Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - You Are Not Alone

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

This entire episode is dedicated to a raw, revealing listener-submitted story that challenges the perceptions of success and resilience. From the glitz of professional victories to the shadowed valleys of personal turmoil, we get an unfiltered view into the complexities of a life riddled with failed relationships, infidelity, deception, and the numbing solace of alcohol. This isn't just one person's tale, it's a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of outward accomplishments, many of us grapple with inner demons, often unseen and unheard. In our struggles, no matter how unique or harrowing they may feel, we are never truly alone. The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Normally on Fridays, if you're a listener or viewer of the podcast, you know that we do Q&A most of the time. Last weekend, of course, or last Friday, an exception. Did Andy versus Michael round one? There's going to be more. The result's probably going to be the same. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I received an email from a listener to the podcast that touches directly on something that I referenced a few episodes ago. I believe it was on a Friday. And that is a email. my own personal goal slash journey. I don't know the best way to describe it of trying to have more empathy and more understanding of the people that I encounter in just my day-to-day life, the ability, the desire to have the ability to give people a beat, to try to see life a little bit through their eyes to round the edges on my own reactions sometimes. Having said all of that, I consistently fail in this, but I do the best that I can. I'm a person like anybody else, and the journey is never going to end. But this is something that I am actively working on. And this email is long. I'm going to read the email in its entirety for one reason and one reason

alone. We all have a mask that we wear and some people their mask is very transparent. You can see the pressures in gravity of life weighing on them. You can see the impact that it's having on them for better or for worse. And other people have a great mask and you can't tell. And I've worked with people in my previous career who had a fantastic mask and I had no idea of what was going on behind it. And they eventually made a decision to end their own life. and it's horrendous and you will live with regret for the rest of your life if you know somebody like that and you feel like that there's something you could have done about it. I feel like by reading this email it is a good reminder to everybody to include myself that we aren't alone and we never know

what somebody else is dealing with. And because of that, maybe we should give them just a little bit more grace than we commonly do. So strap yourself in. It is a long one. It is a deep one. And hopefully, in hearing this, it can change the trajectory and course of somebody's life. So here we go. I'm looking at danger close now. All right. Let's get into this. I'm going to try to cut out any identifying details from the email, but I'm going to read it in its entirety. And then I might have some comments at the end. The email itself was titled, Grab a Cup of Coffee.

This is a long one, and it was accurate. But as I mentioned in the intro, it may have been or may be a long one, but the value here I personally believe is immense. Newer listener, longtime fan. I have a bit of a long one for you. Whether you read it or not, I think it is good for me to get off my chest in a written form.

So thank you for that. My goal is for someone to read or hear this and realize they're not alone like I thought I was for so long. And someone going through something will take the leap of faith and go find help. This may start off like a biography or something. I promise I'm not that self-absorbed. There's just some background there. I feel as important. Or maybe I am self-absorbed at this point. Who fucking knows? In italics, which I deeply appreciate, The box analogy. In my mind, hiding your problems looks like this.

My mind is a calm beach with waves slowly coming in and out, probably like at dusk or something because that would be fucking cute and shit. Now there's me with a wooden box and a shovel. Something bad happens or something I don't want to deal with happens. And I put that thing in the wooden box. I dig a shallow hole. I put that box in that hole and cover it up and continue standing on. the beach. Here we go. Early career and being unfaithful. I joined the United States Air Force in 2014 after a failed single college semester. I married my now wife in the same year after dating

for about 12 months. After leaving to basic training and going to my follow-on school, I attempted to have an online affair by joining a dating website. I never actually communicated with anyone as it was a pay-to-play system where you would receive messages from hot singles in your area but had to pay in order to read and communicate back. In parentheses, I was dumb. I was 19 and dumb. Leave me alone. Fair enough. I deleted my profile and never thought about it again until about a year later. My wife found some old emails from the website and understandably lost it. At this point, I should have taken a step back and evaluated what my thought process was and what. why would do something like that, but instead I buried it and never looked in that mental box again. A few years later, I had a texting affair with a coworker. I begged my wife to stay and apologized, and said I would never do anything like this again.

