A vet's introductory rant

Alright, I'm not much for this social media stuff anymore but this seems like it might be a bit more on the up and up than any of the other platforms so lets give this a shot.

Howdy folks, my name is Larry! I've been on a bit of a strange journey lately. See, right as the 2016 election was coming to a head I had been getting quite agitated and angry, and luckily my boss was the kind of guy that recognized my behavior as something that he too exhibited, behavior he knew from personal experience to be PTSD from his 15 months in Iraq. Well, I too spent some time in Iraq, and sure enough once I started talking to someone at the VA it started to become pretty glaringly clear that I too suffered from this affliction.

So I began the process of dealing with my shit, and that wasn't easy. The first barrier was getting past my own brain, I had spent the past 8 1/2 years lying to myself about the source of my problems. I would point the finger at booze, girls, shitty friends, educational institutions, big companies, stupid hippies, but the problem was never me. I couldn't look at me as the source of the problem, and there were a lot of reasons for that.

My role in the Iraq War was not what I expected it to be. I joined the US Air Force as Security Forces, thinking I would be defending air bases from attack as that was our job. My deployment was a bit different though, my squad was on loan to the US Army to assist with Detainee Operations in Camp Bucca, Iraq. So I was all geared and pumped up ready to go get shot at or blown up by an IED, and instead I stood in a tower watching anywhere between 500-1000 detainees in yellow suits living in a massive cage with tents. Not the war experience I was prepping for, but a war experience none-the-less. I'd had a lot of friends that almost lost their lives, or took lives, and I felt that my experience was not worthy of giving me a warriors affliction like PTSD, so when the symptoms kept getting worse after I had been out for a few years I had a pretty extreme state of denial. About 6 months of therapy and I was able to blast through that wall and find out some disturbing things about myself.

We always have our own self image, the way we view ourselves and the way we want the world to see us. One of the interesting things about trauma therapy is what processing trauma actually does to the brain. The symptoms of PTSD that are displayed externally--the panic attacks, outbursts of rage, the things you can see when it's not happening to you--are caused by the body reacting to some stimulus that triggered the memory of the trauma, and when the memory has not been properly processed the body can go into a "fight or flight" reaction, causing adrenaline release and (in my case) falling back on training that was drilled over and over and over. If someone were to not know I were having a PTSD related episode while interacting with me, they would likely think of me as an asshole vet, because I would speak loudly, quickly, and clearly, I'd be shaking, and I'd do whatever I could to get the FUCK out of where ever I was.

So, therapy deals with the stuff. The baggage. It helps you process it, find a place to put it. Its not an easy process, it involves a lot of time, talking, thinking, and tears. Coming out on the other side, with an understanding of what you have gone through and that THAT KIND OF STUFF HAPPENS IN THE WORLD causes a change in the way your brain works, or at least it did for me. For me, I looked at 8 1/2 years of obvious PTSD symptoms that I always blamed on something else. It was the booze. I didn't get enough sleep. That guy was being a dick. That lady was a bitch. That asshole didn't use his turn signal. That kids pants are too fucking tight. That hipster can't make a good cup of coffee, so now I need to get a good one and now I'm all hyped up, and its that fucks fault! Never once did I look at myself and see that I was the one bringing my problems everywhere I went. Turns out if you smell shit everywhere you go, it's probably on your own shoe.

Now that I've gone through this, and asked myself some tough questions, looked myself in the mirror and was honest about what was looking back I'm not as angry as I used to be. I'm also not as phased by the massive amount of bullshit excuses that our ENTIRE society is made of. "Feeling bad? Its not your fault take this pill, be sure to ask your doctor!" Commercials for antidepressants are just as common when you watch the news as commercials for junk food, or junk food that is advertised as health food (check the label...probably has about 12 grams of sugar per serving). That means that those are the companies paying for the news to be aired. Conflict of interest much? Think the news is going to tell you that if you are lazy, eat shit, and don't take care of yourself that YOU SHOULD FEEL DEPRESSED? Think they're going to be honest about the amount of money the sugar industry has pumped into keeping the studies of how bad sugar is for you (it's fucking poison) from seeing the light of day? No they won't tell you that, but they'll tell you about the great movies coming out that you have to see, the latest drama in Hollywood, the latest news with today's hottest celebrities in between sensationalizing the latest tragedy to hit our nation.

