Everyone wears masks to hide the real them

Hiding insecurities, uncertainties vulnerabilities.

The real person hides behind. The real me is weak, unsure, scared, lost, confused.

Why? Why hide behind a fake smile, and jovial laugh to cover up the pain.

“How’s it going today?”

I think, “I’m lost. I have no purpose. I have no passion. I have no direction. I’m miserable just existing and I want to live.” I say, “I can’t complain.”

Why?! Why can’t I complain when I’m not okay? Why don’t I say anything? I have no creative input towards a solution, so I stuff it deeper than Socrates.

Masks. Part me. The me I used to be. The me I wish I was. Why do I have to be tough, stoic and strong? Why do I feel less of a man when I feel weak, or show emotion? Why can’t I cry?

I’m frustrated because I’ve lived for so long behind a mask…maybe that’s all I’m supposed to be.

I always figured there’d be a transition time before I settled into my new life, post Navy.

I was always told that my life would feel weird as I got used to being out of the navy. This wouldn’t “feel right.” I “might feel lost for a bit.”

This isn’t a bit. I’ve been retired 5 years and working the whole time. I still feel lost. I still feel empty. I still feel lacking. I still just am. I’m not happy, not sad, not content and not wanting…I just am. Existing and living are wildly different experiences and I want to start living.

I have talked to therapists and psychiatrists about this and haven’t really gotten anywhere. They are only worried about the usual questions they ask you. “Are you going to hurt yourself? Are you going to hurt someone else? I have not felt that way and am not currently feeling that way. I just feel like I’m not in the right place. Midlife crisis? Crisis of being? Institutionalized? All these have merit and are possible…but I don’t know how to deal with it.

Seems like most of the focus is on those who are in extremis. Those who are riding that ragged edge with a tenuous hold on life. I understand that and support it. I’m not that target demographic. I’m not your huckleberry. I’m a guy going to a decent job, making good money and I have a wonderful supportive family. So why am I not happy? Why am I not fulfilled? What can I do to feel that way? How can things feel more real? I don’t even know if real is the right word, but it’s all I can come up with now.

Life should be more then treading water. I know I’m loved and I know people worry about me, but I don’t know if I truly worry about myself. Work days seem to just get in the way of my weekend and yet there is nothing I’m doing on the weekend to look forward to.

So here I am at 2:30am writing a post on, what has appeared to be, a dead blog. I haven’t looked to see when the last post has been, but since I can’t remember, it’s probably been a while.

So what’s going on? Well let’s review. I have been retired for a year. An entire year to get adjusted to the “real world.” This is the world everyone else is used to, and I find strange, foreign and uncomfortable. I am still married (cause my wife is a ducking saint and she puts up with my dumb ass.). That’s a plus…even if you don’t think so. I do, so kindly fuck off if you feel otherwise.

I got another job after my first one out of the Navy, and that lasted 30 days. I loved that job. It was perfect. I made a shitty decision and it cost me that job.

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease. What’s that mean?!? Fuck if I know. I was informed via email. The personable bedside manner of the modern VA. Apparently my thyroid gave me the middle finger and went to Vegas, or wherever fed up thyroids go. Got given a whole lot of other meds to help me which means I have one of those Senior Citizen medicine organizers with the individual days and AM/PM too. Yup…AARP has their sights on me it seems.

Family is doing well. Wife is going back to school, FINALLY!!! She’s going to be the smart one of us and I’m glad for that. She makes good decisions and is more grounded than I.

So why am I writing again? (Why am I writing at the butt crack of morning?!?) Well I have been struggling with insomnia and depression. Today is the birthday of one of my best friends…great occasion right? Well she died 15 years ago and sometimes it’s hard. Still love her. Still miss her. Still feel like a bitch for pining. She’s kick me in the ass if she saw me doing this.

I’m still looking for a hobby. Still trying to find my place. Still trying to be…whatever the fuck I’m supposed to be. I don’t know what that is yet. At this point I’m not sure I’ll ever figure it out. Only big baby Jesus and Cthulhu know at this point.

Only thing I can say is that I’m thankful for my family. I’m not feeling self destructive and I’m not dead. These are things to be thankful for. If you are one of the 4 or so people who can read this, thank you for being there.

One of the things you always have in the military is friends, or co-workers that are like friends/family/what have you. You know that once every 3-6 days you will spend 24 hours with these people. You get to know them, laugh with them and be extremely frustrated with them…almost like a real family.