But again, instead of dealing with my problems and analyzing the why behind things, I put it in a box and I buried it. After this, I promised my wife I would go through marriage counseling and individual counseling, which I physically attended, but mentally I was anywhere else. I robotically went through the motions to appease my wife with the I'm wrong, you're right, and I'm just selfish, which is fucking absolutely true. However, it doesn't assist with the finding of the why. Why I am wrong, why I'm a selfish jackass. After half-acidly going through the sessions, or these sessions, I thought everything was good,

but realistically both my wife and I were stuck in that moment. She was constantly paranoid and anxiety-ridden that I would do something again, and I was constantly paranoid and anxiety-ridden, that I couldn't go to the corner store without the third degree, or constant comments about how awful men were, or how this is all my fault, which, again, are fair assessments of the situation. I dealt with this mental state the best way I knew how, locking everything deep inside and drinking.

things were great after that. I never thought about things, and when I did, I was too dumb to really process them and chocked it up to being young and dumb. I was able to do this for years up until 2020. This next section is called cross-training. When the pandemic hit, I was in a cross-train switching jobs. I was at the time a criminal investigator and had been at this point for about five years, and I was transitioning to a federal agency. It was a job I had strived,

years to get. I lost many holidays, birthdays, and stayed late countless days to make a name for myself and get a slot in this job. My daughter never complained that I wasn't around, and any time I got home late or missed something or had to leave at night, she would always get super excited that daddy is going to catch bad guys and keep us safe. Things between my wife and I were good. I was in a good job and I made really good name for myself at my base, but life's a C-U-N-T sometimes and doesn't care what you want. Long story short, I was asked to leave this school the week of graduation. After eight months of being away from my family and years of effort, my dreams were flushed down the drain with the swipe of a pen. Career-wise, I have had adversity I've had to overcome. I was late to work

five times in a month time frame. I failed a test that certifies you in your duty position three times. I failed a test that certifies you in your three level six times, not bragging, but I did set the record. I was almost charged with a crime, and I called my supervisor a pussy over a bodyworn camera that he watched. And I overcame all of that with grit and determination. I went from being a liability to the guy people would call for any question they had or need. needed help with anything. But I didn't know how to overcome this, and I didn't know how to process failure on this scale. I drew back to my base, the same base I had already had a going away party where everyone was congratulating me on my new job and had to tell my leadership that I failed.

But I did what I always did with every problem I've had. I put it in the box, and I buried it, and I drank away the pain. I had super focus after this to get back to being the go-to guy. And within a month, I was back there, but I had a nagging problem in my head, a problem I have never dealt with. Hard transition, but it'll pay off. My entire life, I've had hard problems with self-worth and self-love. I've always hated the way I looked, talked, walked, fucking sat, didn't matter. If I did it, I hated it. This led to a problem of self-worth. If you hate everything about yourself and don't have any self-love, how could you possibly think that you are worthy of anything? I was able to temporarily overcome this

with alcohol, self-love, and work, self-worth. When I am drunk, I am extremely happy and outgoing, and that part of me hates me, and the part of me that hates me is turned off. At work, I grew accustomed to receiving awards and accolades, and was constantly given. positive reinforcement. And when I wasn't receiving those, I chased them and eventually got them. So when someone with these problems is escorted out of a compound and told you are not good enough, things can go south really quick. And they did, but not quite yet. The next section, deployment. In 2021, I had the opportunity to deploy for the first time to Qatar. I was super excited for this opportunity and had a lot of positive vibes going on. I finally, I had finally stopped

thinking about my cross-train and about my marital problems, in parentheses, which at this point, my drinking increased significantly and I stopped talking and communicating how I was feeling. Throughout the process of getting ready to go, I heard nothing happens over there, and it's just a long TDI-Y, which means temporary duty, for those of you unfamiliar with military vernacular, which, to their credit, they're 100% right, 90% of the time. This has honestly been, or this was honestly disappointing to me. I wanted something to happen. I wanted danger and adventure and adrenaline, not a fucking pool and a dairy queen.

