But in dropping the wall of pride, accepting those moments helped me accept myself.Īfter the last year we’ve all lived through, reaching out to friends and family has never been more important to me. Opening up to understand and be understood required a lot of introspection. Of course accepting moments of weakness wasn’t easy.
Despite living in different corners of the country, the simple action of starting the conversation of personal struggles made me feel closer to them than the times we’d be huddled in a foxhole. Asking about how they were, sharing my own personal struggles.
Phone call after phone call, I began connecting with other veterans I knew. In addition, talking about feelings and emotions among males is generally considered a taboo subject. This one moment of feeling understood between the two of us made me realize the importance of opening up.Ĭonsequently the environment the military provided us made us feel like internal struggles are just that, things to be handled internally. We spoke for hours about the difficulties we’ve both been facing. One evening an old platoon mate called me, he reached out to express his struggles in his new life. The overwhelming feeling of an identity crisis made me feel isolated, misunderstood and lost.įighting to stay positive started to become difficult. In a country that glorifies the military, why were veterans committing suicide at an alarming rate? Was I destined for the same fate? We were trained as “professional warriors” but we weren’t trained to face and fight anything like this. These staggering numbers followed me closely. The highest rate of suicide with veterans being in the first six years after they leave the military. According to the VA’s National Suicide Prevention Annual Report released in 2018, 17.6 veterans die from suicide each day. I didn’t want to be a devil dog, I just wanted to be me.ĭespite my attempts to shake off what I used to be and trying to rebrand my identity, I felt haunted by the military. My family no longer introduced me by my name, I was now the “marine.” Family members and friends treated me differently. In addition to trying to unscramble the internal struggles to my past, I had to face them everyday. But inside of my head, inside of a ring, I was fighting myself.
I hated the fact that I had spent years training how to fight and harm another human. Now that I was no longer training to fight the “enemies” of United States imperialism, the fight led inward. With a lavish annual budget of $826 billion that goes to the Department of Defense, being a part of the military was hardly anything to be proud of considering that 1 in 4 American households face food insecurity. Initially, I was happy just to be able to sleep in but over time feelings of isolation began to creep up on me.īesides the awkwardness that came over me when people would thank me for my service, I also felt a deep shame. To start a new life.ĭespite my excitement, transitioning out of the Marine Corps was a bigger struggle than the 20 mile hikes my platoon would often go on. To rejoin my circle of family and friends. But at the end of my enlistment, I couldn’t wait to go back home.
Professional warrior.įor years my life orbited the eagle, globe and anchor. By Manuel Guzman | J(Illustrated by Jeniffer Torres/ Warrior Life)