Happy Veteran’s Day to all veterans out there! I wish you the best and thank you for your service and sacrifices.
I’ve been typing out a now fairly lengthy post on Veteran’s Day and what it means to me to be a veteran. Much like my previous PTSD post from last weekend, I’m not going to post it either.
Most of it was all pride and glory and sacrifice and nobility: like most of the stuff you read getting passed around on Facebook. And all of that is true and fair.
But then I also typed up a long list of how being a veteran also meant a lifetime of pain, wrangling your conscience about taking another human life, dealing with the betrayal of a “battle buddy” who hurt you, spending the rest of your life trying not to become a “22 a day” statistic, and on and on. There was just as large a host of negative aspects of military service as there was positive one.
There are a LOT of veterans out there for whom the negatives far outweigh the positives, and so I decided not to post my flag-waving, chest thumping, USA chanting post. I don’t want them reading that post and saying, “that isn’t what it was like for me” and feeling like their service wasn’t sufficient, or their sacrifice wasn’t meaningful, or that they somehow “did it wrong”.
Instead I’ll be happy to just wish all my veteran friends who see this a happy Veteran’s Day, and my hope that you are happy on all days after this as well.
Take care of each other out there…
*****