I Can’t Remember What It Feels Like to Feel Good Anymore

***This one is for all of you guys that find a reason to keep going every day.***

One of the seasons of life that we inevitably all encounter to some degree is the season I like to call “Compounding Shituations Drizzled in Shit Sauce”. Basically, you have multiple large problems hit you and/or your family near simultaneously. I’ve had several periods (measured in literal years) of time like this. Men often seek me out in coaching for guidance through these exact scenarios. Rarely are they easy, rarely do they resolve themselves naturally, and rarely are they quick to solution.  One HFM member recently described it like this:

“I felt so bad for so long that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to feel good anymore. I just wanted to run a red light and get t-boned at an intersection just to end it all.”

Man, can I relate to that. For me this perfect storm was a combination of transitioning back into civilian life and retiring from the Army while going through a high conflict divorce with an addict while doing my best to protect and provide for my children alone and keeping as much status quo as possible in their lives. I was constantly stressed out. My finances were stretched to the max, I had five major surgeries in the span of two years, I had financial uncertainty due to my Army retirement and the hunt for a full-time job, I was providing 100% of the logistical muscle needed to get three very active children to their demanding activities. I remember being at one travel hockey tournament and waking up in the hotel room not knowing what American city I was in. I was exhausted on every level imaginable. The constant vigilance I had to have and documentation of all the events and evidence of my soon to be ex-wife took a huge toll. Constantly recording and saving graphic photographs of abuse at the hands of your former spouse will do that to you.  I lost about 20lbs of body weight in the early days of my divorce. I barely slept, I ate a fraction of what I needed to, and I worked out in the gym to maintain my sanity.

This has not been the only time I’ve felt like this. In my 2009-2010 Deployment to the Arghandab River Valley of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan about 15% of my 750-man infantry battalion I served in were killed or wounded. For context, in the entire Global War on Terror (GWOT) there are very few units that ever experienced those types of numbers. 22 were killed in action and over 100 wounded in action in just a matter of months. I was a 26-year-old weapons squad leader that deployment. My company suffered 12 of the 22 killed in action for the entire battalion. At the time we were the hardest hit unit in Afghanistan. The day-to-day grind of duking it out with an invisible enemy that easily blended into the population, doing our best to gain a foothold in a country where the people tolerated us by day and worked with the enemy by night, and our high casualty rate were extremely difficult to manage. You were never safe. Many of us began to look at all Afghan men as the enemy, the women as enemy factories, and the children as enemies in training or future enemy factories. That will probably shake some of you to read that. That’s a part of what war can do to you. The intense stress you are under begins to chip away at you and reality.  For a period of months, I forgot I was a Staff Sergeant in the Army. I love winning more than anything else and I felt like we were losing constantly. I felt constrained by rules that only idiots would play by, and we had zero power to control or influence the rules yet take 100% of the risk only to possibly be judged for our actions by people that likely have never been in similar scenarios. Conversely, the enemy didn’t have to follow the rules because they literally did whatever they wanted. As the days ticked by, I could feel the rage fill me to the point I struggled to keep it all together. One day on patrol I had to intervene and take control of a Soldier who was about to do something that can’t be allowed to happen. This snapped me out of it. Something bad was going to happen if the leadership did not get ahold of this. I had a talk with the guys and a lot of us got help for our PTSD, combat stress, and shame we felt from our unit chaplain. It only helped so much as we had six months of the deployment left.  For me and so many others this was not our first combat deployment, and it wouldn’t be our last. Many of us will struggle with this the rest of our lives. I’m one of those men. Some of those men will never get to read this article. They unfortunately didn’t make it in the “real world”.
When you are in these seasons of your life it’s like you are caught in this difficult in between period that is overshadowed by bad and horrible things constantly. It’s extremely hard to see the light at the end of that tunnel. I’m certain that despite having so many friends, family, mentors, and people that care about me….there’s a few times that I wanted to die so bad just so I didn’t have to feel anymore. It just beats in your brain like this drum that gets louder and louder. One night that drum beat so loud I started crying more than I had in at least a decade combined and I just sat in my daughter’s room with my knees to my chest and stayed there until the next morning. I hurt so bad I just wanted to check out and so many other nights but every time I just remembered that at a minimum, I’m all my kids have. I just gave it one more day each day. I started working with a therapist and things weren’t great, but they were manageable.
Seasons of pain and loss hit especially hard when you are middle aged, and the flavor of situation dictates that you start over in one or more facets of your life. This could be a lay off that spurs a career change, a high conflict divorce, multiple rapid-fire deaths in the family, or a myriad of other things. You’ll think to yourself “Why now?  Everything was going fine!”  You’ll think “This is not at all what I had planned? Why me? I’m a good person.” What’s true about combat and true about life is that you can do everything right and still not get hurt or killed.

There are a few things we need to realize here:
There are rarely quick fixes or easy ways out of your mess. You must slug it out day by day. It’s a grind of small incremental wins that add up over time. Keep throwing punches until you start landing them. Your problems can’t duck out of everything you throw at them.

The trying times aren’t going to last forever. You must find a way to win in some area of your life every single day. You don’t want to hear this when you are going through it but, it’s true. In the darkest days getting out of bed, planting your feet on the floor is your first win of the day. Yeah, sounds stupid. It’s not. Start rallying around that.

You need to be very honest with yourself. When you start hearing that drum, it’s time to talk to a therapist. It’s time to take emergency action and be honest with the closest people in your life. For those that have been there, they’ll tell you it takes over like a wave and it’s hard to see that train coming down the tracks.

You need to seek out professional help. You need to develop a self-care routine that includes a fitness-based activity near daily, proper nutrition, hydration, and sleep. DO NOT TURN TO ALCOHOL.

You cannot stop living your life. Life just doesn’t stop. Keep up your hobbies and interests.

These years of wading through the blue porta shitter water lagoon that life has placed in front of you are going to test you like you’ve never been tested. You’ll likely have more bad days than good days. One thing that I can tell you about people is that those that dug deep and made it out of the other side are some of the strongest people you’ll ever know. You’ll draw great strength from these days as well and often in your darkest hour opportunities present themselves. You’ll see.

If any of you are struggling with your mental health or please use this link courtesy of HFM to receive 10% off a therapist courtesy of Better Help and HFM.