Tired of being alone and translating myself for others
I gave up drinking.
I gave up a lot of the old escape routes too. Adventure. Running away. Numbing out. Disappearing into chaos.
Now I run and bike a ridiculous number of miles. I push myself physically because movement is one of the only things that makes the noise quiet down. It is not punishment. It is not some inspirational fitness journey. It is more like survival maintenance. I dont feel any better afterwards. I just dont feel worse when I do go.
I am a combat veteran (2007-2011, 2015-2016). I have a family. I am in school. I am trying to build a better life. I am also changing careers because physically I am in pain and stupidly I push through it. From the outside, I probably look like I am functioning. But internally, I feel deeply alone.
One of the hardest parts is trying to find work after doing things that do not translate cleanly into civilian life.
I have done combat medicine. I have led people under stress. I have worked underwater as a commercial diver. I have worked in EMS and hospitals. I have trained people. I have been responsible for life and death decisions. Ive killed the ”enemy” and saved people in my ambulance. But somehow I still find myself constantly trying to explain what that means in the language employers want to hear. They prefer an indoctrinated college kid over what my middle daughter says “a man whose face is shaped with consequences.”
It is exhausting trying to translate not only my skills, but what to say, how to say it, and who I am even supposed to say it to.
I can handle pressure. I can handle difficult work. What wears me down is feeling like I have to become a marketing department for my own life just to be seen as employable.
Today I went to my VA hospital because I needed help. Mental health was closed. The emergency department was open, but that was not what I was looking for. I did not want to be observed. I did not want to be processed. I did not want to become a chart.
I wanted human contact.
I know about the crisis hotline and used it before. But I want to sit with someone.
That is the part that is hard to explain. Sometimes the system offers a door, but not the door you actually need. I was not looking for someone to treat me like a threat or a liability. I was looking for another human being to sit with the weight for a minute. I say threat. Think of it like Im threatening their numbers
The hardest part is that when I try to reach out, people often do not know what to do with me. And when they do reach back, it sometimes feels like they are reaching for the version of me that is easier to understand. Not the actual person standing there overwhelmed. Pick ONE trauma. No because I am human and complex.
I know the difference between a thought and an action. But I am tired of having to manage myself so carefully while also feeling like nobody really understands how heavy that is. Does nobody grasp that a normal person killing someone, watching them die, or saving them truly deeply affects them? For good or bad!
I miss feeling like I had a place to put all of this Camping, rock climbing. I miss feeling human without having to earn it through exhaustion.
Today I turned my phone off and went outside because I needed to experience being alive instead of arguing, explaining, applying, explaining again, or begging to be understood. Thats another issue because here I am on Reddit looking for conversation. Unable to find it around me.
I just needed to say it somewhere. Im sad im truly alone. Reached out to family who ignores me. bleh.
I am sober. I am trying. I am moving my body instead of destroying myself. I am trying to become employable in a world that does not seem to know what to do with people like me.