When we finally got there, I was even more disappointed, as the Al-Udide Air Base was basically a big stateside base with every amenity you could want with three beers a day. I was hired into the training section and worked in flyaway security. We would fly away on C-130s to airfields that did not have the proper security established, provide on-ground security, and then fly back to Qatar, which was awesome as someone who grew up getting motion sick and was afraid of roller coasters. In late July, we started hearing grumblings about a potential airlift situation out of Afghanistan in as the timer on that was starting to get close to zero. However, we were told the situation

was under control and we were simply going to go pick up packs, which personnel, and equipment from these perfectly good airfields we were closing. On August 17, 2021, I received a phone call from my supervisor telling me a plane had just landed with a metric fuck ton of uncleared Afghan civilians on it. Essentially, my entire dorm building was walking around the hall getting ready to go to work as I got ready. A few hours later, we were almost done processing the 800 on the first plane. When we got the call, there were three more in the air. This started two weeks of non-stop flights and work by the airmen on the ground in Al-Udide.

Udide? I don't know. I apologize for murdering that name. Later in the evening, those of us who were not actively providing security were called to the edge of the airfield to collect body parts from the first plane that had landed. People had attempted to hold on to the outside of the plane and the wheels, and they made it to Qatar, but they were kind of spread out from where the wheels opened up to land to the point where the plane came to a stop. After this, I packed a 72-hour bag and waited in front of our program manager's door demanding to go to Afghanistan to help. My wish was granted, and within 24 hours of that first plane touching down, I was on the ground in HKI.

H-Kaya, which is essentially the airport in Kabul. I wish that I had never wished. I am credited with 11 flights to H-Kaiya in 14 days. Throughout that time, I dealt with death, riots, loss, anger, exhaustion, and helplessness. When we would land in Qatar with 450 civilians, it had to be 450 every time. Our average ground time was eight hours. Eight hours with all doors and ramps to. the C-17 sealed in 130-degree weather on a tarmac in the middle of the day. You can imagine what the

results were. All the things that I experienced and saw, I put in a box and I buried it, but this time the beach was running out of room. Coming home. When I came home, I was a very different person. It was and is hard for me to admit, but something that was there before wasn't there anymore. I'd become extremely distant. I didn't want to talk to anyone or be around anyone. I had developed an anger problem. I broke my daughter's dresser because the drawer was sliding in straight, because the door wasn't sliding in straight, broke my washer because the buttons weren't working fast enough, and developed a road rage problem.

My daughter noticed this. My wife noticed this, but I refused to notice or accept it. I was mandated when I got back to see mental health or to seek mental health, and I was very upfront with them. I had been having some nightmares, anxiety, flashbacks, felt danger everywhere, and anger problems. Their response to me was, wow, we've never dealt with this stuff before, so we don't really know what to do. Back then, I'd say I was pissed or frustrated with that, but now I realize that I was a avoiding dealing with any of it. So I was secretly happy they didn't know what to do because that meant I didn't have to deal with it.

I went through the next year not dealing with any of my shit, not talking about it, not processing it. And I quit the only thing that I had that was keeping me equalized. Boos. All of this led to the next section. The break at the beach. What does the tide do on a beach? It comes in and it goes out. Well, if you're a wooden box and a shallow hole on a beach, when that tide comes in and out, repeatedly, what happens?

The sand gets washed away until the box is now on top. At this point, in my life, every damn box I had buried and forgotten was now uncovered, lying on the beach in the middle of a hot-ass day, and now I'm standing there wishing the boxes would just find a way to bury themselves. the spiral. This year, I experienced what most would describe as a mental break. I had always kept my wife at arm's length, parentheses, family history of intimacy issues, first responder issues, but things had gotten unsustainable at this point. I had so many negative emotions and feelings that I projected them onto my wife and our relationship. I was pushing my kids away, my family, my friends. Everyone wasn't just at arm's length. They were at least a football field away, and if they weren't, I would get angry.

