On Wanting To Serve

Marium Parium

An Egyptian from Texas, living the CPA life, ex-liberal arts major, still writing bad poetry.

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7 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Good for you for finding peace over this.

    Two anecdotes I’ll relate:

    1) During boot camp at Great Lakes, about 6 weeks in, our CC comes into the compartment and announces to us all that one member of the company is in the hospital with Chicken Pox. He then asks for a show of hands of who did not have Chicken Pox as a child. Half the company raised their hands.

    We lost almost that entire half, which included most of our recruit leadership (they all had to be put on a medical hold for 2 weeks while it cleared up, which means they had to drop out of the training cycle and join up later with all new companies).

    2) As many on this site know, I’m a disabled vet. I made it through basic, and ‘A’ & ‘C’ schools, and deployed to Somalia. I was home on leave after my first deployment, riding my motorcycle to my parents house, when a car crossed the center line and hit me at highway speeds. Two shattered arms and a shredded knee later, I was told that my Naval career, which I really, REALLY liked, and had been working very hard on (including training with SEALs and passing the PT Test so I could put in my paperwork for Dive School), was pretty much done.

    Not my fault, I did nothing wrong, but I was never going to dive school, and probably never going to be fit for full duty again.

    When something that is that much a part of your identity gets taken from you… It took a while to find my way out of that dark place. And I made a similar journey, of deciding that I would be proud of what I did, and not mull over what I lost.Report

  2. Richard Hershberger says:

    I tried to join the Navy out of college. I didn’t get as far as you. The recruiter said he had never seen testing scores that high, but my eyesight was beyond the point where they could swing a waiver.Report

  3. Burt Likko says:

    There are many ways to contribute to the nation than military service, and I commend you for both what you set out to do as a very young person and what you have done since then.

    @Marium-Parium I would also relish any more contributions you wanted to make here. This was an outstanding piece that I found honest, touching, insightful, hopeful, and addictive to read — and I’m proud to see this site publish it.Report

  4. Pinky says:

    The psychology of “pushing through” is overrated. It’s sometimes possible to push through an ailment by sheer force of will, but usually not for long. And if some other ailment pops up in the meantime, it means the body is overtaxed. There’s no shame in that. It’s like driving til the wheels fall off. One wheel, maybe; more than one, it’s not going to happen.Report

  5. atomickristin says:

    Hey – great piece! I really enjoyed it a lot.

    Welcome to the site!Report