|My story

I Joined the Army at 18 years old in 2009, into the same unit as my father. Spent a few years going to various courses and then in 2012 deployed to Afghanistan with US Special Operations Command. Early in the deployment we lost a member of the team and it changed the way I processed the very importance of everything we do and how quickly everything can be taken away. We were met with regular indirect fire/mortars and eventually you become desensitized to hearing the sirens and ‘Incoming, incoming’ over the loud speakers. One occasion I was met with a close call when our mail office on camp was hit directly with a mortar, and the first thought that crossed my mind was ‘good thing I decided to return to my b-hut to change for the gym instead of picking up my mail’. After returning home I didn’t have many marketable skills for a good job so I spent a few months as a bouncer for campus bars, until one of the guys from our deployment called me up and said he was going back. I felt completely out of place in the regular world, and I couldn’t let him go back without someone from our team who knew the lay of the land and what was going on.

It was now 2014, and within a couple days of arriving back in Afghanistan, we were split up and I was put in charge of the team in another location. The operational tempo was a bit higher for the first few months and I had a small team working around the clock, so any sleep schedule was impossible to maintain. Near the second half of the deployment I received a call from back home and found out my mother and sister were staying in a homeless shelter. I wasn’t able to fully focus on our operations and handle the situation at home, so in order to not put my teams’ life at risk I was granted permission to return home and handle what was going on. When I got home I was still in the mindset of having a mission and needing to get it accomplished, and that is how I started to approach every situation I encountered. There was no time for emotion, we just needed the result. In some ways this was helpful to get things done that only involved myself but, as you may already be thinking, this is not a good approach when it comes to others situations and emotions. It wasn’t too many months afterwards that someone very close to me, for the second time after returning from a deployment, told me that I don’t express any emotions anymore and no one knows what’s going on in my head or how I feel. Over the next couple years my civilian career was advancing, but my relationships weren’t lasting very long and I felt that I was unable to feel or have any intimacy with someone. When something came up in a relationship I just wanted to fix it, but didn’t pay attention to the emotional side. I found myself spending most of my free time outside of work drinking and not doing the things I once enjoyed.

Another year or so went by and I was able to get into a hobby that was healthy - hot yoga, and it was quite helpful for helping me center myself and focus back on the life that was right in front of me. I had an amazing routine of getting up at 4am to meet my friend at the gym, knock out the work day and drive directly to the yoga studio. This went on for almost a year straight, until I got orders to go to Monterey and take a year long Russian course. The course was difficult, but I had a solid foundation for routine and was able to get through it and return home. On October 14, 2017, one month after I got home I officiated the marriage between my two best friends, and on the same morning lost my mother to an overdose. The feeling of that loss brought back the memory of the first deployment and I was lost. There wasn’t a mission to focus on and I knew I couldn’t turn to alcohol to cope with it, so I began painting. I loved it and was quite good it turns out. Painting was great therapy through that time, until the time again for the Army to call me up and say you’re going to an intense three month course. Not long before the course, one of the guys from the first deployment also called me and said I’m going back with JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) to Afghanistan after this course we’re going to and we need one more guy. I knew he went through an extremely rough first deployment, spending most of his time in a place we called Rocket City (I’m sure you can imagine why). There was no hesitation to say ‘If you’re going, I’m going’, and that was it.

We’re now into mid to late 2018, taking off from Fort Bragg to head over. Once we got to the base I was assigned to a team to take over the cases/operations from one of the guys heading home, but my flight was delayed between the bases and he had to go out on one more operation before we could do our transition. On that operation he lost his leg and had to be flown out of country to get medical care and get home. For a while once I joined that team I felt I would be blamed for him getting blown up because my flight was delayed. None of them did, but I knew I had to step up my game and do my part in the cases he was working so that the group responsible for that wouldn’t gain momentum. I was fully tuned in from that point and we conducted many operations with various specialized units over the following months. I really felt alive and each day I knew what had to be done, how to do it and where to go next after each operation was done. One of the final operations I went out on however, didn’t go as planned. We were on foot a few miles into a valley in the mountains, and along the way encountered over 12 IEDs that either didn’t detonate or were disarmed. During one of the breaks we took to obtain updated intel on the area, I had my pack off and walked back and forth from one of my guys and the commander to provide the intel on movement in the area. In the middle of passing a piece of information to send up, about 60m away an IED went off and we were immediately under fire from the sides of the mountain. Four of our guys were standing right next to the IED that was triggered, in a spot that I had walked over several times. I ran over with the medic to the guys and did everything I could to assist, while getting reports of the locations of the enemy around us to call up. We were in the firefight for what seemed like an eternity, and eventually received air support so we could get the medevac helicopter in to get the four guys out. After doing our best to shield the open wounds of the guys with our bodies while missiles were shot into the valley we had to make improvised litters and, during a lull in the shooting, carry each of them down the 8ft terraces to the pickup point for the medevac. Myself and one other guy stayed at the pickup point until we were able to load them up and they were extracted. Everything seemed to be pretty calm at that point until as we were walking back up to meet up with the others I noticed a chem-light at our feet on the ground, marking a known IED location. We both paused and had a decision to make because we didn’t know where exactly it was or if we were right on top of it. Luckily, we were able to safely get out of there and then extract on foot with the rest of the group. As soon as I returned back to my regular camp from that operation we were also hit with an RPG and small arms fire at the gate. Another close call, and reminder that life really is delicate. The rest of the deployment remained at a high pace and I was just so exhausted I don’t even remember much of the demobilization process.

