I can’t die. It’s a gift and it’s a curse. On the one hand my quality of life has gone up drastically from taking better care of myself. On the other hand it’s constant pressure. What do you mean you’re confused? Ah, I see. It’s the old case of: “May I go to the bathroom?” versus “Can I go to the bathroom?”
Well let me rephrase for the pretentious grammar Nazi in my head. It’s not that I can’t die. If you put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger I’d definitely die…unless I didn’t (this is an entirely different rabbit hole).
What I mean to say is that I’m no longer ALLOWED to die. This restriction is only partially self-imposed as my earlier years were spent mainly trying to kill myself. Even these days between jumping out of a plane or riding my motorcycle I’m probably a little too cavalier by most peoples’ standards but believe you me I have cut out a veritable shit-ton of nonsense that statistically speaking was going to put me in a box too early.
The Revelation
Why am I not allowed to die? I had a revelation when I was traveling overseas last month. I was sitting in the airport waiting for the plane to arrive like I have done hundreds of times. While staring out the window I started to feel wistful. This particular time I had gone directly from dropping off my kids with their mother to the airport. We had had a wonderful 4 days together and I already missed them (I miss them immediately after sending them back every time, every week, even though they only live a mile away from me).
Sitting at the airport I looked at some pictures that had been taken in the few days prior and I started getting nervous about getting on the plane. Seriously awful thoughts crept in about the plane going down.
For perspective you should know that I’ve had thoughts like this before, but my philosophy was always, “Well if it goes down, I don’t have any more problems anyway!” I’m usually very ‘come what may’ about these sorts of things. I’m the guy who has said out loud in passing “Wouldn’t it be awesome to be the guy to survive a plane crash?” I’d have my time floating in the ocean, eating whatever I could find including the other passengers should the time come. Rest assured we’ll all have made a compact with each other and I would gladly allow any of you all to eat me in the same situation should it arrive. Then I’d write my tell-all lone survivor book and take my obvious place in the pantheon of legends. Then I’d also probably come into some money and fly free for the rest of my life.
This time however I did not feel that way. Looking at the pictures of my kids I thought about the plane crashing into the ocean. I thought about floating above them like a ghost for their entire lives, still too young now to really remember me. These thoughts were awful. I thought about them never knowing me and the struggles that they would or could have without me there to comfort and support them. I saw them grow up and become adults with me just a faded memory; a guy who people told crazy stories about and a few pictures of me hugging them as babies and toddlers (Please note that I’m in perfectly good health and yes I do have a great life insurance policy).
And this is more of a philosophical issue than anything because all at once I was like oh my god, “I can’t die anymore! I have to live forever! My little boy needs me, my little girl needs me.” It was exhilarating to feel that sort of need to be alive and present as opposed to the usual turn of events which is the need to feel near death excitement in order to feel alive. These forces are at odds…I shall explain.
I know it sounds odd but it truly is an odd revelation to me. I’m selfishly very happy that I finished my 8 years of service in the Army before I had kids. I’m so very respectful of those that have built their families around it. Since I started genetic multiplication after I got out, my perspective was different. When I was on deployment overseas many times from the years 2003-2011 I always thought less about the danger in and of itself. I was doing a job. Yeah I could have been hurt or worse. Yeah it was dangerous. But it was exciting and in the realm of risk, it was all on my side. I thought sure I could bite it but whatever right? My mom would be sad. Some of my friends would be sad, but life goes on.
I realize that this is dumb young guy rhetoric (but I was a dumb young guy) and it was pragmatic and justifiable to me at the time.
The risk apparent to the other older men and women with families (relative to me at the time) is now very clear. What they leave behind is way heavier. This is why we send so many young men and women overseas. They’re the only ones carefree enough or foolish enough to think that that level of excitement is something of desire; that you will be in your own personal action movie and stoically facing down the enemy. This is hogwash. This is something that the older folks who are still in have somewhat matured past. Or they at least have a realistic grip with the price.
The Excitement Scale
I say somewhat matured because let me tell you, it is exciting. No matter how mature you become, no matter what knowledge you have, you are excited by those experiences.
