A Decade of Service: A Millennial Perspective
What has a near decade of service in the United States Army taught me?
Every military service member’s story may have similar chapter titles, but each chapter is filled with unique experiences. My hope is that sharing my perspective offers insight to those who choose to serve, are serving, or have served.
A quick glance into my childhood and how I was raised for better context. I’m the second of four kids, raised in a below-middle-class family in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. Both my parents worked very hard to provide for us and raised us to the best of their abilities. My dad was an Army veteran, but that was before my parents’ marriage and my mom was either in college or working. My adolescent years were spent around family and going with them to their jobs, whether it was a warehouse, office space, or auto shop. Daycare was not an option for us, but I believe that’s what attributed heavily towards my hard work ethic, independence, and my desire to grow up fast.
I joined the Army right after High School. Over the past ten years, my time has included five years as a combat engineer and paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, a combat deployment to Afghanistan, and roles as a battalion and brigade Schools NCO in the 82nd during a rapid deployment (logistical chaos is an understatement), but I excelled in my assignment. I served the next four years being told to be a recruiter in upstate New York during the COVID pandemic and the implementation of MROADs and Genesis (medical logistical chaos). My final year is being spent in a Soldier Recovery Unit as I navigate the Medical Board process.
This past decade has been filled with countless experiences and people I’ll forever be grateful for. Yet, there’s a side of service we don’t often discuss—the losses. The loss of friends, relationships, opportunities, time, and even identity.
The Losses That Shape Us
My first experience of loss was immediately after completion of basic training. A time when I should’ve been celebrating my accomplishment as I awaited airborne school. I was sexually assaulted while I was sleeping by other recent graduates who were also going to be going to airborne training with me. To them, it started as a possible joke, but I was not in on it, and it tore me apart. I was a soldier now, not that skinny and weak kid, or so I had thought. Did I tell anyone? Of course not; everyone had already witnessed it, and the fear of being ostracized or identifying myself as a victim, wasn’t what I wanted. What a great way to start off my career as a young 18-year-old. I’d be in the same battalion with the people that scarred me for the next five years. I acted like nothing had happened, and so did everyone else. Lucky none of them were in my platoon.
The next loss I would experience was fellow soldiers on deployment. People I didn’t know, but who I would see in the dining facility and who were patrolling the same routes my platoon had patrolled. We conducted a Ramp Ceremony where we put their caskets on a plane home. It was gut-wrenching watching others mourn their friends. You take an extra long look at everyone after a night like that. My deployment was plagued with Vehicle-Born Suicide Bombers. Our Romanian counterpart would be the next to experience a terrible loss. The unsettling feeling of when the inevitable would occur began to creep in. I remember the night before my unit was hit. I had dinner with my best friend, not knowing what the next 24 hours had in store for us. When our convoy was attacked, it felt like a movie. The explosion didn’t look real. Seeing my best friend on a stretcher loaded onto a helicopter, the human remains in front of my vehicle, how fast support arrived, how the sky shifted from night to day almost instantaneously, as if it was just a training event, but when it was over and seeing my best friend lay unconscious in a hospital is when that reality set in and everything became real. That was the loss of innocence for me, it was like a switch flipped in my brain. After that day, everyone in the platoon handled their job with even more care and compassion for one another. Paratroopers have the unique capability of thriving in adversity.
What I had lost in innocence during that same time, I gained in a personal relationship. I had started talking to my then-girlfriend a few months before deployment, and I fell madly in love. With the knowledge that tomorrow isn’t promised, we decided to get married as soon as I returned home. Planning a wedding on a deployment is not advised at all, but I knew she was worth it.
Returning home from deployment was when the loss of identity started. I sat alone in my empty room, and the only logical answer was to buy my first beer since I had turned 21 while on deployment and missed the opportunity to celebrate the traditional way. It was the first time I drank alone.
My first time returning back to Houston after deployment was to get married. There were so many emotions and things going on all around me. I was nervous to see everyone. I had feelings of guilt, sadness, anger, confusion: how could everyone and everything be the way it is when there is evil in the world? So I did what I do best and I didn’t tell anyone how I felt, including the person I was going to marry.