This wasn't enough, so I started self-sabotaging at work by making mistakes. Big mistakes. Picking fights with my bosses. Being an absolute dick to everyone, not doing my admin work, one time or at all, to the point everyone hated me. This wasn't enough either. So I started self-sabotaging my marriage, even more. I told my wife I wanted a divorce, got on dating apps.

had relationships with coworkers and was an all-around piece of shit. All of this came to a head when my wife found out about the dating apps. I tried to excuse it by saying we were separated, but that wasn't it. I came home that day to all of our pictures, all of our signs, everything that we have had for the past 10 years that showed our love, literally torn to shreds, broken or in the trash. I once again tried to bury my feelings, ignore it, and put it in that box. But I was all out of boxes, and there's no beach left to bury stuff in. And all the boxes I had buried before were now uncovered by the tide, and I lost it.

At this point, since my deployment, I had cried a total of one time. Two years I had cried once. Because why cry when you can bury and ignore? Well, two years of buried emotions don't come out so well. I shut my bathroom door, turn the lights off, and I cried. And then I cried some more. And then I punched stuff. But unfortunately, when all those emotions come up at once, it's hard to pick which thing you're upset about. And what should be your inner voice walking you through a problem turns into a million voices that are screaming at you. I had a million things flying through my head from issues. as a kid all the way to Tinder. To me, my life was over. I was a failure at work. I was a fucking loser the way I treated my wife.

I was a failure as a father because I pushed my family into pieces. And I was just in general a failure at life. All the voices quieted down to one. Your family would be better off without you. I grabbed my gun and I left with the intent to kill myself. At this point, I'm weaving in and out of traffic, still crying, still crying and trying to decide where I wanted to do it. I can't do it on base because I wouldn't want those dues to see that. I can't do it in my truck at all because my family would get the truck back and that would be traumatizing.

The only reason I didn't go through with it was because my friend texted me to tell me that our 0930 meeting was at 0900 and asked where I was. This was the first time and the last time this dude ever asked where I was for a meeting. He saved my life that day because I thought, well, I'll at least go to this meeting. I don't want a no-show. Throughout my life, I have always dealt with problems in two ways, bearing my problems and drinking. When neither of those were available, I didn't know what to do. The after party. This whole situation was and is an absolute cluster fuck of bad life decisions, lying to myself,

and my family, being unfaithful and being selfish. After my mental break, I sought professional help in an individual and group setting. I had already been seeing an individual therapist for post-traumatic stress, but I actually opened up about all the shit I was actually hiding and had breakthrough of sorts. It is a struggle every single day to put one foot in front of the other, but I do it, and I do it honestly now. I opened up to my wife about a lot of the problems I had been facing all of the things I had done and what I was feeling. But being honest with myself was the first step towards actually healing and some acceptance. My goal in this message to you is twofold. One, none of the things I have done to my family are because of my deployment. I must take personal

responsibility for those actions and be accountable. Feeling bad, trauma, post-traumatic stress, don't make you do anything, but they do exacerbate issues, especially when compounded on top of other issues you choose not to deal with. My daughter loves Marble movies, and a quote from the recent Dr. Strange movie resonated with me. The debt always comes due. You get away with nothing in this life, and eventually you will have to answer for the things you have done, but by being honest, facing your problems and truly trying to be a better person will make the debt less burdensome. and you might as well deal with one problem at a time rather than dealing with 19 all at once. Number two, people care.

