|
I wrote a modified version of this text for a website asking about military transition stories. I doubt it will go anywhere because the website appears to try and maintain a positive, good-guys-win-in-the-end vibe.
I spent five and a half years in the US Army as an infantryman in a light infantry raiding unit.
The hardest part about transitioning back into the civilian world is reintegrating your mind back into the world of normalcy. The infantry is a killcentric subculture, where the means are the ends (in this case, killing and destruction of bad people). All your jokes, your attitudes and beliefs, your daily routines (eating a specific diet, working out every day), the music you listen to, the people you hang out with, the literature you consume... they all revolve around your profession at the time and the subculture of the institution in which you're engrained.
When you're on the job on your 'business trips' overseas, the methodology of choice to bargain with the people you're tasked to 'deal' with is bullet therapy. You're out to capture/kill people, and those that get in the way with violent means are met with equal or more violence. This doesn't transition exactly when you get back stateside (thankfully), but you still retain as much as you legally can and don't leave your house without your .40 and a bad attitude.
When you're in the military, you play along with the 'other people,' civilians. When somebody hits you in a car accident, you get out, swap information, shake hands and go about your day. While shaking their hands, you might envision the backside of their skull opened up and their brains spilled out after you put one in the center of their forehead. No big deal; all that pent up potential action is going to be taken out on bad dudes overseas in a few months anyway. You can play the game for a little bit.
Outside of the military, these pent up feelings build up. You miss the action. You despise how dull your life has become. You yearn for people who think like you, who can agree with vulgar or hostile sentiments and opinions, somebody who can understand. You take the pent up, cultivated aggression out as best you can on the gym or writing or video games or however you do it. But it isn't enough. There isn't anything to replace the way of life that you used to live, or any outlet that will expend the specific stress and buildup that is inside of you.
You know it's not normal to be thinking like you used to, in your other life. Fighting and killing bad people is not healthy, but you can't help it: you were reborn as when you made it through to your unit and your internal circuitry was rewired permanently. You were groomed to do bad things to bad people.
You start to question yourself and your sanity and your lack of basic goodness. You realize you're pitbull in a society, and you think that you probably should be in jail instead of around these normal people trying to live their peaceful lives. You don't belong. The lack of a support group of like-minded individuals with similar experiences, no real outlet to expend the pent up stress, and the suffocating emptiness that is trudging through life without a purpose... it all adds up eventually. For the first time in your life, the question slips into your mind, one that you never thought you'd ever ask yourself in a million years: is this bullshit existence even worth living?
------
With enough willpower, anybody can assimilate. You get over it, for the most part anyway. You settle your mind down eventually and integrate yourself into the norms and customs of society. You find a way to function and play along with everybody. You might not be normal or fully integrated, but you can pretend.
But you can't take the soldier out of you entirely. Deep down in your core, that is still what you are wired for. And so you still drill yourself with ready-ups regularly and shoot at ranges to stay sharp. You make mental note of entrances and exits in buildings you enter, and keep a mental map of the grocery store you're shopping in or office maze you're walking through. Sometimes, when you see somebody walking suspiciously or acting nervous in public, your instincts kick in and you hope to whatever god you believe in that they make the wrong decision and go kinetic on innocent people or even yourself so that you can once again throw down and continue to fulfill your soldierly purpose of removing the bad people from the world.
 
|
This is really well written. I'm sure the "bad guys" are being wired into the exact same mentality. I wonder if it is possible to undo that conditioning? My guess is probably not...
I think the failure of reintegration shouldn't be attributed entirely to the soldier but also to the society. If there were something purposeful and strong to reintegrate in to, it wouldn't be as hard. Your feeling like a "pitbull" is partly from being surrounded by soft sheep. It makes sense that you would feel angry and disconnected, after being trained to kill and risking your life, to return and be surrounded by people who care about nothing but money, fame, sex and entertainment. Are such people and ideals worth dying for? No one seems to ask or care... that is a slap in the face to those who are asked to kill and die.
|
I also read your other, previous post on your "descent into madness", and I think it's fascinating how you manage to put your feelings in words in such an articulate and honest fashion. Honestly, well done. I really appreciate the "inhumane humanity" (I don't know how else to put it) that transpires as I read your entries. I feel like you're quintessentially human: an oxymoronic struggle between practicality and ethics, with a latent existential crisis humming in the background.