First understand that excitement is not necessarily a measure of positive or negative. Excitement only measures one way in your body. There are emotions that you carry with the feeling that make you register positive or negative. For different levels of stimuli your body generally reacts the same way. Someone jumping out as a joke and scaring you versus surprising you with a funny joke that makes you outburst laughing may register the same. Going skydiving and getting in a bad car accident may register as the same. Some life threatening struggle may register the same as your child being born. These are just generic examples.
The point is that you register these things in your body as levels of excitement first. Then you carry a positive or negative connotation afterwards relative to your mental perception of the stimuli. For service members overseas many live at a constant level of excitement. This level of excitement is not normal in every day civilian life (for most).
Even those living on secured bases/forward operating bases overseas the whole time during the beginning of the war were constantly under threat. Mortars would break through from time to time and be targeting places like dining facilities or MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation) facilities. Think about what that does to your level of excitement if the places where you are most safe are a roll of the dice away from being dust. This isn’t even considering those that DO go outside the wire; waiting to be shot randomly at or to have a piece of garbage or animal carcass on the side of the road blow up. Nothing taken for granted. Nothing is safe.
This isn’t a story about war though. This is a story about how that kind of excitement fucks with your equilibrium. It’s about how it crosses your wires. It changes the default neutral level to a unnaturally higher state.
You know how when everything is quiet in the middle of the night you can hear the television on two bars of volume but during the hustle and bustle of the day you need to turn that shit way up in order to hear it? It’s like that, except now you’ve lost your ability to hear anything below 10 bars of volume in terms of excitement.
This makes it hard for many servicemen and women to transfer back to normal life. After my first four years after getting back into school I was a different person. I was driven, a super student, and I was also bored as hell. Half-way through my undergrad I ended up volunteering for another deployment and went back to break up the monotony.
I am loathe to bring up fiction that deals with these sorts of topics because they always, always, ALWAYS have to sensationalize or romanticize some part about the story in order to sell tickets. But I get it. They do need to sell tickets (it’s a business) and if it sheds light on some element of truth to others who would not normally see it than great. The movie “The Hurt Locker” did a great job of trying to depict the struggle of a serviceman to cope with this issue. This movie used some pretty extreme examples to get the point across but it made sense; after experiencing those levels of excitement the zeal for life was zapped from the main character when dealing with every day things back home.
For me, even these days, 7 years after exiting the service I still miss parts of it (even the bad) if only because everything else seems so boring. This is not me asking for pity. This same excitement is the cause of depression, manic behavior, acting out, suicide, PTSD, and many other issues among service members and each one has to deal with it in their own way. I have talked to someone about it. If you are feeling this way YOU SHOULD talk about it too. That said I acknowledge that I waited too long to START talking about it.
I am incredibly driven and have worked my way up my corporate ladder in a short period of time. I have had a great education and feel truly lucky to have what I do. My life is good. But the itch is always there. You have to keep an eye on it. This itch tempts you to crank the volume knob to deafening levels regardless of the risk of deafness. This is a regular and real struggle. I still lose the struggle sometimes.
This is why the experience of feeling terrible and realizing that I wasn’t “allowed” to die anymore was refreshing. It was different. It was the desire to NOT do anything stupid because life is exciting enough on its own if you let it be. This is why mindfulness is so important. Staying in the moment and appreciating right now. This is why we need to practice daily gratitude and empathy. This is also why contemplating your death is not unhealthy in the act of helping you live to the fullest (Memento Mori).
I will likely still do the occasional foolish thing, but I am aware of my place in other peoples’ lives now more than ever. This isn’t about removing all risk from my life. It is about changing the nature of my relationship with it and not taking things for granted. I want to see my kid’s kids one day. “It’s better to burn out then to fade away” is the rhetoric of someone without kids. I want to watch them grow. I want to hold them during their hard times. The need to be better and be healthier is real. I just also from time to time want to plummet to the earth from a plane or drive over it at 120+ mph in a controlled manner.