And your problems are not special or one in a million. Through my group, I have found others with similar avoidance and intimacy issues, but it took years for me to see that. I viewed myself as a bad guy. I hated my daughters, I'm sorry, I hated that my daughters, my wife, my family loved me because I hated me. I have done awful things out of selflessness, self-ishness, and there is nothing I can do to take those actions back, but I can learn from them, and I think others can too. If you're going through a hard time or feel like you are at your end, don't fucking stop. It will take a lot of honesty and a lot of hard work, but you can and will love the person on the other side of this.

All I've ever wanted to do is help people. It's why I chose to be a cop. I hope that this message helps someone. But in the end, I want you to know that this has helped me. Thanks for spreading your message and putting similar stories out there. Your podcast has been a godsend. That is a lot. And I honestly don't know what to add to this other than to reinforce the two points at the very end.

And I'll start by saying one thing that I've said often about trauma. There's so many different ways in life to be on the receiving end of trauma. Maybe you don't win the lottery with your parents and you grow up in a shitty social and economic situation. And perhaps your parents grew up in the same type of system. And instead of preventing that problem from generationally passing on, they chose to pass it on. You have no control over where you begin your life and who you begin your life with. and you're not responsible for the trauma that happens to you. But to reinforce point number one,

you are 100% responsible for what you do with that trauma. The first sentence and his final bullet point in the after party, none of the things I have done to my family are because of my deployment. That is such a difficult statement to make when you come from a community that is more than willing and not only a community, but a society that is more than willing to label you and treat you as broken because of the requirements of your job. It is such a slippery slope to slide into that and start looking at any issues, problems, or residual that you may have as a byproduct of the career that you chose. And I can't reinforce enough. Again, it goes back to the trauma.

The trauma you experience on that deployment or the deployment or the occupation that you have, you have no control over. But you have 100% control over what you do with it. And it is not, in this case, the deployment's part or the job's fault or any of those things. The actions you take, you know, you may have weight on your shoulders. you may have trauma from those things, but it's not the fault of those things if you choose to do something poor with it. And that is a fucking difficult hurdle to get across because what you are doing is stripping bear anything other than the person that you see in the mirror every time you look into it for the reason and accountability for the actions that you take. It's not a fun look. I've had some shit looks in the mirror in my life.

And what you really want to do, especially as the problems get more complex and worse, all you want to do is look somewhere other than that mirror. What could I point to that could excuse this behavior? How could I explain this away? If you really want to get through it, you have to do that. And that starts with shouldering the burden of that trauma in working your way through that. It is not the deployment's fault. It is not your job's fault.

It is on you to deal with the trauma and burden that may come from those things. You know, point number two kind of in the intro before the episode began, kind of speaks to the mask that I referenced. Everybody wears a mask. Like I said, some are more opaque than others. Everybody is dealing with something in their life. I've yet to meet anybody who has a perfect life. I know a lot of people associate wealth or social. social status with an inverse proportion of problems.

And I haven't found that to be the case. I obviously don't know everybody on the earth. Maybe somebody does have a perfect life. I haven't met that person yet. And I've met people in just about every orbit from a social or economic perspective that's probably out there. And they all have problems. I'm trying to do a better job.

of just giving people a beat, of being more graceful in receiving other people's actions when they are likely falling short of the person that they want to be. Because I'm trying to view it through the lens of what could they possibly be dealing with that I don't know about. I don't know their trauma. I don't know how good their mask is. But behind that mask,

we are all dealing with our own issues. I'll give you some examples. I'll give you an example for my own life. This is something that I have struggled with for my entire life. And one of the reasons that I wanted to read this email is that it reminded me of myself. I have struggled with a sense of self-worth for my entire life. I constantly am critical of myself. And probably more accurately,

definitely more accurately. I am very hypercritical of just about everything about myself as a person. The way that he described, I don't like the way I walk. I don't like the way to sit, the way that I speak. All of those things, you might as well be talking about myself at different points in time in my life. I constantly went in the military, fought an internal battle that I never vocalized to anybody while I was in. internally internal thoughts and it's so god it's so important to manage the way that you speak to yourself and of course i can talk about that a little bit more now because i've worked on over

years the way that i speak to myself and the things that i say to myself but i would have a battle with myself are you good enough are you good enough to do this job are you actually able to meet the standard i i guess what i was dealing with the easiest way to say it would be imposter syndrome I constantly felt like I was an imposter inside of my old career. I constantly questioned whether or not I was good enough, whether I was capable enough. And the way that I would speak to myself, not out loud, even though I've talked about recently, for whatever I talk to myself out loud all the time, it was an inner and an internal dialogue.

