Courage

So after two years away from the restaurant biz, I’ve acquiesced to my significant (and climbing) debt and decided to get a part-time job as a server at Carrabba’s Italian Restaurant. And still, to this day, being a civilian and working as one is just plain weird and frustrating.

We had our orientation the other day, a mandatory occasion in corporate settings that was predictably tedious and dumb: the big money-making machine talking via their managers about how “authentic” they are and how many “values” they have.

Courage was one of those values. Yes, courage. The same tenet of my Marine Corps experience as reinforced and drilled into my brain for an entire six years as the Marine Corps motto: “Honor, Courage, Commitment!”  And I was almost enraged that Carrabba’s would dare use that term in their business culture.

Courage in the Marines is having the wherewithal to run through hails of fire to pick up your wounded comrade. It’s holding your position as ordered even though a superiorly-numbered enemy attacks you. It’s removing your sense of self and leaping on a grenade to save other Marine’s lives.

Courage at Carrabba’s is making sure you take time to do things the right way: using a jigger to measure alcoholic drinks properly; making sure you upsell a customer to enhance your Per Person Average; showing up to work on time in a not-too-disheveled uniform.

I hate that they would use that term. It cheapens the sacrifice of my fallen friends.

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Guns and Smiles

There is not a soldier in all of us. A soldier is a product of patriotism, painful training, and a powerful professionalism that’s unmatched by any other organization on the planet. No one’s running around the battlefield in the real world with smiles on their faces. The overarching theme of this commercial, the marketing intent, is indeed, that war is fun. I don’t know how anybody could say otherwise about this commercial.

War is not fun, people. And I’m amazed I need to type that. To my point at the beginning of this blog, I’m not saying I’m against violent video games or violence in the media, or that I’m against violence at all. (Sometimes violence can be used for positive means, like liberating the world from Nazism or overthrowing a tyrannical dictator.) But I can’t believe the insensitivity of the themes that were produced in the television marketing of this videogame, especially considering that our young men and women are fighting (and dying) in similar combat today.

Ultimately, this game is meant to create a realistic war experience that people can play. Everyone’s interested in war. There’s no greater possible conflict that can exist in a person’s life, so there’s a natural curiosity I think. But the thing most people can’t realize about these games is what a farce this product (and other games like it) actually create within the mindset of the average American. They’re less-informed and more apathetic because of what they think they know from these war simulations. I believe these videogames color their perceptions of war because many Americans don’t even read one book in a year, the news doesn’t actually cover the combat, and most people don’t have someone in their life who’s serving in the Armed Services.

The users of these games ask the troops they do come across the most insensitive “did you kill anyone?” because war to them is just a freaking collection of hand and eye movements between a controller and a plasma TV.

There are an estimated half a million veterans of the current wars who’ve returned home with mental illness as a result of their true experiences. But I guess a game about a warrior coming home and banging their heads against a wall in some apathetic VA hospital isn’t entertaining enough. No one would want to play the how much can you drink tonight without killing yourself video game simulator. No would want to race through the can you navigate the mental maze of violent flashbacks about your friends dying game.

Ask a veteran about war and look for a smile on their face. You won't find one.

Play your games. Just remember that is all they are. If you’ve never been, you have no idea what war is. I really don’t think I’m being too sensitive here. I think I’m being real. 

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Football and Life After War

On a ridiculous 3rd and 19 last Saturday, the Steelers converted with a deep bomb pass, and I knew then that they would score and my team would be eliminated from the playoffs. No Lombardi trophy this year. The Ravens came close, but failed, again.

At the party I was having at my apartment, we all just sat, shocked and angry – anger that could be seen as an unending stun. We just stared ahead. Some got up and left after dozens of minutes. Others put their head in their hands and closed their eyes. One friend just went into the room and closed the door for the rest of the night, not to come out until the next afternoon.

Why am I talking about football in a war blog? Because I was reminded of an important lesson that day: emotional wellbeing really is a supreme challenge, and hard to maintain. I couldn’t believe I had let something so beyond my control – the outcome of the game – throw me into such a tailspin of short-lived depression. I’m still on Ravens website almost hourly, writing angry comments about my team’s failures. I’m still furious and sad for my team and the aging veterans – people I’ll never know or meet – who still haven’t gotten their Super Bowl rings. I only became a big fan in recent years after quitting the restaurant industry and getting my Sundays back. I wished immensely I could go back to those times and that I could go back to not caring.

