The Broken Soldier

You know, Army personnel lacking recognition of who I am is really pissing me off.  By that I mean a failure to recognize that I’m not some dumb kid, green and ripe to be taken advantage of, manipulated, lied to, etc.  I’m a 33 year old man with multiple college degrees.  In fact, with 350 semester hours total grad and undergrad credit, there aren’t a lot of doctorate holders with as much education as I have.  I also have quite a lot of experience in the working world (including active duty military), and, in spite of deficits brought on by chronic pain, insomnia, and depression - each feeding the other - a great memory (close if not actually photographic) and intelligence slightly higher than that of a fucking carrot (Z score=5, to be precise).  I’ve kept my mouth shut and stilled typing fingers mostly because it isn’t worth getting into.  I don’t need to prove myself to anyone.  But folk in the Army seem to labor under the delusion that because I’m junior enlisted (as I was not given an opportunity to attend OCS) they are free flout the rules, to lie to me, to gain my assent to something by one set of conditions, changing those conditions after my assent is gained.

I’m a tolerant man.  I have a very long fuse.  It takes a lot to get me up to ‘get get get down’ as Flavor Flav, my cognitive father, is fond of saying.  But once I’m up….

The folks at the State, the unit, and at Knox got me up yesterday.  Each painted Active Duty Medical Extension as one thing in order to gain my assent, and now that it’s time to start ADME it isn’t what they said it would be.  Whether they deliberately misled me, failed to communicate what to expect to me, or were simply mistaken, my assent was gained under false pretenses.  But this happens quite a lot from my experience.  And when it happens and I’m bold enough to bring it up, I’m the asshole.  Whatever.  I trust this organization less and less each time I deal with them.  I’m truly looking forward to being a civilian again.

I’m set up for treatment at Knox through the Warrior Transition Unit program.  I’m terrified.  It’s possible these people are going to cut on me.  It’s definite that they’ll be making decisions about my retention, my initial disability rating, etc.  How can I trust them to do any of those correctly when I can’t trust them to be straight with me?  Answer: I can’t.