It’s amazing how the human brain picks up something in childhood and hangs on to it. So it affects everything about a person years later. I discovered this in the course of therapy I received to help with the aftermath of mental illness.
What happened to me was crazy, I had seen and done so much in a short space of time. There’s no way he came out unscathed. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, married twice, had three kids, and tried to be in too many places at once. Too many turntables that inevitably came crashing down.
Now everyone is looking at me warily, thinking I’m about to go off the rails again. On the other hand, life is still pretty hectic.
You see, my second wife lives 200 miles away and no matter how hard we try, we can’t keep going. We are at an impasse, neither wants to move to be with the other. As you will begin to see, I bit off more than I could chew.
So let me set the scene. In 2006 I joined the army and went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the home of the British Army Officer Corps. Around the same time I met my first wife and got pregnant. Our oldest son was followed by twins within 2 years. Time I was not at home for consecutive operational tours. Destined to fail, my wife left me when she was in Afghanistan and returned to our hometown. I guess she could have left the army then, but I didn’t. I stayed, was posted near London and met my second wife.
This is when it got even more complicated for me. I try to be a father whenever I can, trying to be the best husband and driven by my career, but I just can’t pull it off. I spread out again but I knew my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to be home, but my wife and I seemed to attack each other all the time. I got angry and stayed like that. I didn’t know what was going on, but she was crying as much as I was furious. I went to the doctor and was quickly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I don’t know if it was just that, but my head was screwed. I began to drink more, to withdraw into myself, and generally blame my wife for everything.
Then I made a mistake that started a spiral into despair, the mental hospital, and separation. I took my kids on vacation and something to drink. They got scared and I lost them for a year. No contact.
I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, but I couldn’t seem to recover. I was in such a dark place. I threw everything to escape from my brain. He left the wife, our house, everything.
And so began my descent to the bottom before I decided enough was enough and I needed to fix myself or be damned. I fully accepted my therapy, stopped drinking, spent a lot of time being mindful.
It was during this time that I learned a lot about how my brain worked and why it reacted the way it did. It started when my dad left when I was 4 years old. My young mind decided at this point that if he was gone, then I needed to replace him. I guess this was rational to my immature mind, but the problem is that you can’t be anyone else, you can only be yourself.
I tried to be him, to act as he would have acted, to put him on a pedestal and try to aspire to him. That’s why I also joined the army. I thought of following in his footsteps.
But then again, if that’s not me, how did I think trying to be someone else for years would help me? The other problem was that because I had placed it so far out of his reach, I felt like it was never good enough.
This went on for years and resulted in me developing a growing sense of resentment whenever I felt that someone looked down on or looked down on me. So, with so many plates to turn along with this growing feeling of discontent, I began to take out my frustration on my wife.
It is only in hindsight that I can see this. At that time it was totally her fault, or his or hers. Never mine. Recipe for the disaster that brought me to the brink.
So I left, got a small apartment and isolated myself. I worked to the darkest place and then recovered. Now I’m not totally fixed. I’ll still have the urge to drink too much from time to time, I’ll still get nervous, but I don’t have the feeling of resentment that has eaten at me for years. Now I see things for what they are. My brain working against me, maybe because of the alcohol, maybe because of the frustration.
I had to learn to enjoy my own company, find an inner peace and I think I’m there now. Which now means I have to pick up the pieces of what my life was and fix them too. I started seeing my children again, but I know I will be under the microscope for a long time. I started to make peace with my wife, but I will work on it for a long time.
I have accepted that my military career is over and started planning for a future based on using my experiences to help others like me. I mean, if I can help just one person, I’m doing the right thing.