We work hard all our lives to achieve some form of greatness, but even after you reach the top you still wonder is there something higher?
Please don’t take the title of this blog in the wrong way and in no way am I condoning this.
We all get sick or sometimes, we feel bad or ill. It’s very simple to just take some medicine or just sleep it off in hopes that the outcome will give us a better feeling. But we do that because we know the feeling we are going to achieve after. In my mind I’ve always thought of others that have just gave up in life and why did they ended it. Instead of seeking Happiness they sought suicide. How are they going to know what that good or happiness feels like once you are gone.
I don’t belive in the after life. I’ve seen movies and how Hollywood sometimes shows how peaceful it is to come back and help others. How will you ever know if you come back? To me you must have real courage to do something like that and take a chance with life in hope to take a pain away or end some type of suffering.
Having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I think about this all the time. While deployed to Iraq back in 2004 I had to change the channel in my brain to survival mode. In those 9 months that is all I knew and lived, Survival Mode. I’ve never been on that channel, so I had not choice but to accept it. I had no feelings, I never thought about home and definitely didn’t think about love. My whole goal was to stay alive and keep everyone around me safe. I was able to see and experienced things that I only saw in the movies. At this time, I don’t want to get into I did while I was there, but if I didn’t do the things I did…
“I wouldn’t be alive today.”
Every night in Iraq I didn’t allow myself to go to sleep unless I knew I made a change in my day or a accomplished a goal or a mission. It’s been over 14 years since I was in Iraq and guess what my mind is still on that stuck channel, Survival Mode. I never knew how to switch it back. There’s times where instead of turning my channel back to Ruben, I just want to go back to Iraq and be a Sergeant of Marines in Iraq. To me that is my Happiness. Honestly, I can say that was the happiest in Iraq and I finally knew what it fell like. I don’t want to change that channel, but life back in the States can’t change with me.
I still carry myself proud and use all that I’ve learn in the military and in combat in my everyday life. But I find it difficult to use because my environment is not military or combat. People always make fun of me because they see my military ethic in me, but they also know that I am serious. But at the same time I’m not sure if they fear me or think I will just go crazy one day.
I want to feel normal in that channel, put me back in that element where that channel is useful.
All I want to do is be happy, I work very hard in my career, and as a new husband. No matter how hard I work or how loving of a husband I am, I don’t feel happy. My PTSD and depression kicks in and it just starts eating away at me. I can’t sleep because I know that I didn’t accomplish a fight. I try to fight it because I’m always challenging myself to do better, but better is not always good. No one sees what was done so you end up taking on burden. Sometimes I have to be a Dick to others so I can be happy, because they followed my orders of things to accomplish, but then the people around me don’t feel happy.
This is why I always wonder how others with worse problems then me just stop their clock. Do you know that you will be happy at the other end? Who told you Is there proof that there’s Happiness on the other side of suicide? Is this is the only way? My mind is so powerful but it’s weak at the same time. Is that weakness stopping me, or is my strength preventing me? The other day some one from my past contacted me, and I thought to myself, “I don’t want to think about my past because I don’t want to be sad.” I want to be happy and think of the now, and I want to be excited and think of the future. I don’t look back, I look forward. Each day that I seek happiness I think combat because that is my mission.
Is that what others sought when they left this world?
Or where they just cowards and wanted a easy way out? I’m I a coward because I wasn’t as strong as them? When I was in the military, I was given awards and medals for initiative, courage, accomplishments. I was able to get promoted because I earned the next pay grade because I was a Leader. I’ve came up with certain things to awards myself now that I am out of the military. It seems to keep me sane but since I am the one rewarding myself I feel somewhat strange. I am now the leader of my mind.
It’s true that money doesn’t buy happiness because in the end you might have shiny and expensive things, but you have no one to experience that with if you don’t have someone that doesn’t understand your weak mind. In stead of searching for my happiness I am too busy making others happy. I spoil my wife with gifts, experiences, my company, and I feel drained in the end because I don’t feel happy. My thoughts are, if I see her smile or excitement in her she will be happy, then that feeling will transfer to me.
I have failed many times.
At work, I always go above and beyond than others, so I can get that promotion, but since I’ve accustomed them to my habits, I feel I don’t get that acknowledgment. It’s sad because at this point a simple, “Great Job,” is worth more than anything money. I want to be happy. So now I’m fighting a battle at work to be happy again. I can’t find happiness at work or at home, but I need to find it and accomplish it.
If I walk away from life now, how will I know if I will be happy on the other end? At the present time I don’t want to find out. I want to make a difference but I’m not sure if I am. Why is there so many bad people in the world. This is why I went to Iraq to fight a battle to get rid of those bad people. But in the end those weren’t the bad people, the bad people are amongst me. I quit social media to live a less stressful life and then what happens? My past comes to haunt me and my wife. WTF? This is why it’s called the past. I don’t want to deal with it.
No matter what I try to do, life gives me some f’ed up curve balls. My life is not perfect. I’ve worked so hard to get to the level where I am? Houses, Cars, Money, Jewelery, etc… No one gave me this, I worked my ass off to have everything, but why it is that bad people want to come and take that away from me. Don’t take my kindness for weakness, the scars on my body will prove that I earned all this. But in the end, is me working for all this worth it? I have this awards to make me happy, but the people around me are hindering me.
I also am not happy because, there are others that work less than me and have more?
WTF, am I doing wrong? At the end of the day, all I want is for someone to tell me that I am good. I am tired of working and not getting rewarded for my hard work. Funny story, I had 20 dollars in my wallet and I went to buy some lotto tickets. The first thing that came to mind was if, I win, I want to pay for all my nieces and nephews college. I automatically thought if I win, my wife would love me more because I would be able to focus on her more.
Wow, to me those thoughts are just so dumb. But that’s what came to mind. I hate my past, this is why I don’t look back because it brings sadness and depression. Why do you want to ruin me? People don’t have nothing else better to do then to make other peoples lives miserable like theres. Sorry you live such a fucked up life that you are trying to give your disease to the world. Why don’t you just look at me and say,
“I want to be as successful as him,”
not “I want to make his life miserable because I am miserable.”
Then I recommend, you should find out what suicide is and let me be happy.
Mean while I have to defend myself with the present, so It doesn’t affect my future. In the end, we’re all going to leave here by choice or fate. I need to keep my channel in my mind on because I am a fighter in a different type of war now. A war in my mind called PTSD and Depression and I want to claim victory by Conquering Happiness. It might be a battle that will last the rest of my living life, but at least when I’m gone, I will know if happiness was there waiting for me the whole time.
Once again, I’m not contemplating anything bad to me or anyone. But these are the thoughts I battle in my mind everyday. You might be used to seeing a cleaned up, well put together man on the outside with successful habits, but my mind is very dark and I get tired of searching for happiness because the day I stop searching then you will understand the title of this blog.
If you are suffering from PTSD and Depression like I am, don’t be afraid to talk to a professional that can assist you. I speak with a Doctor every couple of months and it helps, but I also use EsquireLife to assist me as you see in this deep blog.
Check out some of my past videos, i’ve created to help me with my PTSD.