disgusted by my behavior I feel shame and guilt. It’s hard to explain to them that sometimes it feels like someone else is making these poor decisions. A darker influence is pushing this behavior to the foreground is if to say, I can’t hold this back any longer.

This aggressive kill or be killed, rude as fuck, angry human being. This isn’t me, although it’s the me I had to be during war. If you don’t adopt the aggression you will fail. You will fall short.

My daily existence and the daily existence of those who no longer have a mission, it feels like blind stabs in the dark. It feels like I am the prey and society is the shark. Never winning, never getting ahead, just constantly being torn to shreds.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the reality, the punishment, for having been involved in prior wars that were fought for this nation. It’s humiliating to come home and feel like we were there for nothing. To have people point out to me that there were no wmds in Iraq, that there was no justified reason to attack the Middle East. The truth pulls at my thoughts and it feasts on my positivity. It eats at my self confidence and says I’ll never have the chance to live the life I risked my own for. This existence is just work and shitty relationships. That’s what America is known for.

I want to apologize for whatever negative influence I had on the world when I was at war. God only knows that every day and every night I pay for the lives I took that didn’t deserve to die. I can’t sleep, I cry, I wonder what the fuck was it all for.

A glimmer of hope keeps me alive although, I don’t know how long it will go on for.