Just a blurb. Lots of things crossing my mind, more questions than answers. I thinned out some of my groups so I could pay more attention to the ones I like to read or share with. But that's only a baby step in the grand scheme. There's so much teetering on the brink of change in my life, I think I'm spending too much time trying to make sure I have every last detail covered and not enough time saying "fuck it" and plowing forward. Buying a house, legal issues, still fighting with the navy over my medical severance, anniversaries of suicides, and a whole lot of "grass is greener" things.
I used to be John Wayne. In the navy, I was the reactor operator. I sat in the chair in the middle. The officers did what I told them the right thing to do was. It was my show. As an instructor, I passed on to the next generation of operators every matra I lived by at that panel; Limits are goals, Agressive - not reckless, Learn from mistakes, don't hang yourself on them. I could make that reactor plant sing in ways that would make most people nervous if they knew enough to understand what all those meters and lights actually meant.
On the commercial side, I'm just an instrument tech. I'm not even John Wayne's sidekick. I'm a stable boy. Every time I walk into the control room to calibrate an indicator or tweak a radiation monitor, I just look at the operators with envy. I tell myself things to convince myself life is better this way. I have more time off than they do, who cares if they make twice as much money? The plant's in automatic, I calibrated the computer, so I'm actually in control. They're just trained monkeys that push buttons in response to flashing lights. But I don't believe it. I can't. I know what it's like to sit in that chair. But I also know that that chair is not the same as it was in a submarine. It takes a commercial plant three days to come to full power from initial criticality. I've done it in three minutes. I've done it in three seconds. I've been off the coast of somewhere we weren't supposed to be, watching things we weren't supposed to see. I was the one sitting in the chair when the speaker cracked open shouting "torpedo in the water, all ahead flank cavitate." Directing my throttleman, I took that reactor plant to the edge of thermal limits she'd never seen before. I saw power levels change by a factor of 1,000,000 times per minute. And I stopped the increase less than a red cunt hair away from our absolute limit. We went balls to the wall until we were safe. And I was John Wayne.
I miss being on the boat, I know it sucked. I kept a binder of everything that sucked so that I could remind myself at times like this. But I still miss it. I miss the guts and glory. I miss shouting things like "Steel boats, Iron men!" in the faces of new guys that were afraid they couldn't hack it. And I miss the "fun" things like crawling around in frozen lard for a silly tradition. Every day I grow more pissed at the navy for taking that away from me. Every day I wish more to be back in the saddle. And every day, I try to tell myself that life is better on this side, I just need to find my land legs.
I try to talk to my wife. She doesn't understand. She never will. I tell a story about how we were bobbing around on the surface in the north atlantic for thirteen hours, running off the emergency diesel while I directed a team to troubleshoot and repair an essential part of reactor protection, then turned around and slammed home the most technically perfect reactor startup of my life. She thinks the story is a bitch about a bad day and responds with something like one time in retail, an associate stacked red towels on the green towel shelf and she had to resort all of them. What the fuck, really?
The guys at work aren't much better. Sure, they're mostly ex navy nukes, but it was a different navy in the 90's than it is now. The cold war was over. The new wars hadn't yet begun. deployments were pleasure cruises. I talk about being armed with a .45 while operating the reactor and they think I'm making it up. They talk about Crete and Siciliy and Naples and the LBFMs (Little Brown Fucking Machines) scattered across the pacific, and I talk about 64 days following a submarine being sold from one enemy to another. Their response is utter disbelief. They think that sort of stuff only exists in the movies.
That sort of stuff was my life. Now I'm a washed up, thirty-something vet, living at home with mom and dad, trying not to use PTSD and MDD as a crutch and watching a corrupt government on both sides of the aisle erode away at the very liberties I risked my life to protect and wondering if I'll ever feel normal again. Wondering if I'll ever feel anything ever again.
This ended up much longer than I imagined it would. So much for just a blurb.