Other than that statement, I sincerely have no advice for you. But it would be great if you keep on writing about your experiences as an ex-soldier.
|
Military training breaks down a man until his mental process is in ribbons, then puts these pieces into a mould and bakes it under intense heat until the pieces form into a soldier.
I've always wondered, if a man can be broken and reformed into one thing. Why not broken again and formed into another?
|
On April 02 2014 16:13 Thaniri wrote:
Military training breaks down a man until his mental process is in ribbons, then puts these pieces into a mould and bakes it under intense heat until the pieces form into a soldier.
I've always wondered, if a man can be broken and reformed into one thing. Why not broken again and formed into another?
If only it were that easy, right? That's a pretty bold claim to be making about military training. It's similar to saying how a computer science program at a university creates the consummate programmer. Why not just get another degree in the arts to redefine your position and specialty? Unfortunately, a degree and its program only build you up to whatever profession you plan on doing. You aren't actually a bonafide professional until you have the raw experiences under your belt. That takes the immersion of tons of time and effort.
It's the same thing with soldiering. Basic training and all the other initial entry things I went through only felt like I was going through the motions when I did them. Sure, I knew how to walk in formation, operate my weapon, and perform battle drills - but I never saw more than the surface of these things. I never saw the intrinsic purpose of the why's of soldiering tasks until I had to no shit put these things I learned in my 'soldering college' to action, when I was completely immersed during deployments. I'd argue that the experience of deployments and combat reinforces the soldering mentality moreso than most other professions in life because of its intimate and visceral relationship with life and death. When is your life or your friend's life going to directly depend on creating and editing code? Likely never.
On April 02 2014 03:30 Mothra wrote:
I think the failure of reintegration shouldn't be attributed entirely to the soldier but also to the society. If there were something purposeful and strong to reintegrate in to, it wouldn't be as hard. Your feeling like a "pitbull" is partly from being surrounded by soft sheep. It makes sense that you would feel angry and disconnected, after being trained to kill and risking your life, to return and be surrounded by people who care about nothing but money, fame, sex and entertainment. Are such people and ideals worth dying for? No one seems to ask or care... that is a slap in the face to those who are asked to kill and die.
Interesting points. While the fluff that permeates today's society is depressing, I think that the core ideals of the Constitution alone are enough to put one's life on the line for. People deviate from its code here and there, but by and large its spirit is still very much alive in enough people/institutions to keep it sacred and relevant enough. Maybe I haven't seen enough in life though and am naive.
That said, I think in my case it's the more the nostalgie de la boue, the attraction to the dirt/mud of the soldiering world, that inhibited (inhibits?) my reintegration. I guess in a way it's like how the addict always seeks to recapture that perfect high - once you experience it, everything else goes out the window; every other life experience is dull in comparison. How am I supposed to deal with the petty worries of every day life when I transcended every other life experience, with a sense of purpose driving those experiences? It's been mentioned before in literary texts, probably most famously when FDR talked up being shot at as the greatest thrill in life, but surprisingly there isn't a whole hell of a lot devoted to the honest exhilaration and fulfillment of the combat experience. There is literally nothing that comes close.
On April 02 2014 05:27 sorrowptoss wrote:
I also read your other, previous post on your "descent into madness", and I think it's fascinating how you manage to put your feelings in words in such an articulate and honest fashion. Honestly, well done. I really appreciate the "inhumane humanity" (I don't know how else to put it) that transpires as I read your entries. I feel like you're quintessentially human: an oxymoronic struggle between practicality and ethics, with a latent existential crisis humming in the background.
Other than that statement, I sincerely have no advice for you. But it would be great if you keep on writing about your experiences as an ex-soldier.
Thanks man. I get apprehensive whenever I write in the public domain about these things, mainly because of the underlying sociopathy that I feel sometimes threads these posts. It's a good outlet for me, but I still am representative of the profession of arms even if only slightly and only informally, and I would hate to in a sweeping blow taint the integrity of it because of how poorly I word my personal experiences.
|
I imagine it hits even harder when you stop thinking of the people you're killing as "bad people." What if instead you just start thinking of them as "people" who are trained to do the exact same thing you are.
