Frustration fills me. I stand in line just to get in another line. Apathy surrounds me. No one cares if they do a good job. The bare minimum has become the new standard. Excelling at anything other than self-promotion is pointless. Those that excel are quickly chopped down by the masses. Struggling to break free of this cycle, but no one gets out unscathed. The tentacles of laziness sneak into everyone's soul. It takes a hammer of persistence to smash it.

What follows is my thoughts/rumination about why I get suicidal urges and depression that won't go away for the last 8 years. 

What was it all for? Why did my generation give up 15 years of our lives in wars that accomplished nothing? I live in constant pain and I can’t remember the last time I slept well without medication. I walk around permanently angry at the world. I missed so many holidays and birthdays with my family, that I am surprised I still have a family. 

 I am a generation X kid. We were raised in the 80s and 90s. We knew who the bad guys were when we were growing up. Democracy was good and Communism was bad. After 15 years of war and more deployments than I want to remember, the only thing that I am sure of is that the problem with Iraq and Afghanistan is that we were there. You can’t convert people to democracy if you give it to them with the heel of your boot. 

Our generals FAILED us, our senior leaders had no idea how to fight this war, and the casualties just continued to climb. We soldiers were stuck with the garbage leadership that didn’t leave the Army under Bill Clinton. The Army offered big money for people to get out early in the early 90’s. The smart ones took it and ran. The crap that was left over stayed on active duty and became our senior leadership that thought the best way to pacify a nation was to kick in their doors and search their houses. How’d that work out dickhead? 

We lost more people in Iraq than on 9/11 and no one has ever been able to show me why we were there in the first place. We demolished Afghanistan looking for bin Laden and then found him in another country that was supposed to be our ally. 

What did my brothers die for? What are they still dying for? We have 22 suicides a day and climbing, because no one cares. America doesn’t care about us and most veterans know it. The Republican party has fought time and again to get rid of Obamacare, but they have no problem with the VA allowing vets to die from neglect. The Democrats want us to go to war with no money for training or equipment and just figure it out once we are there. There is no political party that is good for the soldier. 

As I approach the twilight of my career, I look around at all that I have done for my entire adult life and realize that I wasted my life for a cause that I can’t even define. You want to know how veterans get to suicide? We can’t fit into this society because of the war, and we don’t know why we went to war in the first place.