I used to be John Wayne. In the navy, I was the reactor operator. I sat in the chair in the middle. The officers did what I told them the right thing to do was. It was my show. As an instructor, I passed on to the next generation of operators every matra I lived by at that panel; Limits are goals, Agressive - not reckless, Learn from mistakes, don't hang yourself on them. I could make that reactor plant sing in ways that would make most people nervous if they knew enough to understand what all those meters and lights actually meant.
On the commercial side, I'm just an instrument tech. I'm not even John Wayne's sidekick. I'm a stable boy. Every time I walk into the control room to calibrate an indicator or tweak a radiation monitor, I just look at the operators with envy. I tell myself things to convince myself life is better this way. I have more time off than they do, who cares if they make twice as much money? The plant's in automatic, I calibrated the computer, so I'm actually in control. They're just trained monkeys that push buttons in response to flashing lights. But I don't believe it. I can't. I know what it's like to sit in that chair. But I also know that that chair is not the same as it was in a submarine. It takes a commercial plant three days to come to full power from initial criticality. I've done it in three minutes. I've done it in three seconds. I've been off the coast of somewhere we weren't supposed to be, watching things we weren't supposed to see. I was the one sitting in the chair when the speaker cracked open shouting "torpedo in the water, all ahead flank cavitate." Directing my throttleman, I took that reactor plant to the edge of thermal limits she'd never seen before. I saw power levels change by a factor of 1,000,000 times per minute. And I stopped the increase less than a red cunt hair away from our absolute limit. We went balls to the wall until we were safe. And I was John Wayne.
I miss being on the boat, I know it sucked. I kept a binder of everything that sucked so that I could remind myself at times like this. But I still miss it. I miss the guts and glory. I miss shouting things like "Steel boats, Iron men!" in the faces of new guys that were afraid they couldn't hack it. And I miss the "fun" things like crawling around in frozen lard for a silly tradition. Every day I grow more pissed at the navy for taking that away from me. Every day I wish more to be back in the saddle. And every day, I try to tell myself that life is better on this side, I just need to find my land legs.
I try to talk to my wife. She doesn't understand. She never will. I tell a story about how we were bobbing around on the surface in the north atlantic for thirteen hours, running off the emergency diesel while I directed a team to troubleshoot and repair an essential part of reactor protection, then turned around and slammed home the most technically perfect reactor startup of my life. She thinks the story is a bitch about a bad day and responds with something like one time in retail, an associate stacked red towels on the green towel shelf and she had to resort all of them. What the fuck, really?
The guys at work aren't much better. Sure, they're mostly ex navy nukes, but it was a different navy in the 90's than it is now. The cold war was over. The new wars hadn't yet begun. deployments were pleasure cruises. I talk about being armed with a .45 while operating the reactor and they think I'm making it up. They talk about Crete and Siciliy and Naples and the LBFMs (Little Brown Fucking Machines) scattered across the pacific, and I talk about 64 days following a submarine being sold from one enemy to another. Their response is utter disbelief. They think that sort of stuff only exists in the movies.
That sort of stuff was my life. Now I'm a washed up, thirty-something vet, living at home with mom and dad, trying not to use PTSD and MDD as a crutch and watching a corrupt government on both sides of the aisle erode away at the very liberties I risked my life to protect and wondering if I'll ever feel normal again. Wondering if I'll ever feel anything ever again.
This ended up much longer than I imagined it would. So much for just a blurb.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
First of all, as cliche as it may be to some, thank you for your service. There is nothing easy about putting oneself out there in harms way; regardless of how much someone may or may not 'love that shit' (as some people say). Its both admirable and totally fucking John Wayne!
Its definitely hard when you feel like the present is just a pale shadow off the past and that your best times are behind you (?) I feel that way sometimes. I'm a decade older than you and I'm not aging gracefully. Perhaps it would be more effective if my mind would actually age with my body but it stopped around 32. That feeling of temporal displacement is even more difficult when you have no one to talk to about it. I truly hope that whatever you are going through now, passes in completion, and opens the the door for both an exodus of old demons and a visitation of good will and peace.
By the way.. It's a pleasure to meet you Sir.