I raced my race. The one I'd been training for this whole time. The race came and went. It was a wonderful experience. I beat all my goals. So why do I still feel broken?
I achieved and exceeded my expectations for myself, I did it! But I'm not doing well. Its silly of me to expect one race to change my heart. To strip away years of hurt, guilt and shame. The simple fact is a lot of veterans are like me. Trying to chase something that will erase the hurt. To be clear, I'm not done racing, but I'm done focusing on it as my sole therapy. PTSD can't be run away from, it must be run towards. My wife has run towards my PTSD and in all honesty, its why I'm still alive.
I've had to remind myself why I don't kill myself at least half the days in the last 9 years. I've managed to stay alive this long, but this battle has landed me in the hospital twice. I'm not proud of any of this and I don't say it here to attract sympathy. I say it because honesty could be the thing that saves me. Saves you.
When we get honest, we can move forward. People can rally around us and options become available. Maybe its a treatment center, maybe its a lifestyle change, maybe its getting into regular therapy, or maybe its simply talking regularly about how you're really doing with your spouse.
I promise you its not always fun or pretty when we get honest! I can think of a great many things I would have rather done than confirm my wife's greatest fear that I, her husband, was and have been suicidal for many years. I knew it was her worst fear because she knows how many brothers I've lost and how many other veterans have died in the same manner. Now she has to worry about me.
I didn't want her to know because I didn't want her to worry. So, in every fight, every time I was depressed, I could never fully share with her my truth. I was afraid if I told her I was reminding myself of the reasons why I needed to stay alive, I would destroy her.
I have stayed alive because I have a wife and two daughters. If I die, I know how horrible it will be on them. They need me around. What I've come to realize is thats not living. When you justify life based on the convenience and security of others, you're not living, you're existing.
Thats exactly what I've been doing, even at my highest moments, I've been existing. Those highs don't last long. My race lasted 1hr and 25mins. you can't base your happiness around 1hr and 25mins. I want to live. I mean really live!
At This Able Veteran you'll hear a quote from Mary Oliver several times. "Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this to, was a gift." I find it beautiful and it's been a motivator to find purpose for me.
When something terrible happens in our lives, we are handed a box full of darkness. But we have two options. We can let it destroy us (I've tried this route and it sucks) or we can let it drive us as an agent of change and hope.
What we go through in this life uniquely qualifies us to speak into another's. We get it, we've been there and we've come through it. So, someone who is just now opening their box needs us to be there with them.
Please understand I'm not honoring the darkness. I wish none of the bad things that have happened to you had happened. But they did and we can't change that. What we can change, what we do have power over is what we do on the other side of the trauma.
I thought being a film maker was the thing I was going to do to change the world. I thought thats how I would see the box as a gift. So far its none proven to be the case. I struggle with depression, rage and suicidal ideation regularly. Thank God for This Able Veteran and my family. Without them, I wouldn't be here. They have given me a foundation and have kept me from falling to far down. But now I need to take some steps.
Here are my next steps.
I've applied to a 45 day inpatient treatment program and should find out if I'll be admitted soon. I've applied to two other organizations as well. If these all fall through, I have a third place in Georgia that I will fight to get into. I can' no longer wait for someone or something to show up and get me better anymore, I have to take those steps.
Through this process, I've been really struggling with finding my purpose. As I mentioned, film making isn't my purpose. It doesn't help me live the quote from Mary Oliver.
The good news is I think I've figured out what my purpose is! Don't let anyone tell you the darkness has to stay dark. Light that candle and search the darkness because there is always an answer when you're down there. It is so hard to find, but its there.
I'm going to be taking steps towards two goals.
First, I want to continue to train and race. My hope is I can start to bring other veterans along and help teach them lessons I've learned along the way. I also want to equip them with resources. I am building relationships with other organizations that can offer programs I can't. But I can help give someone purpose, get them back into the physicality some of us miss from the Military and help them find their purpose. If I can't help them, I'll have a list of people who can. I do have long term goals for this project, but I'm not getting bogged down in the details. Right now I'm letting today be today.
The other goal is an art project. I'll always be an artist, just maybe not in the way I have been. I want to start working with wood from whiskey barrels and transform them into something else. I'm not doing this with the goal of turning a huge profit, I'm doing it for creation, focus, peace, and sanity.
So where do we go from here? This will be the last post on this blog. I'm starting a new chapter in my life. That new chapter in my life has a name, its "Hill 22".
22 veterans a day commit suicide. Even if that number is 1 a day, its still to many. As I've trained, I've found so many life lesson running up, down, and between hills. We all have our own "Hill 22", the thing that threatens to break us. My hope is to show others it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes we need to push through it, sometimes we need to slow down, and sometimes we need to not go it alone.
The new blog will be found at Hill 22. Please follow me and my journey there.
For those of you who have stuck by my side, thank you. Your support is needed. We all need community and you've been that for me. This isn't goodbye, this is a come with me to the next chapter!
Remember, seasons end. Some seem harder than others, some seem longer than others, but seasons always end.
Remember, when the going gets tough the tough get help...
