lexwraith

My wife was/is both an RN and a DNP in NYC during the entirety of the pandemic. I'm an Iraq infantry veteran. Our experiences are remarkably similar and there are major trends as to why there is unsustainable turnover.

1. Everyone pays lip service. People stand at airports and say thank you for your service the same way they open their windows at 7PM and start clapping and cheering during shift turnover. Sometimes they'll say they know people who are veterans or 'frontline healthcare workers' as a sign of solidarity

2. Nobody actually wants to hear what you went through. Hearing people die or knowing people are about to die in sometimes painful, unfortunate ways is too raw for people to try to seek out and understand, despite the fact that for a significant portion of the population that's how we're going to go out, in a hospital with all sorts of drugs pumped into our system

3. There's a constant barrage of emotional/mental harm. Believe it or not, you don't magically 'harden up' immediately. Absorbing/witnessing drastic outcomes gets easier, but the burden doesn't get lighter. This isn't to mention physical harm. People do all sorts of things out of desperation and frustration.

4. The systems that manage you are byzantine if not kafkaesque. You're never sure how the decisions are made, yet you're the one that will be paying the most for it. You know deep down that you're just a number on a spreadsheet, and the only reason that keeps you going is internal motivation to do what you think is right, so you push on

5. The people who can help rarely think about you. Very few politicians will mention your name or your union that is doing its best to get some kind of safe nurse:patient ratios or even get the hospital to pay for your scrubs that they mandate. Very few billionaires have mentioned healthcare workers or veterans at all. As a whole, until someone has an emergency that threatens their physical or financial status, healthcare and security is treated as a black box with unreal expectations and extra sensitivity to deviations from said expectations, despite a complete lack of introspection and information on how those expectations came to be

I don't know what the solution is. In healthcare, every system is so deeply connected to the rest that destroying one or even refactoring takes down everything else, and we need it to stay online. The same applies to the continuation of geopolitics by other means. You can give every IC the best EMR system, the best rifle and radio, the best monitor/laptop/keyboard, but it's all for nothing if the system as a whole is a dumpster fire. Her frustration is palpable every time she finishes a rough shift (probably 2 out of 3), and the best I can do is lend my ear and pour a glass of wine.

That being said, I am grateful that she is continuing on the path. Our shared experiences have brought us closer than ever.

I don't protest because I don't have time, nor would I think it's effective. People are just too busy for a war that is completely separated from them to care about it. I did care, at one point, but I too have been grinded down by both my experiences overseas and the people I served with.

I enlisted in the USMC in 2005. 0311. Felt like I had been ready since I was 11 or 12.

I went to Boot Camp, and then SOI. First taste of reality is bitter. My entire generation of Marines were called the 'X-Box' generation for our complacency and lack of earnest effort. Our ranks had swelled up to ~215K in the Marine Corps, and with it, a lower of the bar to join. That's just the way it was. Kids were already getting kicked out - hardship, drugs, etc. Still didn't mind - it felt like everyone was on the same page. We were crusaders to be, and our religion was America and deliverance was provided in the form of 5.56mm. Felt good, the narrative. Felt right.

And then I joined the fleet, and that's when I realized I was a fucking idiot. This whole time, I had believed in something grand, some kind of romanticized view of war and life and how boys - no, men like me - could make a huge impact and different in the world against a nefarious enemy that struck out at all that was good. And you know how many people shared that view? Maybe 5, 10%. We were intelligent, idealistic, and had some 'reason' to be there. That is not the case for the vast, vast majority of people who enlist. It usually takes some life experience for you to join up, hit the fleet, and not be bewildered by it, and that was something virtually all of us, with the precious few best of us, lacked.

When we got in country, the shock was amplified. The aimlessness/worthlessness of my generation was reflected in both wars. I was in Iraq twice, and both times, it seemed like our only job was to just maintain the security of Ramadi, and then Al Asad. That was it. Occasionally hunt bad guys, get blown up all the time, be bullet/bomb shields by proxy for a populace that wasn't 100% sure what it wanted.

What exactly was the mission to stop foreign fighters from flooding into the country? Beats me. What exactly were we going to do to uproot and prop up a culture that is has no real concent of loving thy neighbor and working together to achieve some state of sovereignty? Beats me. How do we turn this society into a capital G Great society? How were riflemen supposed to achieve that? Would it even meet the objectives of the mission? Nah we thought, we should just keep handing out generators, heavy equipment, and speedballs (not the drug) to the populace. We were just enlisted men on the bottom, evoking smiles when we did good and hate when we accidentally kill some guy's brother because he ignored the red flag not to go down this road towards our base.

Nothing changed, day in, day out.

I knew quite a few devil dogs who were in OEF, Kandahar and Helmund, before + after Marjah offensive. The feeling was the same. What exactly, are we doing here? For an organization that prides itself on achieving objectives, even at great individual cost, we sure did a shit job at explaining what exactly our goals were to the operators.

All this to say, what CAN I say that hasn't already been said? I don't need to 'protest' anything, because I don't hear a lot of people supporting our operations over there except for chicken hawks. I'm glad McCain's son, and John Kelly's children served with me. At least they put what is most dear to them on the line for what they believe. Can't say the same for most of modern day 'conservatives'. They have nothing on the line when they send people over, and that's the best I can protest, but what's the point? Nobody else seems to care either way - it seemed like the wiser of us had realized the whole thing was bullshit from the beginning, and now just don't care and have accepted it to be the way things are, sixteen years later. To top it off, we just have too much shit going on at home. Politics is really showing how bad democracy can get when the people themselves, the vessels of power, are fucking idiots and care more about feeling good than making good decisions for the future. I've got a housing crisis here, insurance crisis there, financial security crisis everywhere, so where can I fit in some good old protesting time? If I did, who would hear me? My old friends wouldn't want to hear it either. We just want some kind of peace of mind and happiness in our life, not dwell on the pointlessness of it all.

We are the aimless generation, just trying to survive the journey through the minefield our forefathers had left us, day after day.