eumelia | So the Army called me last night...

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So the Army called me last night...

And asked me to come in for a day or two some time in the future.

I wonder if the new Reserve office made it clear to my old Unit that I'm not coming back.
That I'm unable to even think about doing what they want me to do.
I'm not cut out for this sort of thing, I went there to help a friend, I went there because my friend asked for help and I did what I could to help.
But I can't anymore.
Not when my heart starts to beat like a it's pumping it's going into a heart attack any second. When just thinking about going down into that bunker causes me to become this meek, spineless, crybaby.

Daddy asked me if I regret going into the Army last summer and one level no I don't, because I helped people and I helped my friends, but on another, yes I do. I regret that I had to come home every night and cry my eyes out and that I had to lose five kilos of weight due to stress. I regret serving in a War that did nothing but kill people, if we had attained our goals maybe it wouldn't have felt so worthless, but all this War did was make Israel look reckless, aggressive and unprepared for fighting an asymmetrical war.

I'm not cut out for watching monitors that show people being killed, and you know despite the fact that the people I saw die had no regard for life and that their goal was to destroy my home, which contrary to what some people think, I love. I can't fight for it the way it asks of me.

I can't.
I love my country, I hate my government. I love the soldiers, I hate the generals. I love the people, I hate the politics.

I love Israel, but I gave what I can and I have nothing else to give that it wants.
All I can offer is that I'll continue writing about what goes on here and tell people that yes, bad things happen here, but since when has bad things happening, made bad people.

Daddy when I told him that essentially yes, I regret having gone to the Army in the summer, despite not regretting helping my friend, I don't feel it was a good time for me. Daddy thinks it was good for me, "a new experience". And let's not forget the money.
Fuck that.
Seriously.
Fuck. That.
War is not "experience". And neither is a drill, not anymore.
I don't enjoy being a bitchy reservist that causes problems to my old unit, but I've been there and it's not the first time they've been low on personnel and it won't be the last, so they'll have to deal without Mel.
And yes it hurts me to do this, but I come first and going to a Drill is not in my best interests.
And asking me "wouldn't you earn money from it?", is not an okay question to ask when I've explained my position!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi, Eva, and welcome to the discussion :). LJ-land would've been a lot more boring if we all stuck talking just to people we know from off-net, no?

First off - from victim to counselor. *bows*

Now. Story goes like this.

melody_kitty and I were friends in high school - she was two school years below me, one year younger. We lost contact when I graduated. Two years later, she arrived to the same unit I served at. While that was incidental, her being assigned to the same war station as I was anything but: she was specifically assigned to this post 'cause she's my friend. I'm the one who trained her for this job, i'm the one who pronounced her up and able.
Fast forward a few years. Ten days after returning from a six-months stay at the US, war started. Fourteen days after Mel's return, I called her from the army, saying: "Come over."

So there we were, sitting through roughly thirty days of shifts together. Yet, sometimes, it seems we sat in two different war rooms, experienced two different wars.

Me, my first year of service was one trauma after another. I was kicked out of the first section I served at 'cause my CO there thought I couldn't handle the stress. Years later, i'm responsible for eight other people and then for more on the level of making sure nobody loses too much weight; i'm the senior at a station pretty much holding the rest of the complex afloat. And i'm the kind of person who takes everything to heart: bad mix, that.
But I was there to get the job done, and Mel was there because I asked her to. We both shuddered at the destruction, we both went to sleep with a heavy heart.

We both needed much healing afterwords - I gave my collueges quite a hard time, was too edgy, for a few months. Going back for the first drill after the war sure sent my pulse up - but also dissipated most of the remaining trauma. I was reminded of how different are drills from reality - but I haven't forgotten how well the drills have prepared me. I haven't forgotten that the main reason my station was prepared was because of all the care and time I put into it as a reserve person.

And Mel? You have her post above. We sat through two different wars, she and I.

And it's hard for me: it's hard to accept that she - who seemed to hold together so much better than I through the war - is still struggling with things I had put behind. It's hard to accept that it's so, even that I know we're all different, because fuck that, we sat there together.

And maybe, possibly, I don't want to aknowledge how bad this is... because if I hadn't asked to summon her, she wouldn't have been summoned. (The officer in charge of the reserve activation doesn't like her.) If we hadn't been friends - she only got into this job because of me - if it hadn't been my voice on the phone, she probably wouldn't have come. Legally, she didn't have to. And even if I can sleep in peace with the destrution i've seen in South Lebanon... this'll keep me awake at night, if I think about it then.