Life isn't as simple as a video game where every enemy you shoot is a "bad person." Perhaps the sad truth is that you're all victims of your governments convincing you that the other deserves to die. And we get these stories that go in depth about "reintegration" into a real world society from a video game war society. Maybe the first step to reintegration is realizing the truth that the "bad people" you killed might be exactly the same as the good, honest people you meet on the street when they're also not in a combat zone shooting at you.
|
Beforehand I want to apologize for my english: I wish I could have done a better job on that tough topic.
I was trully moved by your story, partly because you seem to take so much on you at an individual level, unrightfully in my opinion.
The historians have analysed the spread of war experience in society and its mid-terme effects. For instance, some researchers claimed that the habituation to war atrocities, mainly during WWI in that case, were a key factor of the surge of nazist and fascist regimes in Europe. Those were indeed explicitely using the "front soldier life" as the new archetype to rebuild the whole society (see for instance G. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, 1990). I didn't used so unwisely the word "nazist" to be provocative, but to highlight two points.
First, that your experience is the very forseeable outcome of intensive military usage: thus the people in charge are in debt with you big time, and by extension all the people that let them do so, by misjudgment or sef-interest.
Then, the WWI-WWI reference is quite a powerfull sign that the post-war experience of veterans is related to the collectively defined meaning of the war and its outcome. In that particular case, it was one of the first time in european history where the war was definend by both sides as a death or life struggle for the whole nation, a fight against an inhuman ennemy. Furthermore, the post-war franco-british obsession of crushing Germany once and for all leads to completely one sided war memories in both camps. Hence I think that your metaphore of the way you are "wired" is a bit misleading. Human beings are not wired: they construct collectively there experiences as meaningfull, and then deal with it.
I'm about to touch a very sensitive subject, and I'm genuinely hopping that it will not make the discussion derail. I will refere in a somewhat critical perspective to the way actual war waged by the US are officially described by american autorities and mainstream media, but only because I think its relevant to the topic. I won't discuss it by itself; but only from the point of view of the potential consequencies on reintegration of veterans of this way to describe the ennemies. b
But please if you're specially touchy on that matter, don't read. That blog disserves better.
+ Show Spoiler + In your blog, you use "bad people" to discribe the personns you were trying to kill with a ton of evidence which strikes me very much, in comparison with the rest of the blog's wording. It's particularly contrasting with your description of the "palying along with civilians". You fell some relief by picturing them as people you have of will kill: how "bad" they are doesn't make such a big differrence in the process of adding up and relasing pressure.
I feel forced to think that it may be a big part of your problem.
It's not an easy task to cope with the job of killing people. It's even harder to make it a meaningfull and bearable experience when you're officialy tought that people you kill are not, in fact, completely human. But it's nevertheless the official truth in the US since the goverement refused to apply the international law on war and war prisonners to the "terrorists". In fact, such a description is a way to cope with the killing, but a very taxing one, as your blog so deeply testify of it. In particular, the fiction that ennemies are absolutely bad can only be held at the cost of beeing completely closed to all sign of humanity those ennemies could display, and ultimately avoiding all kind of empathy towards them. As the denied guilt doesn't magically go away betweneen fights or after going back from the army, neither does the kind personnality that is able to shut it down. In particular, the need to affirm the inhumanity of those who where killed by the continuation of the hunt seems to persist to an unsufferable extent.
I think it's the kind of problem that nobody can solve for himself. In your case because you have to get along everyday with people who share, to a much less extent of course, the burden of this guilt and thus the subsequent denial, while paying the bulk of its prize with your sadness and nightmares.
I know it's not very helpfull. I think I just wanted to state, hearthfully but quite in a convoluted way, how unfair is your share of suffering. In the end, no matter which way you describe the kind of hell you went back from: in every possible way, you take the blow for the othersand after that left alone with the consequencies. At the very least for that, you're not the one going wrong.
edit:
@Therapist: that's exactly the kind of self-comforting scorn that prevents any move forward. He is obviously no more and no less responsable than anybody, including you and me, for the way wars are pictured and used in modern western societies.
|
On April 02 2014 17:23 Bobo_XIII wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 16:13 Thaniri wrote:
Military training breaks down a man until his mental process is in ribbons, then puts these pieces into a mould and bakes it under intense heat until the pieces form into a soldier.
I've always wondered, if a man can be broken and reformed into one thing. Why not broken again and formed into another?
