I think there’s three types of people that enlist in the military:

The first: they knew they were going to do it before they graduated high school, they probably did some JROTC stuff, or had been in contact with local recruiters and this was their plan all along.

The second type, is the type that feels backed into a corner without another reasonable route to go. Whether it is financial, or they are seeking drastic change in their lives, they feel like they have to join the military. I don’t think the option is still available to choose the military over jail time, but if it is, this category is also for them.

Ah, and this one is the one I understand the most. The ‘have-never-spoken-to-a-recruiter, but-first-time-in-you’re-signing-papers-to-go-to-Basic-type. Zero thought goes into a drastic life change, they just know that they want to be anywhere other than where they currently are.

Care to guess which type I was?

I was going to community college after high school, I had the chance to go to a university, maybe even on a running scholarship for cross country, but instead I decided to stay close to home. Firefighting was what I thought I wanted to do at the time, it would’ve still been a good profession, but I was lost… I had no idea what I wanted out of life, my girlfriend and I had just broken up, I was struggling, and all I knew was that I wanted to be anywhere but here.

Sitting in my truck between classes one day and I see this yellow and black Daytona Charger pull up, and, not to sound stalker-ish, but I stayed around to make sure I saw who got out of it. This guy looked like he had it figured out, and being as lost as I was, plus subconsciously seeking a male role-model because my dad wasn’t involved in much of my life… I followed him to class, and made sure to sit right next to him. I struck up conversation any way I could to get to know a little about him. I asked what he did before school and found out that he had just finished a 6-year enlistment as an Army Ranger.

His stories were incredible, he told me about night raids, all the different countries he’d been to, how many times he had been blown up, the adrenaline rush of firefights… I was awestruck. Being young and stupid, I thought the only downside to that could potentially be getting killed in action, but at least my death would mean something, right? And after my break up… dying didn’t seem so bad. It took about two weeks of class with that prior Ranger, talking to him on the days we had class together, for him to give me his old Ranger Handbook.. and I had made my decision. I was going to be an Army Ranger, and I was going to be one today while I was hyper-focused on the idea of it. One downside of having ADHD is that hyper-focus, some days it can be towards something positive, but most of mine is brought on when I’m irritated and need something done.. but, I didn’t even know I had ADHD at this time, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 28.

So as I tunnel-visioned in on becoming the next Army Ranger, I decided that if I told my mom, she would try to convince me not to go. That day, I left school and went straight to talk to a recruiter. My test scores weren’t high enough to be considered for a medic, but my God did my eyes light up when he showed me videos of the infantry. Everything was tactical, and cool, and looked like everything I wanted to do. I wanted to make a life worth remembering, I didn’t think twice, I just signed my name on the dotted line.

I had to wait before I could go to Basic, something like four months, and the tunnel-vision continued… I started a gym membership, I studied my Ranger Handbook, and I waited for the day I could finally leave. What I’m going to tell you next is something very personal, I want to talk about my traumas and how they have related to growth in my life.. I won’t say that I’ve overcome them completely, this last year has been rough, but I understand now why I struggle with certain aspects of my life. I hope that by reading about my behavior, and my understanding of it, those of you that are interested may be able to understand your own.

I’m not looking for pity, and please don’t feel bad for me. Everyone’s situation is different, but this was mine… My parents divorced when I was 10, right around the same time I got my first bully at school. The worst part? He was also in my friend circle and would be for the next 8 years because of the small town and singular school system there. I won’t share names here, but for the purpose of this story, we’ll call him “T.” T and I had been friends since probably Kindergarten, he was never really nice to me, but as we started to develop cliques, we would later go on to play several sports together: soccer, basketball, and baseball. We’d have sleepovers and play video games, rarely was it ever alone, our other friends would be there too. It was weird, I could never figure out why he was a completely different person around me when it was just the two of us, but as soon as we were with friends, he was someone I grew to be afraid of.

I was short, I mean, I’ve always been short and still am, as far as male social norms are concerned, but because everyone else had started growing.. I was different. It started with the smallest things most kids do, they take something from you, hold it out of your reach while you try and get it back, is was super mild.. until my parents divorce started. I thought about it all the time. I wouldn’t sleep some night and the arguments had gotten worse, my emotions were on edge and one day I just couldn’t hold it in. T started teasing me, and I was just tired of holding it all in.. I started crying.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve been at a school where a kid has cried, mainly a boy because boys aren’t allowed to cry.. but, it makes them weak. And once again, I was different. You start to earn a reputation about you and when someone is having a bad day, guess who they take it out on? The kid that’s going to give them a reaction. I know what you’re thinking, it’s 5th grade, how bad could it have been? Looking back on it still makes me tear up.. for some people it may not be so bad, but for me as a child during one of the most vulnerable times of my life? It was devastating. I needed a friend back then, but instead, one of my ‘friends’ had just declared open season on my defect.

