The Return! · 4:50pm Jul 26th, 2015
Yes, to all who are not yet aware, I am back home early, and I have much to discuss. (This is your one and only wall of text warning, I guess.)
Recalling the first line of the USAF song, I realized several days ago that I was Icarus with my entire life situation for the past year and a half, outside of my ever-nascent writing and editing world, which is still going strong and will be going stronger than ever in the months and years to come.
Pesky poetic pretentiousness aside, I am currently re-adjusting to the civilian sector. A lot has gone down this past July, a lot. Many have asked me the details of what went down, so I shall go over it anon.
When I got off the plane in San Antonio on June 29th, I was more pumped than ever, as my previous blog posts had indicated. I was curious, perky, anxious to get started, enthusiastic, ambitious, all that good stuff, all the way onto Joint Base San Antonio/Lackland as the sun began to fall.
Oh man, the Military Training Instructors were really looking forward to finally meeting us. We were up almost all night that first day, I think we were running on about three hours of sleep at the most. But during that first week, I went gradually from pumped and determined, to worried and a bit disgruntled, to eventually full on depressed and stressed/frustrated to the point that all I wanted was a ticket out of there in one piece. I would later discover from a female sailor and fellow patient at the San Antonio Military Medical Center that folks like me are "oops-ers" in the Armed Forces. I'll get to that bit of the month later on in the blog.
As that first week (Zero Week of Basic Training) drew to a close, I was now 110% certain it was time for me to leave. I was messing up with the most basic of duties, was struggling with focus and learning new drill movements and other procedures, and I was unable to even maintain some of my standards of personal hygiene on account of the environment being so damn alien and incompatible to my age-old procedures for daily life. To make matters worse, one evening got so bad for me that I had a nervous breakdown and hollered at our flight's male MTI to send me home after getting into a dead-end argument about my being there in training in the first place. I told him what still holds true to this day: I had joined the military for the benefits during a seemingly dead end point in my life, and had convinced myself that I was a person I wasn't, prepared for a career and a way of life that I wasn't even compatible with from the very beginning. I had tech school all thought out, but basic training I had merely convinced myself I would "pass without any chance of fail, come on, you have the grit, you wuss!"
Tell yourself something enough, and you could convince yourself that it is reality, for good or ill.
So, in the aftermath of that verbal altercation, another MTI from our brother flight of trainees was called in and we discussed my situation. He calmed me down significantly enough that the next few days of training passed by relatively "smoothly" and "normally," but the issues were still very much there. He told me that my two ultimate options were either to continue with training, or face a whole world of legal hell. After that I was bottling all that unresolved stress up, and I was predicting nothing but a downward spiral the longer I was in the training environment.
As chance would have it, during Zero Week, I filled out a scantron test that our flights all did that asked us general personality and behavior-related questions. Many of us were flagged based on our responses to those generalized questions, and called down to the base's Behavioural Analysis Service for clarification on our answers for presumably bureaucratic business, none of us were in trouble. That said, it gave me the opportunity I so urgently needed to talk to the mental health workers posted there, and stop that downward spiral I was predicting. The Airman I met with I explained my entire situation to, and his recommendation to the Captain there, the actual psychologist or psychiatrist, was Entry Level Separation, ASAP.
I met with the Captain shortly after, this was all done on a Thursday of the First Week of training, still early-mid June, and he agreed. He told me either way I was going home, lifting a huge burden off of my shoulders, and told me that ELS was going to be their course of action for my case.
Per standard procedure, I was taken by ambulance to the San Antonio Military Medical Center on the other side of town, had some med work done, and then voluntarily admitted to their psychiatric and behavioural unit Six Tango (6T). I was a bit uneasy about it, but it was either that or going right back to Lackland presumably for Medical Holding in a pseudo-training environment (still in dormitories, military bearing and standards etc.) My stay there was probably one of the best decisions I had made this year. I learned a lot about stress and such in my brief four day stay, and while I was there we did classes, played Xbox and watched shit tons of movies, and I just generally relaxed. Let go of a lot of that toxic crap I was sealing up back at JBSA. I signed my ELS document, got to know a lot of my fellow patients, heard some interesting stories, and received my diagnosis. There were about twelve of us in there, me and a few other Airmen, two girls from the Army I think it was, two sailors - both older adults with kids - and the rest were Army and in there for reasons that weren't leading to separation from the Armed Forces. It was the female sailor who told me that I and the others were pretty much in the same situation. And holy crap, there were a hell of a lot more people in my situation than I thought. All I heard about during the more serious talks was large-scale military downsizing and the Pentagon pushing the mantra of "do more with less, those are your orders" (I could have ended up losing my own job in the USAF in less than two years), issues with hiding statistics and covering up problems amongst our ranks... all heavy and very shady stuff I'm not going to get into in this blog post.
Anyways, they pinned me down to Adjustment Disorder with "mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct." Basically, in the training/military environment, I crack like an egg, and when removed from the training environment, I return back to normal quite quickly, as in the symptoms vanish entirely.
While at SAMMC I got back in touch with family, who I am now currently living with while I get back on my feet, and I learned quite a few things about stress management, goal setting, time management and motivation, that sort of thing. Regardless of me not making it through all of training, I still learned much over the past month, and can march onwards on as a wiser person than I was in June.
Not much to tell about Medical Holding. They took us back out from SAMMC, me and another Airman and fellow inpatient at Six Tango, back to Lackland where we stayed with a support wing for about a week while we waited to sign our Letters of Notice so we could go home. I got to go home first, which was last Friday. Lucky bastard, I was. 
My apologies if any of this came off as a bit jumbled, I'm writing this as I'm still unpacking, getting used to everything again, the whole damn enchilada, real chaotic still, but in a good way. If there's some bit of it anyone wants clarified, PM me and I'll be happy to fill you in.
To sum it all up, I'm back, I'm in one piece, and getting into the groove of things once again as a civilian who had a chance to learn quite a bit more about himself and the world in general. I got further than a lot of my immediate family ever did with the Armed Forces. I tried it, discovered it just wasn't meant to be for me, and now I'm moving on from it all the wiser, and with my respect for our men and women in uniform exponentially higher.
In about a few days time, I should be back up to business as usual, everyone. Thanks for your understanding, and your support, much 
Welcome back!
3271021
3271022
Thanks
3271075 your welcome
Okay, U.S Military code words for things fly over my head like Derpy at full speed
It's fantastic to have you back though. I was extremely lonely without my story buddy. It's too bad Military life didn't work out, I was rooting for you the whole time, and I was kinda, sort of prepared to endure the many months without contact with you. But ya know, I get attached to my friendships, Twilight would be proud!
Still, welcome back, mate. Missed you, and hope you get readjusted swiftly and smoothly.
Welcome back.
3271088 Yeah, Twi really would be
3271359 Thanks. Let me know if you need any editing done soon.
3271373 I don't know if you saw my blog post, but I have the newest chapter done, but it's delayed on its release because one of my editors is doing something right now. You can edit it if you want, but that's if you're feeling up to it.
3271390 Yeah, I'll work on it.
3271441 Cool. Let me know whenever you finish.
Hello again. It's great to see you!
3271656 Likewise
3271802 d3819ii77zvwic.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/tumblr_mnj888Jab71s6z99jo1_500.gif
Hi... I had a somewhat similar situation 6 months ago when u tried USAF... It was a mile marker for me, but I was changed for a better mental stage because of it.
If ya want to chat or something Pm me.....
(I don't know what I was trying here. Wrote and erased abit of things... Just not real well with wording..)