The climb

Sometimes is takes getting knocked on your ass for you to realize that you miss the comfort of standing on your feet. I have spent the last several months backsliding, going down a bad trail. Kind of like the shale you stumbled up in Afghanistan, that unforgiving, goddamned shale. Treatment is like that. Regardless of the substance or the issue, we hit peaks and valleys and its how we climb out of those valleys that makes us or breaks us. Meds had run their course, as they often do, which means you either need the same meds in a stronger dose, or different meds altogether. I hate those meds. I hate that I am regulated by some bullshit pharmaceutical that is not of my medicinal choice. I hate that some company is making money off of my treatment and what a doctor types into a computer. But this is the game and I grew tired of playing it. If you grew up with me, you know that I was pretty damn loud, pretty damn funny and pretty damn good at having a good time. That guy is not around much anymore and for those last three months that I didn’t write in a blog,talk to you, or care about myself, that guy grew further away from me than I realized. This is the downward spiral. Something I hadn’t been on in over a year, and it was ugly then and it was uglier now. 

It was not until I took the time to breathe that I realized how much suffocating I had been doing. Not just in those three months, but in all the times I treated life like chess and thought two moves ahead not paying attention to the current beauty of the first move. It started with a laugh. A laugh from a kid who was just doing what kids do, they have fun, they laugh. That laugh cut through my soul like a pick axe in soft,virgin ground. What have I been missing? How many things had I said that I regret now? How many days did I spend half assing everything, when just a smile would have doubled my effort or let someone know that I appreciated them?  These are the things you think about when you start that climb back out. 

I went into retirement with an excitement about something new. That excitement turned to frustration, the money was wrong, the days had no structure and I was getting my ass kicked by something that I had no understanding of. Being a dad. There are no smoke breaks or time outs,and I fought through the lack of fatherly knowledge and began really starting to get a grasp on things when I realized that the past I had invested so much in, some of the people I knew and called friends were no longer there. I was a memory, good or bad, I was done to those who relied on me whenever they needed something. They weren’t answering the phone anymore. Call it a culture shock, because the Military is its own culture. Its own brotherhood. The biggest High School in the world. The place I was looking at from the other side of a locked door. I had no distractions to take me out of my environment. No breather. My wife was breaking her back, working her ass off trying to keep our heads above water, while I was waiting to get paid. It killed our credit. So close to buying a house and 5 months later I couldn’t get a snowcone in Alaska on credit. This really kicked me in the gut. We had come so far and now we were at below the starting point we were when we got married. 

This was the bottom. The climb out started with that laugh. Nothing is more pure in my mind then the belly laugh of a kid, who knows no pain, no hard times. They only know love and being happy. That laugh saved me. It happened and the mind that once clicked on with situational knowledge in hard times, clicked on again. The laughs came more frequently. I looked at my kids in amazement, both good and bad, but I was truly looking now and not glancing. I tried to look at the world through their eyes. I watched more kids shows and sang more Mickey Mouse songs in two weeks than I had in my entire life. I enjoyed the time I had watching my girls play soccer, going to practice early so we could kick the ball around. I enjoyed going to my daughters choir concert. I enjoyed listening to my daughter tell me about the gossip at school about kids I didn’t know. I enjoyed finding out that my daughter was playing high school softball. The climb became easier. The steps not as hard as they looked from the bottom. Something was missing though. I drove up to Ft. Hood to pick up the missing piece of our family about a month ago. He is a little shit, but he is our little shit. My dog that I worked with for 4 years, deployed with and who broke my heart when I dropped leash, to come to Texas and train dogs was coming home. 

It had been in the works for a long time, but nothing in the Military happens quickly. When I finally got him in the truck and started the drive, I had closure. It does not mean that the ride down was routine. If you have ever met my dog, he is like me. Nothing with him is routine. He bounced from the back seat to the front seat, to the floorboard, to my seat, like a psychotic ping pong ball. There is something unique about a dog climbing in your lap while you’re going about 80 on the highway. We have been in more dangerous situations before, but I really wanted to get him home to the kids, before we died in a car crash. After a stop at a McDonalds drive through in Austin, he ate a cheeseburger, french fries and some chicken mcnuggets. He was at least courteous enough to let me have the drink. With a full stomach, he finally settled down next to me until we got home. He is home now. He is still the same dog that the family remembers. He is reminding me about the good times. With our family together again, the climb is so much easier. These last several months have been a dark time and its where I have been. Now i’m feeling the sun on my face, family and dog in tow. Belly laughs all around.