Distractions. All distractions to keep you from looking at the one thing you actually have control over that can change.

YOU.

Since the first of the year, I've eliminated all food items that contain wheat or added sugar, and I've never felt better in my life. Lost 12 lbs in the first month before even looking at a gym. I've been more productive as a musician, I've been more productive as a writer, I've been a better boyfriend, a better teacher, a better band mate, a better friend, and just feel better. You don't see commercials saying all you have to do is stop putting junk food like candy, soda or bread into your body and that body will start to feel better. Why don't you see that? Well...because the candy, soda and bread companies that pay for commercials might start to lose some business, and that is NOT what America is about.

Everyone in this world is on a different playing field, that is part of the human experience. We all have different hands dealt to us, and sometimes you get a downright shitty hand dealt to you. But guess who controls how you play those cards? YOU DO! Make a decision, that you are going to do everything you can to make your life what you want it to be. I've recently discovered how crucial diet is to that, and since making the decision to focus on that I have noticed an improvement. In poker, once the cards are dealt you can choose what to keep and what to get rid of. I've gotten rid of my shitty diet, my sedentary lifestyle and shitty people that bring me down. I'm sure there are many more unhealthy things that I'm doing (I probably drink too much coffee), and I'm going to change them.

My problems aren't gone, they are still there. I know how to live with them better than I used to, and tomorrow I'll be that much better than I am today. Whoever you are reading this, whatever you have experienced does not define you. Its not about if you've had a worse hand than me, or if my hand is worse than yours. Countless people who have never been to a war have experienced far more horrible trauma than I, and countless war vets never had to deal with mass prisoners or incoming rockets and mortars like I did, and far more war vets had to endure far worse than I could even imagine. This shouldn't be about who's dealt with worse shit, it should about healing. And part of the healing process is to learn that yes, you did have this experience, and many others have also experienced bad shit like this too. The world keeps on spinning, and we should do everything in our power to keep people from experiencing the bad things we have experienced, and we should also try to live our lives in such a way that we do not push our own problems onto other people. Why? Because they've got their own fucking problems to deal with! You have no idea what else someone has been through. So losing your mind about issues pertaining to your own personal trauma and forcing people around you to change the way they live their life isn't fair, deal with your shit. I know its not easy. That is why I made excuses for years about it.

So now ask yourself, are you making excuses? If you're honest with yourself, you might not like the answer. BUT THAT IS GOOD! Have you ever grown by being comfortable? Probably not. We grow when we are uncomfortable. Society is moving in a direction to try to remove all discomfort from everything, and we are growing stagnant because of it. Don't like opinions that are counter to yours? No worries, you can hide those "offensive" ideas on your feed so you don't have to see them. You can fill your feed with all stuff that confirms your line of thinking. You never have to even consider the opposite side...so you have no idea why people who disagree with you disagree with you. Well of course you don't, you haven't looked. Some people look, but they drag their bullshit biases with them and refuse to objectively look at what is going on. Some people look at these different thought processes and views--like myself--and I wonder "do the people that object to this actually comprehend the real reasons behind this viewpoint?" In my attempt at objectivity I have found that a lot of what people are finding "offensive" is just the harshness of reality that they don't want to confront. Not my problem if you can't handle your own shit, just like its not your problem if I can't handle my own shit.

We all have to share this planet we live on, and we've done a pretty shit poor job of doing that. We are obviously not addressing a flaw in our collective reasoning. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, a prisoner escapes a cave he has come to know as his entire reality, and upon leaving the cave he is able to see that his entire worldview was based on incomplete information about the world around him. Ask yourself, do you know all there is to know? What piece of information are you not privy too that could make sense of all the madness going on in this day and age?

Chances are, you're trapped in a cave too. It's OK. We all are to some extent. The first step to getting out of the cave is knowing that is what it is. Start looking objectively, ask the hard questions that the little voice tells you not to ask. Eventually, you'll start to see the cave for what it is, and that is how you start to get out.