Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Leaving the military is gut-wrenching.
Whenever I travel, I make a point of trying to look like I’m not in the military. I won’t shave every day, I avoid wearing military-affiliated clothing, and avoid the ever-present tactical backpack that military folk inevitably carry with them. I’m proud of my service, I just like to appear as if I’m just Mark- and not someone on active duty.
A few years ago I was in Colorado for ski season. I had a multi-day growth of beard, my hair was unkempt, and I was wearing nothing resembling “military.” But when I went to the counter to buy my lift ticket, the cashier asked me if I wanted a military discount.
How did she know? I was deliberately trying to look un-military. So I asked her how she had me pegged as military so quickly. She just shrugged her shoulders and said: “I could tell.”
I don’t know if I picked up some weird pheromone in Iraq or something, but this was just case in point of something where I couldn’t help but exude being an army guy.
I’d always joke that joining the military isn’t a career decision, it’s a lifestyle choice. Being a soldier was not just what I did, it was my identity. All my friends were also in the military. Exercise was not just something that I did to feel good, it was necessary for my job. I read military history and biographies from famous military leaders. For a long time, I was very much of the attitude that if it wasn’t something that improved me as a soldier, it wasn’t worth doing.
Deciding to leave the military, then, became so much more than just a career change. It’s a change of who I was, my identity. Or, at least I thought it was.
Why is it so hard?
It’s all we’ve ever known.
For the majority of service members, we entered the military fresh from high school or college. Some people go and work regular jobs for a few years before deciding to join, but few enter service with any type of real career already in place.
Being in the military is known while looking out into the civilian world is a huge unknown.
Everything is taken care of.
Free health care. Good pay. Solid retirement options.
Everything in the military is cared for. You could theoretically live and die your entire life on a military base. There’s shopping, groceries, movie theatres, and bowling alleys. During tax season, free tax services are offered. Marital counseling is available. Need legal advice to deal with your landlord? Don’t worry- it’s taken care of.
Looking out into the civilian world where all these services now come at a price, can be scary. And there are now options, where before your only option was what the military provided.
During the transition process out of the military, figuring out things like healthcare, housing, and not least of all employment can become huge stressors. For those wanting who are unsure, it can often be easier to just take the path of least resistance and stay in the service.
How the hell do I civilian?
There’s a scene in Stepbrothers where Will Ferrell is seeking help to transition from an immature 40-year-old man who lives at home to a functioning adult. In an earnest effort to learn how to act like an adult, he asks his therapist,
“Do I carry my high-school diploma around? What do you do with your hair? What happens if there’s inclement weather? What do you wear? Can you wash clothes in the dishwasher?”
And that’s what leaving the military can feel like sometimes. Like you are entering this unknown world.
With new rules.
I hardly ever had to think about what to wear in the army — I wore the same thing every day. I never had to do a resume. We had a prescribed format that HR filled out automatically for you. Inclement weather? Grab a coat.
But the civilian world? Options? I can choose my own haircut? How do I do that?
Military life can be surprisingly easy.
Be real, you know you probably worked a lot less than people thought you did.
Now, it can all be dependent on what type of unit you are in or who your boss is, but military work is often feast or famine. When you’re on deployment and have to go on patrols, prep reports, pull guard shifts and do everything else- yea, you’re working for a lot. But a lot of days, well, there just wasn’t much to do.
There are no customers to take care of, no client reports that need doing, and no products that need to be developed. As a soldier, you aren’t worried about keeping the lights on, the Department of Defense and US Treasury are taking care of that one. So when you aren’t training for deployment or deployed, the work pace can get pretty relaxed.
Just about every month I was on active duty we would have a 4-day weekend. Whether it be for a federal holiday, or just because the unit commander thought, dammit, they deserve it. That’s a pretty nice way to live. Veterans can look at the civilian world where they know that *gulp* they aren’t going to get the same type of work pace, and it can be scary.
And, damn, it can be fun.
Ever shot a machine gun? Blown something up with C-4? Let me tell you — it’s fun.
One night, we were doing a group jump. Meaning that approximately 500 of us were all about to jump out of an airplane into the darkness, parachute down, and then practice securing an airfield — a key strategic maneuver. That night I was a jumpmaster, meaning that on my plane I was responsible for the 50 paratroopers that would be jumping out of my side.