And here is the point to this blog; here is the connection I discovered between being a fan and being a veteran. As ultimately trivial and unimportant as a football game is, we choose to get passionate about it, and we put our hearts and minds on the turf. But the passions and blood and sweat we poured out in the battlefield sands of distant lands are so much harder to let go when we’re losing. Everyone loves to be connected to something bigger than themselves. Everyone wants to be a part of an epic struggle and come out on top. When we’re falling behind, we’re especially frustrated and upset because we always think our team – our passion and desire – is the strongest and the best. And that only speeds up the tailspin.

There are bumps along the way. And it’s always a struggle. The conflicts will come and sometimes we’ll let up the big play. Sometimes we’ll fumble and not recover. But when we get the chance, we pick that rock up again and run through everyone until we score.

There’s a lot in life, football, and war that is beyond our control. But we can always choose to work towards being happy.

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New Year, New Goals

I know it’s kind of a sappy sentiment, but this really is the best time of year to do some deep introspection and reflection and start making some resolutions for the future. As my friend who hates New Year’s reminds me, “It’s stupid to make resolutions on this day because you could make resolutions on any day.” True. But it’s the end of the year now and with all the holidays and small breaks from our responsibilities, we have extra time to think, and I would say that we should all take a personal self-assessment.

So where are you? Are you functioning survivor of war who does what he has to but still feels numb to the world? Are you so far past your experiences people don’t even believe you when you tell them you used to serve (no one believes me: I’m out-of-shape and bearded). Or are you simply planning to spend the holiday with several 40s or a flask of whiskey, unable to fathom how you will stay alive in this next year?

I’ve been there. Well, not technically, vodka was always my poison.

Today, I’m doing well. But I’ve learned very recently that if I’m going to keep following the path I’m on – this path as a writer who writes about war and the life after – I’m going to have to embrace a role I don’t want. I don’t want to be a beacon that other veteran’s will come to for help and advice.  I don’t want to because the farther I get from my experiences the happier I feel, and I’m afraid that I will be dragged back down. Don’t counselors and therapists have a really high suicide rate? I’m also not so full of myself to think I have the secret key to “the way to getting better,” but I do have a story. I think it’s a successful story, and maybe some other veterans can study pieces of it and apply my lessons learned to their own journeys.

So, lesson number one: It’s a New Year and you’re alive. How are you going to get yourself where you want to be? Start small. If you asked me this question at the end of 2004 or 2005 my answers would have been pretty pathetic. I would have said, “I want to be able to pay my bills on the first of the month instead of wasting all my money on booze and almost getting evicted every month.” Or I would have said, “I want to be able to stop feeling like I want to die every time I’m reminded of my traumas from war."

It was a dark place. But I was able to make small changes. I didn’t waste every cent I had at the bar every night, and sometimes took a night away from going out and partying. I went to hang out with my old friends sometimes – positive people I’ve known since being a teen in youth group – to keep me away from all my horrible tendencies and flagrant self-destruction.

Today, six years later, my goal is to finish my master’s degree in writing. Really? I know. It shocks me to write that out and realize how far I have come. We want you to get to a place where you can be happy again. This site is for you. These stories are for you. Please look around and join our community.
Much love,

Dario

~ Semper Fi ~

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The Curse of Alcohol

The curse of alcohol is that you can never move

Away from the town where you’ve made the bars home.

You can never save up enough to buy a  

Way out of your problems.

Each shot becomes an expression of the regret
You can’t swallow, so you fill your cup again.

Settling for being empty and never quenched,

Each drink is more desperate than the last.

You cycle between the highs and lows of your
Glass only to come to understand

You drank yourself away years ago.
And you can’t get that time back.

And you cope with the bottles, 

And you love them

Because the booze blacks out the scene

Of your buddy’s head exploding;

The cold glass feels better than the warm blood

From when you bandaged another’s bullet wound;

Because it was hot in the desert and the

Whiskey pulses flame through your heart and mind.

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From One Veteran to Another

I’ve been trying recently to make sense of the whole universality of the veteran experience. The longer I’ve been out, the more veterans I meet (it’s funny how you can still instinctively tell by someone’s mannerisms and demeanor that they served even if they don’t have regulation waistlines and haircuts anymore) and it seems that no matter where they’ve served during the War on Terror (or any war really), or what branch they were in, or what job they did, we all suffer from the same demons.
 Some more than others, but I’ve yet to meet a vet who doesn’t relish a chance to get blasted with another former warrior so they can talk without inhibition about their experiences. It’s like a mini therapy every time a veteran hangs out with another vet. That’s definitely a good thing I suppose, but what about our shared experiences made us all messed up in the first place? (And yes, I know not every vet has psychological issues, but no doubt their time at war has still changed them in a way most others can’t understand.)