If only it were that easy, right? That's a pretty bold claim to be making about military training. It's similar to saying how a computer science program at a university creates the consummate programmer. Why not just get another degree in the arts to redefine your position and specialty?
indoctrination and critical thinking are not at all similar in this aspect.
|
On April 02 2014 17:23 Bobo_XIII wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 03:30 Mothra wrote:
I think the failure of reintegration shouldn't be attributed entirely to the soldier but also to the society. If there were something purposeful and strong to reintegrate in to, it wouldn't be as hard. Your feeling like a "pitbull" is partly from being surrounded by soft sheep. It makes sense that you would feel angry and disconnected, after being trained to kill and risking your life, to return and be surrounded by people who care about nothing but money, fame, sex and entertainment. Are such people and ideals worth dying for? No one seems to ask or care... that is a slap in the face to those who are asked to kill and die. Interesting points. While the fluff that permeates today's society is depressing, I think that the core ideals of the Constitution alone are enough to put one's life on the line for. People deviate from its code here and there, but by and large its spirit is still very much alive in enough people/institutions to keep it sacred and relevant enough. Maybe I haven't seen enough in life though and am naive. That said, I think in my case it's the more the nostalgie de la boue, the attraction to the dirt/mud of the soldiering world, that inhibited (inhibits?) my reintegration. I guess in a way it's like how the addict always seeks to recapture that perfect high - once you experience it, everything else goes out the window; every other life experience is dull in comparison. How am I supposed to deal with the petty worries of every day life when I transcended every other life experience, with a sense of purpose driving those experiences? It's been mentioned before in literary texts, probably most famously when FDR talked up being shot at as the greatest thrill in life, but surprisingly there isn't a whole hell of a lot devoted to the honest exhilaration and fulfillment of the combat experience. There is literally nothing that comes close.
Again thanks for sharing your perspective so honestly. It sounds like a such a difficult situation... Perhaps your comparing it to drug addiction might lead somewhere, i.e. what strategies have been effective for bringing addicts off the (ultimately lethal) quest for the perfect high? Or maybe a profession like firefighter might recapture some of that thrill and purpose without getting you thrown in jail? I don't know... probably advice from fellow veterans would be most helpful. Do you ever talk about this stuff in veteran's groups?
|
On April 02 2014 19:36 Karel wrote:Beforehand I want to apologize for my english: I wish I could have done a better job on that tough topic. I was trully moved by your story, partly because you seem to take so much on you at an individual level, unrightfully in my opinion. The historians have analysed the spread of war experience in society and its mid-terme effects. For instance, some researchers claimed that the habituation to war atrocities, mainly during WWI in that case, were a key factor of the surge of nazist and fascist regimes in Europe. Those were indeed explicitely using the "front soldier life" as the new archetype to rebuild the whole society (see for instance G. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, 1990). I didn't used so unwisely the word "nazist" to be provocative, but to highlight two points. First, that your experience is the very forseeable outcome of intensive military usage: thus the people in charge are in debt with you big time, and by extension all the people that let them do so, by misjudgment or sef-interest. Then, the WWI-WWI reference is quite a powerfull sign that the post-war experience of veterans is related to the collectively defined meaning of the war and its outcome. In that particular case, it was one of the first time in european history where the war was definend by both sides as a death or life struggle for the whole nation, a fight against an inhuman ennemy. Furthermore, the post-war franco-british obsession of crushing Germany once and for all leads to completely one sided war memories in both camps. Hence I think that your metaphore of the way you are "wired" is a bit misleading. Human beings are not wired: they construct collectively there experiences as meaningfull, and then deal with it. I'm about to touch a very sensitive subject, and I'm genuinely hopping that it will not make the discussion derail. I will refere in a somewhat critical perspective to the way actual war waged by the US are officially described by american autorities and mainstream media, but only because I think its relevant to the topic. I won't discuss it by itself; but only from the point of view of the potential consequencies on reintegration of veterans of this way to describe the ennemies. b But please if you're specially touchy on that matter, don't read. That blog disserves better. + Show Spoiler + In your blog, you use "bad people" to discribe the personns you were trying to kill with a ton of evidence which strikes me very much, in comparison with the rest of the blog's wording. It's particularly contrasting with your description of the "palying along with civilians". You fell some relief by picturing them as people you have of will kill: how "bad" they are doesn't make such a big differrence in the process of adding up and relasing pressure.
