High level, the army was great for me. The experience was great, met all sorts of people, the leadership skills and lessons I learned have catapulted my career, and the GI Bill paid for a masters from an elite school.

But recently I can’t comprehend what I did for 5 years. My friends died. For fucking what? Because of choices made by assholes in DC? When it first happened, yeah I was sad, but it happens, it is a very real workplace hazard. But now I get physically nauseous when I think about my friends. The lives they never had. They never even got to grow up. They never got married, or had kids, or traveled the world, they didn’t get to do anything.

Everyday my body hurts and picking up my kids is a fucking gamble if my back will hold up. Everyday I wake up and plead that I’ll be able to breathe normally and not need a rescue inhaler 4 times. “Yeah the burn pit sound bad but no way it’ll affect me” Sike. Didn’t even have to wait years for symptoms to pop up. Got diagnosed with asthma in the post-deployment check up. My life is permanently altered by the long term symptoms from another major medical episode I don’t wanna talk about I got while serving. “Go get your VA disability!” It’s fucking stupid. I hate this paycheck. I would give it all back and more just to be completely healthy.

I hate going to the VA. The healthcare I have gotten has been great. The doctors are from an elite university next door. But getting past the fucking mongoloids at the admin desk? Good fucking luck. I somehow am the only GWOT guy ever there. The rest is all Vietnam, or sometimes fucking Korea, guys knocking at deaths door.

The worst is the fucking scumbags that populate there. I had to listen to a guy in the line behind at the pharmacy telling his buddy on the phone to go to the VA and tell them you got raped or saw your buddy blown up so you could get that 100% disability. The dude went and gave his birthdate to the pharmacy counter and it was a date that unless he did a minimum of 16 or more, dude never left post. I hate that I am lumped in with these fucking guys.

I hate how I have to explain what the fuck the infantry does to people when they ask what I did in the army. I hate how I have to add “officer” when I say “infantry” with other veterans in the workplace or else I get treated like I have crippling brain damage.

I hate how this small chunk of my life dominates my everyday and will follow me till I fucking die. It was a job. Allegedly, a noble job. Now it is an anchor to every fucking day. It wasn’t worth it.