 I think it’s all about the prospect of us facing down our mortality daily during our tours. That’s everyone. Whether you were a postal clerk, administrator, tanker, or infantryman, everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and other places) brought about the momentary possibility of our lives ending. That reality changed our spirit and our mindset; it made us hyper-tense, calloused, and adrenaline-filled. Even if we served in the Green Zone or a large main base, there was always an errant mortar to land around us, potentially blowing up our buddies’ head. There was always some local on base who wanted us dead and might detonate himself as a suicide-bomb while we sat down to chow. It was an experience that was so fundamentally different from the American nine-to-five life or the college life of many our peers that it was so easy to feel alienated and separated from normal society upon our return.

 And what exactly is normal life now? Should we pretend the things that happened didn’t really happen at all? Should we not discuss how edgy we feel in large crowds or mention how we’ll occasionally be afraid to drive past a trash pile along the highway while we drive our civilian vehicles? Can we go back to being who we were before the war?

 Personally, I wouldn’t even try, because that would be sacrificing my true identity. I was once a warrior. I once sat atop a Humvee ready to kill at the behest of my nation. I survived rockets, mortars, snipers, and IEDs. Those things have changed me.

 At first they changed me in a bad way. I was guilty to go through so much yet come home unscathed when some of my friends had died. I took to intense self-medication to replace the chaos in my soul that felt normal as a result of my time overseas. I was angry, rage-filled, and manic. I ruined many relationships and made a lot of enemies. But I’ve grown; and I’m growing.

 Nothing’s a regret if we learn from it and move on. By the sheer intrinsic value of these horrible and traumatic experiences, we’ve been tested in a way that most others never will be. We can learn better lessons as such: we can truly appreciate every single moment of every single day; we can really feel compassion and love for another human being; we can understand the value of existing. Does this sound like a dream? To many of you, I’m sure it does.

But I’ve been there. And now I’m happier than ever. But it was the hardest place I’ve ever arrived at. And I couldn’t have done it without my veteran friends. Don’t isolate yourself. There’s a whole community for you here at Not Alone.

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Echoes

I’m pleased to report that things are going well in my life. Like everyone, random bills hit me hard sometimes and family stresses me out (I won’t even talk about Turkey Day this year), but I move on. And I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed with Writer’s House Literary Agency, which was a dream coming true – a four year goal finally achieved.

But there are echoes of my past life – the manic life of the young man returning from war – that still sound off even today.

I told you once about a friend; an old Marine buddy, roommate, and childhood friend. We’ve been seeing each other occasionally for coffee or meeting up to watch football, but he’s fallen on the wayside again.

I got this voice message from him two weeks ago: “Hey, man. I really need someone to talk to cause I don’t have any friends. And my girlfriend just cheated on me and I just want to go out and chill and drink a few beers.”

I knew it was going to be bad but how could I say no? I knew he had been sober for some time, and gotten a nice job, and behaved like a normal, calm civilian. But he was relapsing into the insanity of never really dealing with his mental health problems and them flaring up again. The girlfriend, as much as that hurt him, would just be a catalyst for reliving more pain.

We went to the bar. I told him I wouldn’t let him get too drunk, but really, how was I going to stop him? I told him he needed to start doing healthy things: like not moving in with a girl he had just met; taking martial arts again to help focus and discipline his mind; not start drinking again.

“I just want to become a Marine again,” he said. And it was true: war was the easy part for us veterans. We did what we had been conditioned and trained to do, and we did it well. But no one really prepared us, or watched after us for when came home.

It’s crazy but I still feel the same too sometimes. I think: "if s*** gets too bad, I can always go back to Iraq.” The real world – taking care of, and being responsible for yourself – that’s the hard part. The military is an easy system to adapt to and understand. Life runs like a well-oiled machine when you are in service, because you have a purpose and a mission and that is all.

“You’re doing well for yourself man,” I told him. “You’ve just hit a bump. You’ve got to quit thinking about war, man. You’d probably just see more of your buddies die.”

At about 11 pm, surprisingly, he abruptly informed me that he was ready to go home.

“Awesome,” I replied. He didn’t seem very drunk at all.

An hour later I got a call. He had been pulled over by the cops for driving ninety on his motorcycle. I was a little buzzed myself, so I had another friend pick him up.

We saved him that weekend, but the following Friday he whipped his body into a tree after getting drunk and driving in the same way. He did come out the coma. No one believed he would have survived.

I get angry when I see my veteran friends imploding. I want to shake them say, “Cut it the f*** out! Yes you’ve been to war and seem some rough s***, but we need to you to be okay. We need you to move on!”

I’ve moved on, but I still remember my training: I am not allowed to leave a man behind. And I am understanding this now as the toughest mission.

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