Dagoba

I am not grieving much over the loss of the military life anymore. it's been nearly a year since I left it and nearly 4 since I left my one true love, the sea. The anxiety doesn't come from that. It was there for several years and kept at bay with constant busying of sea schedules and inspections and jets screaming off the "pointy end". One cannot truly understand the source of my anxiety unless they understood my job. There were lives hanging in the balance with every decision I made. Whether it was the pilot and rio clinging to the innards of the aircraft I was slinging up into the air with fire spewing out the back, or the guys that were in my charge, and ensuring they were constantly ok. If I had a catapult go down... well... in the theatre of world operations there is always a carrier. That carrier has jets on it and they are the one fine line in the sand between our ground troops advancing or staying safe. Also the jets are the magic wand in any conflict that can erradicate the enemy with one swift gushing of armorment and firepower. ok, back to the catapult, There are only 4 cats on every carrier, and 4 arresting gear wires to retrieve the jets from flight. When one of those cats breaks, there are only three. Each battle platform is mesured at the pentagon on the huge workd map in realtime by percentages. When one cat is down, that little blip moves from 100% to 75% in a microsecond, lessening our warfighting capabilities in an entire region. if two goes down, kiss your ass goodbye because we can barely sustain air supreiority in that particular theatre. Well, since 97' I have been in charge of at least one catapult. By 2006 I was in charge of all 4, and all the arresting wires and the electronics which guide the planes in for recovery. It's a knee jerk life that has a "the only easy day was yesterday" kinda mindset. Most of the guys that are in positions like mine were able to tune out the gravity of the situation or just able to mindlessly carry out their repititious duties, too stupid to grasp the level at which the job hung on the scheme of things. I literally controlled the entire warfighting capability of an entire theatre, let alone the carrier. I once tried explaining this to Barry and he could hardly grasp the idea that they would hang all that responsibility on one guy. I don't think he really believed me, or was just placating a guy who's delusions of grandeur made him think he was that important to his country. I truly wish the latter were the case. It's not! I'm shaking as I type this and having to retype every like 4th or 5th word due to anxiety. It keeps the giant pinned down and I am a giant of a man inside, capable of huge things. I someties feel like Yoda living in a little hut in a swamp, so powerful that he could take down gods and idols without lifting a finger but somehow exiled by an unseen force putting him there.