I feel forced to think that it may be a big part of your problem.
It's not an easy task to cope with the job of killing people. It's even harder to make it a meaningfull and bearable experience when you're officialy tought that people you kill are not, in fact, completely human. But it's nevertheless the official truth in the US since the goverement refused to apply the international law on war and war prisonners to the "terrorists". In fact, such a description is a way to cope with the killing, but a very taxing one, as your blog so deeply testify of it. In particular, the fiction that ennemies are absolutely bad can only be held at the cost of beeing completely closed to all sign of humanity those ennemies could display, and ultimately avoiding all kind of empathy towards them. As the denied guilt doesn't magically go away betweneen fights or after going back from the army, neither does the kind personnality that is able to shut it down. In particular, the need to affirm the inhumanity of those who where killed by the continuation of the hunt seems to persist to an unsufferable extent.
I think it's the kind of problem that nobody can solve for himself. In your case because you have to get along everyday with people who share, to a much less extent of course, the burden of this guilt and thus the subsequent denial, while paying the bulk of its prize with your sadness and nightmares. I know it's not very helpfull. I think I just wanted to state, hearthfully but quite in a convoluted way, how unfair is your share of suffering. In the end, no matter which way you describe the kind of hell you went back from: in every possible way, you take the blow for the othersand after that left alone with the consequencies. At the very least for that, you're not the one going wrong. edit: @Therapist: that's exactly the kind of self-comforting scorn that prevents any move forward. He is obviously no more and no less responsable than anybody, including you and me, for the way wars are pictured and used in modern western societies.
I've read and reread your response a few times and am not sure what to do with it aside from sit here and chew on it... not because your English is bad or anything, but because what you say provokes thought and introspection. I'll try and give you a response for your thoughtful comment.
I know my writing is cold and that it seems that I'm oblivious to the fact that I've helped to end multiple human lives. The truth is that I've (and I think every other person caught in the cogs war) thought a good deal about the people I've killed or helped to kill. I've considered the humanity they possessed, from their passion that was bright enough to compel them to fight for a cause (literally to the death) to the more mundane things like how they might have enjoyed watching certain TV shows or how much they loved their mom or other relative. I'm also very aware of how starkly similar they and I were: misguided people out fighting for some perceived set of noble ideals that in reality were more twisted than they or I saw at the time.
But I'm still okay with having done what I did. If I consider only the fact that they were living, breathing, feeling human beings then it gets to me too much, as it would most people. But the reality of the situation of warfare is that the insurgents we killed and the Army I was a part of are two factions with opposing intents guaranteed to clash in violence, and that it didn't matter how I or anybody else ended up there when the shooting started. Kill, or be killed. After my first few missions, I started to gradually see the war situation for what it was firsthand and grasped the futility and fucked up situation that both Iraq and Afghanistan were. Over time, it became less a 'doing my duty for America and liberty's sake' than 'I'm here to kill you for wanting to kill my friends that are caught in this shit sandwich.' As far as I saw it, if you wanted to hurt myself or my friends, you were automatically deemed one of the 'bad guys' and dealt with accordingly. I'm aware that they were actual people. But in a situation like that, you don't have the time to consider the esoteric aspects of the consequences of your actions. And considering that you were perpetually stuck in the cycle of deploying until your contract was up, it was the best you could do to validate your actions.
I know that's not the most comprehensive reply to your post, but that's all text I can really form right now. Thanks for the response.
