Have you ever observed a litter of dogs?  They’re born together.  For the first few weeks of their lives, they stay together.  They eat, play, sleep and even fight together.  That’s all they know.  Then they start dwindling as people come and buy them, or adopt them.  Then you come and pick yours up.  You’re excited, because you know you’re giving them a good home.  Except you don’t understand why the entire car ride home, that puppy you just bought is crying, whining and upset.  He’s going to a good home.  You’ve got a warm car, kids to play with him, food, water and toys.  What’s wrong with him?

What’s wrong is that you’ve ripped that puppy from the comfort of his family.  His tribe.  That’s all he’s known in the short time he’s been alive.  Now that entire support network is ripped out from underneath him, and he’s completely reliant on some strangers that he doesn’t know.  Sure, you have the best of intentions, but that doesn’t replace the shock he just went through.  It’s pretty much the same when you find out you have 30 days to get out of a family you’ve served with for 14 years of your life.  The culture, the mentality will never be the same elsewhere.  Civilians don’t understand, and some even make it worse.  “Have you ever killed anyone?”  has got to be one of the dumbest questions ever asked by a civilian.  It’s not malicious.  It’s ignorance.  But the tolerance for ignorance has been lost decades ago, drilled out of your head by your Drill Instructors and your NCO’s. 

Looming over all of this is that now I have to come to grips with one of my biggest fears.  That I would never deploy directly to a combat zone again.  Not because I’m a warmonger.  Because that was the last place I ever felt comfortable.  The last place I ever felt at home, and strangely enough, the last place I ever felt truly whole and at peace with my situation.  And now, that was never going to happen. 

I found a job working as a small engine mechanic, jack of all trades for a company.  Got an offer a few months later as a heavy equipment mechanic at another company.  A year later, I was miserable.  I hated my life, hated my job, and realized that this was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  So I quit.  I had the support of my parents when I did, and I focused on what I thought would work.  I used part of my GI bill to go to college, and got my EMT-B certificate.  I got hired on immediately after completing my course by the local 911 EMS service for the nearest major city.  I worked there for two years.  I loved it and hated it at the same time.  Loved it because it was the closest I could get to feeling that camaraderie and adrenaline rush I got in combat.  Hated it because I was working long hours for pennies on the dollar. 

I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I wanted to come work for him, for great pay and great benefits.  I jumped on it.  I figured that for that amount of money I could put up with anything.  I was wrong.  It was around this time that my PTSD started catching up with me again.  I’ve always prided myself on being able to find a solution to anything, whether or not it was an acceptable solution.  The one solution I couldn’t find to this date was how to get my ankle and knee back to where I could run again.  That frustration was gaining on me in leaps and bounds.  To compound on this, I was realizing that the light-switch that was turned on in my head while I was last in Iraq had never turned off…and that I was living my life one day at a time in full combat mentality. Small minor problems required out of proportion reactions.  I say reactions, not solutions.  My family can now kind of laugh about the great electronics massacre of 2017 when two computers failed to function as required, and ended up in tiny pieces in the garage. 

Only problem I had now was I couldn’t shut that light-switch off, and I was afraid to let anyone know that I had a problem.  It was my problem, I needed to deal with it.  So I did. 

Hopper’s Journey: Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * NEXT> Part 6