Once they pipe you ashore for the last time…that all goes away. You still have those friends, but the interaction changes. The boundaries of the relationship change…almost the same way as when you try to put it in your girl’s butt. She’s still gonna be your girl (maybe) but things are going to be different. ( That may be a terrible example, but it sounded really good in my head. Feel free to try and give better examples if you have them.)

Most people have a hobby to fall back on. Something to fill that void. My years in the navy have stripped me of hobbies. ( Maybe not totally the Navy’s fault, but I’ll blame them cause they are an easy scapegoat.)

Part of that is why I started this blog…as an attempt to reconnect with a hobby I used to have, one I used to love. I feel like I concentrated so much on the scientific and analytical side of my brain that my creative side atrophied. I lost that itch, that skill. I know I don’t write as much as I should but I’m trying to change that and force myself to do it. To re-sharpen that skill. Maybe it will help me understand what I’m feeling and why. Only then can my analytical brain understand it and try to take action to fix it.

I lost where I was…both in my writing and my place in life. Every life has different stages, each with their own challenges and this is a prime example of that. I have no friends local. I have work acquaintances, but nobody I call a friend. I have crazy anxiety about being out in public, which is what I need to make friends.

(Weird double edged sword the human mind creates huh? I need something and my brain makes me terrified to go where I need to go so satisfy that urge. Is this what drug addiction is like? Knowing what you need to do but being physically or mentally incapable of doing said thing. )

I understand. Why so many fall into a hole of depression turning to alcohol or drug abuse. Those things attempt to fill that hole. They don’t but they lie and pretend to be the cure for all that ails you.

My logical brain is telling me that I should man up and do the damned thing, but there’s more to it than that and the reality is that this is so foreign, I don’t know what the first step is or where to take it.

So I went to a job site to help a technician and came to the realization that it sucks to be the NUB again. It sucks to be the “hold the ladder” guy or the “tool bitch” when you used to be the one directing that.

On one hand you get the chance to learn, to expand your practical knowledge and add more skills to your tool box. On the other hand you feel like a load on the system and after all this time, I am not used to that feeling or having that problem.

Work hard, show willingness to learn and expand and everything will end up alright…right? I hope so.

So today has started out like most days…me hitting the snooze button and then taking 10 minutes to get up as I creak, crack and groan my way to a vertical position. (It ain’t the age…it’s the mileage.)

I come in and try to start working on more training to get myself to be a useful body. In my memory I hear my first Chief saying,

“You should be qualifying or killing yourself. If you kill yourself, I might get a useful body to replace you!”

Get to work ready to face the day and I try to log into the computer to accomplish the training I need to have done. I don’t have access. 2 weeks at the job and I still don’t have access. (I hear Chief yelling again. “UNFUCK YOURSELF!”)

I email the people in charge and inform them of my issues. They inform me that I should be good to go. (Apparently the civilian definition of “good to go” means something more akin to “fuck your yankee blue jeans fuck boy!”)

Still without access I respond saying that I still am lacking the proper access to star my training proper. Still waiting on that response, but I sure feel like I should have some choice expletives for the said individuals.

Words mean things and sometimes they are different from civilian to military and vice verse. I assume, using amazing powers of deduction and higher level thinking, that when you “onboard” a new employee you should have all their accesses and permissions and “mother may I’s” already completed so people can start. The easiest way to kill motivation and create workplace tension, ESPECIALLY WITH VETS, is to not have shit ready for them to start training and qualifying.

I am here to work and improve things, and I can’t even get the mark 1 mod 0 accesses to do so?!?

You pansy civilians are scratching your balls and asses trying to figure out what in the Sam hill “mark 1 mod 0” means…I hear you. (Never knew ass scratching could be so loud. Maybe you should seek medical attention.). Mark 1 mod 0 means bare bones basic. No frills, no lights or bells or whistles. No you know, and knowing is half the battle.

So I guess I spend the rest of the day “looking busy” which is Latin for daydreaming and searching the internet for something fun. Here’s to hourly pay!

So today I experienced my first “office lunch outing.” Seven of us went to Dogfish Brewery and the company picked up the tab.

This is not something I am used to.

In the Navy, when things like this happen, it is a precursor to bad things incoming. This happens and people look to the skies for the storm clouds or the horsemen of the apocalypse…maybe even some random asshole dignitary wanting to “spend time with the Sailors” which translates into long bouts of cleaning (affectionately called field days. No sack races or tug of war there. Only tug of war happening is you against your hair.)

So I went to eat and realized that chow time is different for cake eating civilians compared to Sailors, and nukes in particular. You “normal” people go to lunch, talk about the weather and your favorite butt oil or the recent HGTV episode. As a Navy Nuke, food is a luxury and the time to sit can change in a second.

