Positives 1. Your kids love you. In the long run they will sort out the truth reguardless of what you our your W will say. 2. You are leading young men some are facing the same thing you are in a tough sitch. You choose to lead there and vent here. As Enlisted I'd say that's a positive with a capital P. 3. You are going to have a down side (bear with me here) for some time after returning. It's gonna be a well but once you climb out of that well, 6 months, year, (took me two) you are going to be one tough hombre. I'm talkin mentally. You will walk up to any of our Vietnam bros and say with honesty 'Hey bro I was there' and from the corporate execs to the bikers you will be welcomed you into the fold. You faced your worst deamons while fighting a two front war and kick that deamon in the balls. Your life will be defined with a definite dividing line and mentally for the rest of your life you will be incabable of thinking any way different and a Combat trained Soldier capable of clear, wise, and calm decision making under extreem amounts of stress.
Thats a real positive. The NG commercial 'If they ask you about leadership experience thy not to smile'. Like any of your accomplishments you cherish it will be hard fought and not easily won but like your kids it will be cherished and to those who know you it will be respected.
That is nothing against the folks we left behind. How can we be welcomed into the fold of motherhood? Hi Mom
4. You have a job. OK your standard of living takes a dive. You are not alone. Lots of us return to no jobs with a public thinking we are crazy.
"All I want is a weeks pay for a day's work" Steve Martin
You're busted FLTC! C'mon give us three little positives, you can do it, I mean you love it in Iraq, ya said so yourself! OK, I'll start you off 1. You have great friends over there 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________
OK, cease fire...cease fire....lock and clear all weapons!
The loving Iraq part has more to do with restoring my confidence in ME, I think. I have a great civilian job, and I think I'm really good at this job too, but had lost ALL confidence in ME. Also, 40% of the Active Army and more of the Reserves have not yet deployed. I had a hard time accepting that I had not done my part, and thought that I would go to my grave regretting that. This has been a HUGE boost to my confidence in my abilities, which had had tons of dirt piled on them by my constant beat-downs (Go back and read my old threads from last October...the beat downs were brutal)I'm like the rest of you...I don't understand or recognize the woman I married. I just kept waiting for it to chnage, and it got worse......
2. It has given me more time to wrap my head around the fact that a divorce is 99% expected when I go home. I really needed more time to get myself there, and this will have given me a lot of time. Those who have followed my thread will know I did not fare well at the beginning of this whole ordeal.
3. It has given me a lot of the old confidence back in ME that I once had. I KNOW once again that I am not what W. has made me feel like. (As No_Hill will attest to, I almost pulled out of this because I had lost all confidence in myself, and really didn't care about a lot. I was taking medication, living in a rat hole, and drinking too much.) I have climbed out of that and the ACCEPTANCE of that as a way of life.
FLTC, I imagine you spend alot of time wondering, or maybe even worrying, about whether you can hold on to this new confidence when you return home, that would be on my mind. Once you're back in the sitch full time it's a different kind of battle, isn't it. Your W's attack dog mentality has taken a great deal from you and the hardest part is to recognize that her reality is not your reality. No matter how she sees you, or appears to see you, that is not YOU! I know myself I still have a struggle with that and things just whack me over the head sometimes. It's too easy to fall back into feeling unworthy, undesirable etc because that has been drilled into your head for years. We aren't what they percieve us to be, just as they aren't what we percieve them to be. Later, guy!
Excellent philosophy. Yes. I do wonder about the regaining of my confidence, and my ability to hold onto it when I'm back in a different fight, actually a much more difficult one.
I doubted everything about myself before I got here, even though I had successfully commanded a battalion, and had been highly regarded at my civilian job! That’s what this type of issue does to your head. You probably know what I’m talking about. It’s like the line in Springsteen’s Born in the USA: “spend your life just coverin’ up like a dog that’s been beat too much”
I do have a great deal of serenity from finally getting off the bench and getting here. It might be tough to understand if you've never been in the military, why "being in Iraq" could give you serenity on any level! When you've been in this profession as long as I have, 26 years, you don't want your brothers and sisters to rotate through 2 and 3 times while you sit back in a Reserve status and collect checks, and don’t shoulder the hardship.
I had a terribly guilty feeling about that, as well as the wondering "Can I do it if I have to?" My confidence in everything was shaken by this. Well, so far, I have MORE than done the job, and I realize again, that THIS is who I am........not what I was painted as by my W. And…in fairness, I have undoubtedly let her down as well, by not being available when she needed me, by not making her the center of the universe, by becoming boring.
Definately it is important to keep in mind that we did let our W's down in some ways, whether it could have been different is water under the bridge now but once we put blame on someone else for everything we are, in a sense, giving up our own power. Our W's became hurtful attack dogs whereas we became little servants trying to appease them, "maybe if I do this better she'll be happy again" But, it's done, fini, finato ...whatever. Our job now is to put ourselves back together as best we can and make as happy a life as we can for ourselves, our families and even our W's. We must remember that they are people too, nursing great pain and the people they present themselves as being are NOT who they truly are. To be both loving and forgiving is something we should each strive for, no matter how hard. Have a great day!
