Confessions of an Airborne Dedicated Individual Combat Killer (ADICK) - Part 6

Military Families Suffer More than Some

Don't get me wrong, I'm not making this post to defend all the dependapotamuses that like to think that they serve alongside their husbands and that you should salute them at the gate because their husband is a captain. I can't stand those damn people. They're usually the worst kind of people, too, because if you don't show them that respect...well, let's just say she's going to call her husband and her husband is going to let your command know about your blatant disrespect. I had gate guard duty at Bragg for three months. All of those people need to bash their skulls into a wall until they figure out they're not in the Army, so they need to shut their damn mouths, hand over their IDs, say "thank you," and be on their way.

No, what I'm talking about here is the toll that Airborne life can take on families. I'll be honest with you folks: everyone who volunteers to jump out of a high-performance aircraft at 140mph is not quite right in the head. We're all pretty screwy guys, so if a woman is brave enough to marry one of us, kudos to her; she's made of more than most. Combined with the stupidly fast operation tempo that the 82nd operates at, it can make being married to a paratrooper into a real pain. Toss kids into that mix? Life isn't easy, least of all for the women that decide to marry us.

Some of us handle the stress of Airborne life better than others, as well, and that has an effect. Some people handle it well, like my old platoon sergeant, who is quite possibly the most stoic and stalwart warrior I've ever met or could conceive of. He indulges himself rarely, had a generally positive attitude every day, and he knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. He and his wife got along very well (his wife and my wife are actually still friends on Facebook) from what I could tell. Then there's most of the rest of us. Many of us drink heavily to cope, so Friday night is usually the worst night of the week for command; God forbid we get a recall order, because half the Division is going to get DUIs coming back on post from the bars and strip clubs. Strip clubs are the other alternative. It's not uncommon for privates and even other enlisted guys to blow most of their paychecks on strippers and booze come payday.

To be fair, the only time I went to a strip joint was when a buddy of mine was transferring to Korea, and we all went there for drinks on his last night in the States. I didn't drink all that heavily, either, although there were more than a few nights where I went out with the guys from the platoon and got wasted. It was always in good fun, and it was never extreme. I did however, do something that was no doubt harder to deal with for my wife and my baby daughter. I disconnected.

I internalized a lot of the stress that I went through at "work." I talked to my wife about some stuff to complain, but most of the time if I wasn't bitching to the guys in my platoon, I was keeping it to myself. I smoked a lot, and stewed on all the bullshit that I had to deal with on a daily basis, and that other people that I considered friends and good guys had to deal with. I let the stress of the place get to me, and there were a couple of points in the three years I was at Bragg where I was depressed. When I say depressed, I mean my soul had been sucked out and my mind had been scrambled and crushed; I lost interest in just about everything. I hated life.

Despite how much I hated being there, I didn't want to take it out on my family at home, so I just shut down when I came home. I unbloused my top, took it off, took a seat on the couch, and watched TV for a couple of hours, periodically checking Facebook. I gave my wife one-word answers, but otherwise I didn't say much. There were more than a few days where I didn't say a word to her for a few hours after I got home. I walked through my house like a zombie.

Naturally, this is not conducive to a healthy relationship, less so for a healthy marriage. I want to say things got better when we had Kate, our daughter, but they actually got worse. Combining all the stress that I'd been trying to manage prior to being a father with less than four hours of sleep a night and working 10-12 hours a day (with the lovely possibility of 24 hours days every week) was a recipe for disaster. The second round of depression came after she was born, and it about destroyed me.

Thankfully, I got my DD214, and I've been a happy, healthy, involved human being ever since. Sometimes I sleep with it under my pillow, just to remind me how much happier I am now that I'm no longer in the 82nd by-God Airborne.

Andrei Chira is a vaper, voluntaryist, and all-around cool dude. Formerly a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, he now spends his time between working at VapEscape in Montgomery County, Alabama, contributing to Seeds of Liberty on Facebook and Steemit, and expanding his understanding of...well, everything, with an eye on obtaining a law degree in the future.