When I got home in mid 2019 I thought I would feel so relieved to be back. While talking to the guy I went with, we agreed at the time that was the last deployment we would volunteer to go on. It wasn’t more than a few weeks after being home that the feeling of relief faded and all that played over and over in my head were the deployments and how things could have gone different in each situation. I once again found myself spending most days and nights drinking to either take my mind off those thoughts, or to feel like a normal person. I went through several iterations of quitting and restarting because nothing seemed to change where my mind was. There was a period of time that I felt I had things under control and was able to have a relationship, get back into a life of doing enjoyable activities and ignore the movie in the back of my head. The problem was, I ignored it all and after another year it started to come back and there was no putting it away. These thoughts consumed me, took away my ability to communicate with my partner and be present in the relationship. Around this time, my father started going through his VA disability process and getting the help he needed and that gave me the courage to acknowledge I needed help too. I tried going through counseling and work through the things that were affecting me, but I was having a hard time sticking to it. I felt I couldn’t put someone else through that kind of life, and it was unhealthy for either of us to stay in that situation. Not only had I lost a relationship from the impact coming home from these deployments, I realized I was also disconnected from all of my friends during that time. I was still spiraling down a dark hole every day and on too many occasions thought it was better for me to just keep everyone away because they didn’t sign up to deal with that and I would figure it out on my own. I felt irritated and angry for no reason all the time, and didn’t want to take it out on anyone or be the person in a social situation who was silent and throw off everyone else’s enjoyment. My strength was deteriorated and I couldn’t do it alone anymore.

In September of 2022, I had another anxiety attack from too much going on, but this time it was in the middle of a battle assembly at the unit. I ended up walking out, angry and frustrated at myself for not having things under control. The only thing I could do was call one of my warrant officers on my way home who knew what I was going through and ask him to give me top cover so I didn’t have to deal with the phone calls from the unit trying to figure out what just happened. I knew this was the last straw and I had to do something immediately because it was getting out of my control, so the next day I checked into the VA Behavioral Health clinic to find a solution. Unfortunately, the first thing they did was try to send me to the ER because I was light headed and had a high blood pressure. I was just extremely frustrated at the time and filled with anxiety. They did get me in front of the behavioral health provider, but he didn’t really listen to what was going on and within 30 minutes just wrote me a prescription for various medications and sent me off. This whole situation was the wake-up call for me to face my struggles head on and not suppress them. I reconnected with my counselor at the local vet center and began analyzing where my life was before everything and what brought me happiness and peace. Doing this gave me a way forward and list of things that I know made me happy at one time, as well as where I could go to find myself. It also helped be become more open with those close to me about what I’ve been through and anyone who asks questions they may feel are too personal. I started noticing more that even those people who I just became acquainted with, when talked about in the appropriate medium, were able to open up about things they are struggling with that they also hadn’t talked to others about.

This challenging life many of us have lived as veterans didn’t just give us a purpose to fight for while we were gone. It also gave us a purpose when we came home, to help each other along their journey to finding themselves again and see there is a life beyond the horizon. The mental battles I have gone through and continue to face, put me in a position to help grow the community of people who care deeply about others, and give them a place that they can make a difference in others lives. That is why I started this organization, so that we can bring together those who are struggling and start them off with a break from regular life and be with others like them to feel the comradery again and help them to the resources they may need to start their journey.