After the long period of chaos, hard work and difficult times comes the search for peace. Most people that I have seen as well as myself just wanted one day, one night of peace. Things many people take for granted are absent during this time, sleep actual resting sleep is often absent. Imagine if you could, insomnia for years on end. What ran through my head as a half joke is “ There’s no rest for the wicked.”
This last phrase may have been closer to the truth than anything else I had ever thought of. My job, my life while deployed was to plan and organize the best way for our targets or enemies to die. We would plan traps, ways to draw the bad guys into our hunter killer boxes. Sure, we had to wait for some “overt act” putting themselves into our rules of engagement but non-the-less, if you weren’t the best hunter you quickly became the pray. Finding ways to morph this engrained way of life into the civilized world became the challenge.
After fighting for years trying to ignore my training which became my very nature I decided to see if I could simply adapt it to a peaceful lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong I plan and conduct my life daily towards a positive life, but I can’t deny myself the natural instincts I have of self preservation. I still check for ingress and egress routes when I enter a building. (Ways in and out of a building of something happened.) To this day I still scan waistlines and peoples hands determining if they are immediate threats. I remain on the alert and I am suspect of everyone until they prove their worth of my trust. But after looking back on my life before the Military I realized we all sheltered ourselves from trusting others. Blind faith in unknowns can lead to betrayal not easily recovered from.
So my search has been an attempt at finding ways to focus my ingrained behaviors into not only a structured but positive thought process. I have also been mindful in refusing to reject or deny things I have learned. Our experiences are what makes us who we are, I have personally found it easier to meld everything and not hide things in dark recesses of my brain. Ultimately we choose how we live our lives, I have chosen to live my life a positive way for myself and my family. You can choose the same path, it may not always be easy but I can guarantee its worth the struggle.
Joy After Trauma 