I must’ve cried nearly every day. Kids would knock me down, hit me for no reason, and then there was the psychological shit. Once again, yeah, it’s fucking 5th grade, but when you take the comments to heart and multiple people start saying them too.. you start to believe it. T started making fun of my dick at school. I was 10 years old, and guess what happened next? The ‘trend’ caught on. The people I thought were friends, the ones on my sports teams, the ones I’d be in school with for years, the ones that I would go to sleepovers with, and their birthdays, all of it, they all followed suit. It got so bad that we got the school counselor involved… it didn’t solve the problem, and now I was a crybaby and a snitch.

I didn’t understand what a narcissist was back then, but I know it all too well now. I’ll save the rest of the bullying stuff and spoil the story now.. They didn’t stop. As we got older, someone them grew up and realized you don’t treat other people like that, but T didn’t. T would be my friend when we were alone, but the second other people weren’t around, he’d turn the conversation to take jabs at me. My self-confidence was non-existent. Fast forward to why this is important to our story- when I decided to join the military, I convinced myself that I could adopt a new identity. Not like a new name and shit, but that I could be whoever I wanted to be. My reputation from high school wouldn’t follow me, I could make myself into something actually.. desirable.

An act of course, but you can only fake it ’til you make it for so long. Acting like someone you aren’t will weigh on you eventually, even if no one finds out, deep down you’ll know… Mine hit during quarantine, an identity crisis. I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know how I was supposed to act around other people. I just woke up one day and couldn’t remember how I used to behave. I’m 29 now, from my 19th birthday in Basic Training up until this last year, I’ve been projecting myself as someone else I thought to be more desirable. I needed to become rough around the edges, I needed to hold my emotions better, I needed to create this new persona because there was no place in this world for a crying cowboy. I needed to do dangerous things without concern for my own safety, buying a motorcycle and riding shirtless, putting it over 100mph, bull riding without a helmet and with zero experience, being drunk alone out wandering the streets in foreign countries knowing full well that American soldiers were a target, especially if you could catch them alone.

I thought it would make me happy, and it did.. the women I met while I was in the military, and later, absolutely loved it, they ate it up. The tattoos, the motorcycle, the scars, the combat stories, it was amazing and I thought it made me happy, until a close friend of mine let me be myself around her. She let me be vulnerable and show her who I used to be.. I’ve never felt that accepted by anyone in my life, and then, identity crisis number two.. Who the fuck was I?

You can be both, but not until you face that trauma. I don’t blame a single kid for teasing my in school, as a child, you don’t even think about the consequences of your actions or how the things you say will affect someone’s life years down the road. T had an older brother that I’m sure bullied him at home, so he needed a place to vent his frustrations and pass on the behavior. I was the perfect target, I was raised to treat others as you wish to be treated, I wouldn’t fight back, and I wouldn’t turn around and try to bully anyone else. I’m thankful for it now, it truly did make me a tougher person all around and it gave me the chance to understand that I don’t have to be who people want me to be. If they don’t like who I am, then I don’t waste my time trying to change their mind or change myself for them. I accept it, and I move on. Wearing a mask over your traumas doesn’t mean you’ve made it past them, they will catch up to you eventually and you’ll have to deal with them.

The one thing I will say, I am a much happier person being who I am now and knowing that I don’t have to fit into this cookie-cutter bullshit that is our societal norm. If any kid, of any gender, wants to cry, it’s a natural part of being human. We have emotions. When I have too many intense emotions at the same time, I cry. I’m not going to change that, and neither will you. I cry about multiple things and it’s gotten worse lately with trying to put a lot of this onto paper, but I accept that as part of who I am now. All societal norms can be broken. We don’t have to fit in to society, you don’t have to be married by 22 and having kids by 23, or whatever the ‘standard’ is now. Don’t fucking hide yourself so other people will be comfortable being around you, find people that want to be around you because you’re not a fucking clone.

I know this is going to bring about some questions because of how submissive my nature sounds in this, which is why the next post I make will be about how I got into kink in the first place, and how I know my role is correct for me. I may jump around with these posts a bit, but in each one there will either be a lesson learned, a trauma occurring, a military experience, or something that I promise will not be boring to read.

‘Til next time,

Cowboy