As part of my safety procedures, I stood in the open doorway and looked for the road intersection that was my signal that we were 1 minute out from the drop zone. With the door open, the cool night air rushed in and not 25 feet from me, the powerful jet engines of the enormous C-17 aircraft roared. Behind us, I could see the 3 other C-17s lined up, filled with paratroopers set to jump after us.
After I saw what I needed to see, I turned back into the plane to see a row of paratroopers standing up. The lights inside the plane were red to help save our night vision, and so an eery glow was cast on their faces. Weighted down with parachutes and gear, no one was comfortable. But every set of eyes was on me, waiting for the command to jump.
Holy shit. You ain’t gonna get something like that working a regular job, I’ll tell you that.
Fear of not being accepted.
Veterans have a dark sense of humor. We are also thick-skinned and take as much as we give in the shit-talking department. Military culture is also generally not very PC. People just don’t get upset about things in the same way that it looks like everyone else does in the civilian world.
This is a serious concern. In every transition class that I attended or in any conversation that I’ve had with fellow Veterans on transition, this comes up. We are just worried that we aren’t woke enough for the real world. Veterans are worried they are going to go to a job with a bunch of snowflakes who all got participation trophies and then be like a bull ina china shop while trying to just ask about someone’s weekend with all the expletives and ill-received humor that they will likely use. It just seems like it will end poorly for everyone.
Then there’s the PTSD thing.
News flash: just because I was in the military does not mean that I have PTSD. Yes, I deployed to the Middle East a few times. And honestly? Nothing happened. I was never shot at and the few explosions I saw were caused by us. And most people are like me.
For sure there are some Veterans who experienced some traumatic events and are still on their journey of processing that. But even then, they can fully function in society. Odds are greater you have someone in your office who experienced a terrible car crash or sexual violence than dealing with a Veteran with debilitating PTSD.
But that stigma is out there and we are all afraid that someone will label it on us.
Guilt.
The military experience is well known for the intense bonds of camaraderie that develop. For sure, my best friends are the people I served with.
To truly feel close to someone you have to go through some shit with them. You have to suffer and see what the other person is like when they are exposed and vulnerable.
It can be hard to leave it all behind.
You have your friends who are still in and can’t help but feel a little like you are abandoning them. Then there’s just the “system.” Funny enough, the military does an excellent job of teaching you that no single person should ever be keeping the whole thing together. But when you start thinking about leaving you can’t just help but feel like the wheels are going to come off and the whole thing is going to hell in a handbasket because you are getting out.
It doesn’t even make sense. You know you as an individual don’t matter that much.
But we were taught to never quit. To see the job done.
There’s a creed that’s oft-repeated in the Army, and one of the lines states:
“Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude to fight onto the objective, though I be the lone survivor.”
You don’t get used to saying stuff like that and then feel comfortable with quitting the very system that ingrained that in you.
At some point, we all have to leave. Whether it be after 30 years or your first enlistment, eventually we all have to leave.
As I stared down my own exit from the military, I kept a thought with me:
Do whatever the other 99% does.
Less than 1% of citizens in the US served in the military, meaning that 99% did not. So as I looked out onto the big scary civilian world, I thought, “Look, all these other people are able to figure this out. It can’t be that hard.”
A Veteran friend asked me, “But what will you do for health care?” to which I replied, “whatever the other 99% does.”
How will I save for retirement? The other 99% find a way (or, at least mostly).
And it all stopped being so scary.
So the civilian world beckons me. But I want to continue to stay a part of the Veteran community and contribute back to those that taught me so much.
The transition from being a service member to being a civilian can be extremely challenging, but helping bring our warriors back into the fold should be something we all want.
As hard as the whole process was, I knew that it was the right thing for me to do. After multiple deployments and a series of failed relationships, I was tired. I needed to step out and do something and knew that the only way I could achieve the other things I wanted to do in life would be for me to hang up the boots and leave.
What I learned throughout this whole journey was that my identity was never “soldier.” To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is, but I know that the attributes that drove me to military service are not exclusive to wearing the uniform every day.
The journey continues to be tough. I know that the last time I drive through the gate on my way out of base will be tough, knowing that I am officially gone. But I also know that it’s the right thing for me to do.
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Military to MBA (Part 1/7): Is It for You?
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Spot on. I’m happy you’re writing. This is great stuff.