You could be sitting down to eat, fork in hand and suddenly the whole world takes a dump on you and you gotta go…therefore no food. As such we tend to eat fast, don’t talk and worry about tasting it later.

The fellow vets I work with seem to eat like regular people…I ate like Somali midgets were about to raid my plate. My burger was gone super fast and I sorta sat there quietly while everyone else finished.

I also realized that I am quite content to sit quietly and enjoy the moment, cause you don’t get a lot of chances to do that in the Navy either. All I could hear in my head was Princess Jasmine singing…”A whole new world…”

One of the things I find, now that I’m retired, is that I feel lost.

Rudderless.

Lacking purpose.

It’s a byproduct of running 20 years with my hair on fire with a shifting set of priorities and it all has to be done yesterday.

Yesterday I talked to one person the whole workday. That seems odd. Feels strange to be so disconnected from people 3 feet away from me. It’s almost like visiting Thailand. I’m near people, but we don’t speak the same language so we just smile and nod at each other.

I know this is passing, temporary…but it makes this whole transition more difficult. I am proud of what I’ve done and where I’ve been, but it sure has fucked me up for the time being.

I try to suck it up, put my big girl panties on and man the fuck up, but inside I’m lost. Scared of everything. Not being able to adapt, adjust…I know that’s my fear and anxiety butt-fucking me, but it’s a damn good stalker.

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I’ll feel better…I hope.

I was a technical theatre major before my time in the biggest canoe club in the world and I heard directors say, “make sure you hit your mark” quite a few times…even more so when it was a dance show. What that means is that you need to make sure you hit a certain point, or mark, at a certain time. (This is usually so you are in the light, facing the right way and ready to deliver…whatever trade you ply.)

In the military it’s the same thing. Be here, at this time, in this uniform, ready to go. This is usually followed up with the phrase “Remember…early is on time, on time is late and late is unacceptable!” (Sounds like my old man every time I hear it in my head.)

In the civilian world it seems that this is a somewhat fluid idea. You have to be at work between these hours, but the work you’re doing…well that seems to be a “fluid” concept. I have all these things I’m going to have to do, but am

Not afforded the apparatus and various “mother may I’s” to actually perform these tasks…and everyone seems to be okay with that.

“We will try again tomorrow and see if everything is ready or not. If not, we’ll call the next day.”

What the holy shit is that?!? I’m hired to do job “A” and to do so I need things “A-G” and permissions “L-Q.” I am not of the type that wants to sit around if I have things I need to do, and right now I’m the unqualified NUB sitting in berthing waiting for a senior guy to come in and yell at me.

I hear some of you out there scratching your heads and mouthing F-word expletives as you read that sentence. “What was that string of words? I recognize them all, but not in that order. ”

Well NUB stands for Non Useful Body. When you are not qualified (certified, passed tests and oral examinations and on the proper paper/database/list) you are a NUB. Your job is to qualify so that the people who have been around for a while get less of a workload and you “earn your keep. ”

You see the nuclear Navy is kind of like a fraternity. Nobody cares what you did before, how many languages you speak or how many degrees you have on your wall. You start out useless and prove yourself. You take out trash and do all the shit jobs so that the guys who got there before you can go on to do other things. As your job is to qualify, sitting in berthing (the living area on a ship) is a luxury and you should t be doing it if you’re unqualified.

Now that we’re all up to speed, back to the story.

I’m waiting for people to do their jobs, so I can start doing mine and it’s aggravating. I wanna got the ground running and it feels like these people are shocked that I showed up as a new hire. Now I know there are many things that go into this, of which I am aware of about 3, but it’s still aggravating I can’t get going to become useful.

Seems the Navy’s “hurry up and wait” bleeds into the real world. Guess I’ll just go back to staring at my computer.

So one of the things you don’t have to deal with, in the military, is OSHA. We have NAVOSH (close to the same) but it’s got decided differences. One of which is that I have never had to sit for 10 hours worth of training on things I’ll never work with.

Now I can hear your brain working, thinking “the military had their own standards?!? Say it ain’t so. “. Yes we do, but they cover most of the same stuff.

Know what’s even better about Navy safety vs civilian training? You get a benefit of the doubt in he military. “Electrician by rate? You don’t need to sit through electrical safety training.”

Civilian side? My ass sat through 2 hours of death by PowerPoint on electrical safety and fundamentals.

The other wonderful part (and I use wonderful with the same tone as when you tell your parents you spilled a glass of milk) is that I get to take courses and tests on things that I will never do. I’m never going to direct a crane operator, so why the actual hell do I need to learn this? Is this really going to make me a better craftsman?!