How do you marry someone you love when you have all this going on and not tell them? You be selfish and tell yourself that you’ll figure it out later and enjoy the moment. Moving forward, I would start to struggle even more and chase a rush, telling myself, “You only live once.” I didn’t think I just acted.
Transition and Turmoil
The conclusion of my time with the 82nd was bittersweet. On one hand, I had the idea of having more time to myself and a less stressful operation tempo as a recruiter. On the other hand, I was saying goodbye to the only thing I had known for the past 5 years. The 82nd was a wonderful mix of organized chaos and exceptional men and women who are a different breed and unlike anything I’ve encountered throughout my career. It takes a special breed to volunteer for the Army and then volunteer again to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft.
It feels like I just put a big red bow on a pile of crap and called it an amazing gift, while writing my conclusion of my time in the 82nd, but at the time, it was COVID, and my marriage had started to fall apart for the first time. I felt alone and confused, I didn’t know what I was good at. I didn’t talk about how I was feeling and I shut people out. It was also the first time I began drinking heavily, and the demons came out to play then. I kept telling myself once I get to recruiting, I’ll be fine and everything will work itself out.
I would struggle with a lot my first year as a recruiter. It was the first time I was truly alone. My wife and I went through a rough patch durning the Covid Lockdown which resulted in us taking some time apart, she went back to Houston and I went to Rochester, NY, on my own. That first year was hell. I struggled with loss of identity, loss of camaraderie, loss of purpose, loss of friends to suicide and accidents. It was so much loss that year. I had no real leadership, and I could not connect with my fellow coworkers or even peers my age. So I reverted back to what I had learned. I drank, I drank a lot, and I drank alone, but I still worked my ass off as a recruiter. I would have times of motivation and sobriety. I was succeeding as a recruiter, and my evaluations were stellar. If it works, don’t fix it, right?
It wasn’t till my third year in recruiting that things with my wife and me had reconciled, and we decided she would move with me to Rochester, NY. It was an immediate roller coaster of emotions, lessons, chaos, and memories. We had begun to foster an amazing community together in Rochester. People that had become our friends became family, and it felt like things were finally falling into place, but that’s when I started experiencing medical issues, and with that, I couldn’t drink anymore. I had already been going to therapy for my PTSD and expressed my concerns on trying to find different methods to cope. Different techniques would work until something at work would set me off, a panic attack, or a PTSD trigger. I would go right back to what I was good at, not talking and drinking.
A Hard-Fought Perspective
The beginning of this past year is when everything caught up to me both from a medical and mental standpoint. I didn’t realize how far I had fallen into a hell of my own creation, confusing solitude with isolation. Those that could see me struggling and would offer to listen or help, I would shrug off with a lighthearted joke about PTSD and I just needed a drink and I would be fine. I didn’t want help, or rather I didn’t know how to accept the help. I was scared to be honest, with others and myself. Which is something I still struggle with. I had become so good at distracting myself with work and outside influences. That when everything was stripped away and I was alone, I couldn’t cope. Ultimately, I had unintentionally hurt those that were closest to me, karma caught up with me and my marriage had ended. I was left to ask myself, do I blame the Army for the person who I had become?
Not necessarily. This past decade has been filled with loss. It was also filled with gratitude, understanding, and perseverance lessons that I wouldn’t have learned without my time in the Army. I refused to be a victim of my situation anymore. Rather, a participant in my journey to become a stronger, better person with the help of a shit load therapy, courtesy of the Army and Tricare. The classic cliché of, “I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” is not a sentiment I exactly share. I wish I had this perspective sooner and didn’t hurt those closest to me. However, what I can change is how I write these next chapters in my journey. I finally asked for help, and to my surprise, the Army listened and has actually begun to take care of me.
Why I’m Sharing My Story
As I transition out of the Army, I reflect on the positive changes I’ve made in leadership, mentoring, and influencing others. Joining the Army, despite the challenges and losses, was one of the best decisions I ever made.
If you’re reading this, and my story resonates. I hope it reminds you that loss is not the end—it’s part of the journey. What matters is how we choose to write the next chapter.
