what a shame

i served for over 5 years in the USMC with a combat tour in iraq and received numurous awards and yet some people think i skated out of the military at the end of my run.. even though i left with an honorable discharge (highest you can get in the miltary). i was suppose to get a medical discharge but my sgt major respected me and gave me what i deserved.

if your wondering, i got out a year early because of post traumatic stress disorder. i wasn't mentally capable of going back to iraq for another tour and the military thought it was better if i was released early. i came to minnesota so that i could be attached to another unit, but instead my unit in chicago decided to let me go early before my contract expired. that's why i was going back in forth to illinois last summer.

it's a shame that i served my country and yet people think that of me. i know that it probably hurts me more than the original person meant it to but to put yourself in the face of death and come home alive means alot and to have someone think that of your career is a slap in the face.

maybe if i told you that i saw and tried to help bloodied and battered children, who were in the middle of an improvised explosive device, who were going to die in seconds because of wounds so severe.. maybe you might understand what PTSD is. to see a peice of shrapnel the size of a football coming out of a little girl;s back who is crying and seeing her father praying to god next to her yelling at us and cursing us to hell.. maybe you might understand what PTSD is. to see peices of a man heads on top of a building after he's been blown to peices..maybe you'd understand. to shoot a man who was coming home with his father after a vacation and didn't know that if he crossed a certain line we were told to shoot..maybe you'd understand. to raid a family's home and take their dad in the middle of the night with no true intelligence and watching the women and children beg for us to stop. maybe you'd understand..to watch a friend kill an entire family with one shot out of a 240 golf machine gun because they failed to stop their car in time..maybe.. just maybe.. to dream dreams of my family dying and covered in blood.. maybe you might understand what i went through. don't think my career meant nothing and that i tried to get out of the military. you have no idea..