It's a little bit overwhelming trying to get it summarized in a little bit, but what I can think of is just
Just self-sacrifice
Basically
One thing Afghanistan taught me is that
Things can change in a second, a hot second your life can be going perfectly fine
And you can be happy, and you think that nothing's gonna happen to you
And then it does.
I remember it very vividly when I got hit with an EFP which is an explosively formed penetrator
Which is a particularly nasty type of IED
Improvised explosive device. I have to explain all the acronyms
I'm sorry
It was that just surely February 7th was there just our anniversary for a
Murphy 1-2
We did not see the IED coming it was disguised in a pile of trash that blew us up
it was Murphy 1 2 which was a
Helicopter crew that we went down. They were a few days from getting away some I just arrived there
I knew his was 7 crew members. They went down we lost 7 of them
And that was one of the main events that put me into the Wounded Warrior
Battalion that was on cam penalty site
This second appointment was a little more rough for me
My wife was pregnant I missed the birth of my daughter
All my brothers are dying over there in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.
I got really depressed for a while
Nobody gives a shit about him nobody puts it on TV. A
nd I still deal with that every day
And once you're in the real world
Back on the block. It's just uh
your
Is you this is you and uh you're out there trying to figure it out.
Then I came home to
Pretty much having my entire life changed. I came out here to California
Pretty directionless didn't know what to do
It was really hard but
I've had I've had some some time to kind of think back on it
When I was got out like was either
Dwell on that and let it just go and just be nothing or I can just continue going on.
I'm sitting and
smelling the roses like they say
Whatever that means,
that I'm sitting there, and I'm I'm just making sure that I appreciate people that around me
appreciate everything that's going on
Hope my life gets better
I hope I am finally able to stop being sad and
Find something to live for
Lot of the guys use we suffer and we wonder why we do how do we get that mind to calm down
Some people tell me I care too much I
Just feel like I care enough
Being in the Marines were all together
And there's this tight-knit bond that you
You just don't expect to have we all didn't always get along we all didn't have the same background
We didn't all have same perspectives, but if any one of those people call me right now
And they said they need it whatever I'm there. I've never experienced that type of bond
But what I have realized is that no matter what you go through?
There there's always somebody there always
What helps us in the long run is working together?
Because countries and people bring so many different things to the table us as humans are capable of so much
Being someone and making a difference in someone else's life is really living
But how will we ever do it if we don't actually step up to that plate?
Well it seems like it's getting pretty crazy these days
seems like we might be beating our chests into another road or there's a lot of people that are divided right now and
And yeah, I just think that you know perspective is something that we all need right now
The things that we can achieve as human beings is remarkable, but we have to do it together
We just have to do it