And God damn, it's powerful because you can convince yourself with some horrendous shit about yourself. I am not perfect with this by any stretch of the imagination. It's something that I still deal with. I have developed strategies to short circuit the negative reinforcement cycle of self-talk through talking with people who understand how the brain works and issues like that. I'm talking about therapists and counselors. I've seen a variety throughout the course of my life when I was going through my divorce of almost two years. I talked to somebody every single week. because I needed to. I wanted strategies to communicate better with my kids, but I also wanted strategies to communicate with myself and not beat myself up and not question my self-worth and not

question my self-esteem. And I absolutely needed to have that because that was the lowest point of my life when I came to my own feelings of self-worth and who I thought I was as a person. It was fucking brutal from an internal perspective, the dialogue and narrative. that I had. But there's nothing special about anything that I just described. And that is why I am trying to be a little bit more graceful with people, a lot more graceful. I guess it would be. Maybe it's because I'm getting a little bit older. I don't know. But it has, it has helped. It's helped me be less reactive. It's helped me be more empathetic. And it's helped me connect with people in a way that I don't know if I was capable or willing to do because when you see

somebody, maybe it's an interaction with you or you see an interaction with somebody else. For a long time, my initial reaction was, well, that person can go fuck themselves. Fuck that person. You know, what's wrong with them? Now my first thought is, what do you, I wonder what's going on in that person's life that's leading them to this point. And I wonder if there's anything that I could do to help with that. And I think that journey, although never ending and be super clear, I fall short all the time, but I remind myself of who I want to be and why I'm trying to do it. It's making me a better

version of myself. But that starts with realizing that you aren't alone. The problems that you have are likely being shared by almost everybody else that you encounter. Whether or not they verbalize them, address them, or bury them in the sand to use the analogy from the email, So that's questionable. But don't think that you're alone and don't think that your problems are unique. And most importantly, don't think that your problems are not solvable. Most, if not all of them are. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

But if you want to become the best version of yourself, which is still a journey that I'm constantly on and constantly falling short of, you have to work through those things and not bury them in the beach. So very appreciative of the individual that wrote this in. Getting an email like this and hearing that the podcast has helped you come to this type of realization is exactly why I love doing this podcast. And I couldn't think of anything else that I could do that would be more impactful. Once you hit upload, I don't know where it goes. I don't know who hears it.

But I hope people hear that whatever, you're going through, you can work your way through it. Whatever you're struggling with, there are other people out there who are struggling with it too. You're not alone. And the only way that you're not going to win in this game is if you quit. So keep putting one foot in front of the other. And maybe people are exhausted from hearing me say this about seeking professional help or talking to a counselor. I'm very open on the impact that it's had in my life. There's people who are writing in or open about the impact it's had on theirs. It may take you a few people to talk to before you find somebody to connect with and the first time you sit down with somebody, it may not be

great. It may not be perfect and that's okay. That doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It means you need to find the right person for it to work. But I think as long as you continue to put the work in, you're going to be okay and you're going to be a better version of yourself. So that's it. Maybe we should all just take a breath, take a beat, and the next time you see something going on where you kind of want to just shout somebody down, maybe just take a breath and ponder. I wonder what it is in their life that it could have gotten to this point. And I wonder what it is in my life that could get you or get me to behave in the exact same way. It's a very powerful thought exercise.

And it rounds the edges. And I think it makes the world a little bit better. So that is it for today. See you guys on Monday.