On April 03 2014 03:26 Mothra wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 17:23 Bobo_XIII wrote:On April 02 2014 03:30 Mothra wrote:
I think the failure of reintegration shouldn't be attributed entirely to the soldier but also to the society. If there were something purposeful and strong to reintegrate in to, it wouldn't be as hard. Your feeling like a "pitbull" is partly from being surrounded by soft sheep. It makes sense that you would feel angry and disconnected, after being trained to kill and risking your life, to return and be surrounded by people who care about nothing but money, fame, sex and entertainment. Are such people and ideals worth dying for? No one seems to ask or care... that is a slap in the face to those who are asked to kill and die. Interesting points. While the fluff that permeates today's society is depressing, I think that the core ideals of the Constitution alone are enough to put one's life on the line for. People deviate from its code here and there, but by and large its spirit is still very much alive in enough people/institutions to keep it sacred and relevant enough. Maybe I haven't seen enough in life though and am naive. That said, I think in my case it's the more the nostalgie de la boue, the attraction to the dirt/mud of the soldiering world, that inhibited (inhibits?) my reintegration. I guess in a way it's like how the addict always seeks to recapture that perfect high - once you experience it, everything else goes out the window; every other life experience is dull in comparison. How am I supposed to deal with the petty worries of every day life when I transcended every other life experience, with a sense of purpose driving those experiences? It's been mentioned before in literary texts, probably most famously when FDR talked up being shot at as the greatest thrill in life, but surprisingly there isn't a whole hell of a lot devoted to the honest exhilaration and fulfillment of the combat experience. There is literally nothing that comes close. Again thanks for sharing your perspective so honestly. It sounds like a such a difficult situation... Perhaps your comparing it to drug addiction might lead somewhere, i.e. what strategies have been effective for bringing addicts off the (ultimately lethal) quest for the perfect high? Or maybe a profession like firefighter might recapture some of that thrill and purpose without getting you thrown in jail? I don't know... probably advice from fellow veterans would be most helpful. Do you ever talk about this stuff in veteran's groups?
It's difficult at times, but not at all unmanageable. I've more or less adjusted to the flow of life outside that part of the military. You're spot on with the type of job suggestion - a lot of us from my unit, myself included, are pursuing or are already in careers in I guess what you could call fringe professions.
It's a very weird and difficult thing to be attracted to the old lifestyle of consecutive deployments and the action involved in it, and it's especially hard to find people who are willing to be candid about it with you. A good chunk of veterans I talk to about this take the opportunity to blast the military for 'how much they fucked them over' with pretend PTSD claims (there are a disgusting amount of fakers out there), or thump their chest about their nonredeemable evil deeds the committed or tell me I'm a twisted fuck for having enjoyed the action part of it. It's hard to find a group of people that aren't quick to point fingers and blame others and drop the gavel and judge and condemn you for how you feel. I've looked, and couldn't find a solid group of people to actually move on with this issue. The closest I came to were the periodic phone calls to my buddies that I deployed with who were going through the same things, though it's hard to get past anything when you both are basically repeating to each other 'I just wanna go back and get into some fucking gunfights and have some meaning in my life like I used to.' Not to say that I'm not accountable for finding a support group to get past this - I regularly stonewall myself trying to maintain a sense of masculinity whenever I talk face to face (or voice to voice) with others, and this form of pride really holds me back.
For me personally, I found solace in a few books about combat, specifically about the killing aspect. That's what got to me the most - how fucked up I must have been to not have much remorse for the people that I shot... in fact to have been exhilarated by shooting some of these people. Three books in particular really cooled me off. Two of them consistently, with testimony in the form of quotes from other soldiers and of one guy's candid experience in the Vietnam War, echoed my sentiments exactly on the exciting parts of warfare. Those two books are The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle, and What It Is Like To Go To War (by Karl Marlantes). The third is On Killing, a book I used to brush off because of its stuffy sounding premise. There is a chapter on the emotional responses to killing somebody, and it was such a fucking relief to have read those chapters... it was at once chilling that the author profiled me to a T when he laid out a general framework for the stages in response to killing somebody and the guilt associated with these stages (not by taking another human's life, but for the fact that I wasn't feeling remorse for it... guilty for not feeling guilty), and so wonderfully lifting that I wasn't the only dude that felt this exact same way, that in fact it was a common reaction. I could still very well be a twisted fuck for all I know, but the fact that I could relate to this text and these people that the author was writing about... I guess it sort of validated my humanity in a way. Not to say that killing somebody is something that is normal and I should feel fine for doing it - I recognize that it's an extreme act that should only be employed in extreme situations (or arguably never some people might argue) - but I at least wasn't entirely crazy. Or at the very least, I was crazy with other people.
|
I might check out those books just to try and understand better, thanks. I think it's important to share your experience... I'm sure there are others who remain silent and alienated even among peers, as it sounds like is your experience. You seem really self aware, and it's a tough deal to wrap one's head around.
|
Human beings are not wired: they construct collectively there experiences as meaningful, and then deal with it.
Well said
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
