The Strengths and Weaknesses of a Former Soldier

What is it that makes you, you? While there is not a single right answer to this, I believe more than anything else, it is the people, places, and experiences that one encounters and how that individual deals and gains from each. Music, in its many forms, has been used for centuries as a way for people to express themselves and their feelings. In my life, I can recall four experiences that have affected me profoundly: deploying for the first time, going through a divorce, retiring from the army, and meeting Ronald “Tank” Headley. These events and people in my life offer that I am strong-willed, resilient, and self-motivated while at the same time suggests that I am not strong enough to deal with everything that I have experienced; in essence, a walking contradiction.

One of the most important experiences in my life that defines how strong-willed and self-motivated I am was spending my first deployment fighting in Ramadi, Iraq. I was nineteen, fresh out of high school, and a newly trained soldier. My unit came down on orders to Ramadi, Iraq only six weeks after I had arrived. I learned that the soldiers we were replacing were taking enemy contact twenty-five to thirty times a day, and the thought of all the violence terrified me. As we moved in and occupied the city we would be calling “home” for the next twelve months, I realized I was not the only one feeling this way, though none of us talked about it. John Michael Montgomery’s “Letters from Home” conveys the atmosphere best with the lyrics “like we ain’t scared and our boots ain’t muddy.” After the first several months of being in this strange, new land, I began to really believe in what we were doing for the Iraqi population. I started to enjoy being there, serving with the ...

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...e, regret, sadness, and rage, I was diagnosed and treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tank, with a simple statement and question, was able to show me how I was not “fine.” Confronting these demons has completely changed my life, and I began making other soldiers more aware of this condition.

What makes me, me are the people I have met, the places I have seen, and the out of the ordinary experiences I have had in my life. These experiences, people, and places have shaped me into a resilient, self-motivated, and strong-willed person while also teaching me that I am not able to handle every situation without help from others. Learning this lesson has been an extremely difficult journey for myself, although not every moment of it was enjoyable. I would not have been able to completely understand myself and my personality without the sound and lyrics of music.