My best friend on the planet Earth was shot in the head by a sniper, and when you have to tell your best friend, "I'm here, you're fine. You can rest," when you know he's never going to open his eyes again, there's no way for that not to change you. We don't learn from the wins. We learn from our struggles. Hey, my name's Brandon, I served in the United States Army. I was an infantryman. Reclassed to be a combat medic. Joined in 1998 and retired in 2015. I had a rough childhood. My sister was killed in a car wreck sitting in my lap when I was seven. Dad left the next day. Struggles that led to doors slamming in my face, saved lives on the battlefield when I finally got my chance in war. Not too long after I got done with all my medical training and when we invaded Iraq, so I went from the schoolhouse to baptism by fire.
People don't holler, "Medic," because they want to tell you the temperature's good. It's a worst case scenario nearly every time. And a lot of times it's the guy you were just talking to, your best friend in my case, unfortunately more than once. And I did suffer a traumatic brain injury, but I ended up completely going unconscious from blood loss. Pretty rough situation. The weird thing about it is none of the physical wounds that I've dealt with have been anywhere close to what I've dealt with with my mind. You come back and you go to the store and you see somebody that you went to high school with, somebody that looked up to you and you can't talk because you stutter. That was a big thing for me is my brain was always going, but the connection was not there for me to get my point out, which led to my isolation.
Couple that on top of headaches and then all the other stuff that come with PTSD. The one thing that I've identified in every Veteran that's on a dark road is isolation. Mine got so bad that when I retired, I lived in a FEMA trailer. Eventually I would get a phone call from my mother that said, "Either you call me back or I'm calling the sheriff's department to do a welfare check." The first time I checked myself into a mental health facility, I was still in active duty. I was a sergeant first class E-7, but something was there and I was on that path to self-destruction. What got me to check myself into a place in Nashville was, if you do this and your soldiers that look up to you and respect you and you've trained and you've led by example, maybe it gives them the guts, the courage to do it themselves if they need it, because if you need it, guaranteed there's somebody else that needs it.
So I did it. It was the start. It wasn't the fix. It was the start. You're going to have bad days. I don't look at myself as broken, but I don't look at myself as completely whole either. Different therapies I've been through, I've done EMDR, probably the one that helped me the most. If there was a time there was no light at the end of my tunnel at all because all those therapies, I couldn't look back on one of them and say, "That one right there helped me the most." As a collective they all helped me in some way. You take the good with the bad, but going through the bad is how you appreciate the good. My grandfather, my mom's dad, is one of my favorite people on earth. He is a World War II Veteran. He was on the USS New Jersey, which is the most decorated battleship of World War II.
We were at the World War II Museum this morning and when we walked across the street the first time and I looked up and saw it. For 17 years I got to wear that uniform and carry that torch to pass on to the next generation. One day, 80 years from now, there's an Iraq-Afghanistan War on Terror Museum, hopefully somebody will walk through that museum and think of my generation to keep them moving forward and keep them pushing forward.
My wife has been my biggest fan. She's put herself out there so much and so many times to support me. Well, now she broke her ankle and today I'm pushing her in a wheelchair. In a lot of ways, that's a role reversal. She's the one pushing my hypothetical wheelchair almost all the time just by supporting me. She's kept my wheelchair going. And I was honored to push her. If I had to give a Veteran some advice, we have to live a life worthy of the sacrifice of our buddies. We're still here. For whatever reason we've been able to be to die for our country, but I feel like we're not willing to live for it. Taking the step to reach out, to make the connection. Thrive, don't just live.