This may be ugly truth to tell, but you shouldn't put Mel through more trauma just to feel you didn't do her harm.
Shoving her back in, while still handaling trauma, is nothing but avoiding responsibility. Saying "She's okay, she didn't see a man dying, and he wasn't on our side anyway" when she's still having flashbacks and nightmares, is belittling what she went through so you can feel okay with yourself.
It's not okay to deprive your friends of support so you can feel you did nothing wrong. You can feel you did the right thing and still support a friend, who is going through a hard time.

There's always a price to pay.

I'm crying good tears from all this.

You seem to have completely misunderstood.

And here's why i'm not going to explain, and why i'm simply not going to relate to anything you have said. In the past, if I posted with a rant about some of the idiotic things I have to deal with in reserve, or of the annoyance that it sometimes is, all you had to say was "Well, then, don't go." (Oh, I remember you offering to let me stay at PT during the war. I remember that with warmth and gratitude. But.)
But, while it's not the same as what you blamed me of doing, dismissing one's commitment is not right, either. And whatever sets of beliefs that make it okay for you to dismiss that makes you person whose opinions I am likely to ignore.

It's putting people first.

I don't blame you for anything. I'm just saying a bit more sensitivity could be nice.

*eyebrows raised*

I firmly believe that trampling individuals and their rights in the name of society is wrong - which is why i'm monitary Right, which is why I can be fierce about human rights sometimes.

I also believe that society is a neccesity of the individuals - which is why i'm not an anarchist, which is why I think that communities matter.

Society exists for the individuals, but if the individuals won't give of themselves, there won't be a society. Complex, hard, people get hurt and the structures don't always get all the support they need, either.

Is it really so simple for you? If it's hard, then don't do it? If some uniformed idiots make me snarl, I should not do reserve service, and the people living up north will pay for it (or, in the case of a war with Syria, everybody)? It's so fucking simple, isn't it.

People come first so I shouldn't call the one who's in post-trauma - or should I call her so that I can prevent more damage from the other two sitting day shifts with no one to allow them to take breaks, ever? Because that's the call i'm likely to be facing next war, you know.

You can keep pretending no one ever talked to you about those things, so people will have to re-explain what was explained, but it's just tiring.
You know very well I didn't tell you "Oh, it's hard, don't do it", but "If you keep going they will never train another person to your proffesional level". So this is besides the point.
I didn't say "If it's hard don't do it". I said "People first". That also means not risking anyone's lives by taking someone handaling a trauma to an essensial position, because they may stop functioning (either with or without taking a gun, shooting other people and themselves - something I hope Mel never does).
People come first, so you train extra amount of people for the important positions, So you don't call on those who are unable to do the job, so you risk as little lives as you can.
I'm not against communities, but no one should pay a price one's not willing to. If one would rather die than do, one should not be forced to do.

I think i'd rather stop here. I know what your stand is, I don't think it should prevent you from being supportive, and I don't see any point in digging my beliefs here. It's not the matter in discussion, and it won't matter anything at all.

I agree that this discussion is pointless. I'm also highly tempted to go through my miluim tag and toss some of your quotes back at you.

And, if I don't come to drills, there won't be anyone to train the newbies. If I don't fight for it, there won't be newbies to train. There is no 'system', there are only people and their responsibilities. And if some of us didn't believe in Doing The Job, the rest of you would pay very dearly for 'people first'.

So as I said two comments above, I simply don't count your opinion on those matters.

I just want to say that one of the hardest decisions I ever made was to say "No", but I knew that if I didn't I'd be compramising my pricipals and putting myself in a position that would cause me more pain and that's one of the reasons I felt I needed to write this post.

And no it's not simple, at all, I know this very, very well, but if the Army, GD forbid, needs to call miluim again for another war this summer I'm going to have to say "No" and I won't regret that.

I hope we don't get there, but.

I need to replace both you, Yaron and Omer V. - Omer won't sign the volunteer form, Yaron is likely to be assigned to another station, and you're not really up to it. The only person I have on the roster which I didn't last summer is Lior. That's two new people I need, and I have to take into account that most newbies have lesser staminas, even if they otherwise rock.

So I hope I don't have to face that choice. But if it's war and it's been weeks and the people in active service - regulars and reservists - are burning out?

I don't get to be responsible just for my own well-being. I don't get to be responsible just for my personal friends. And it sounds like blaming you, when I put it like this, and I don't intend to blame you and I hope you know that, but...

But. At the end of the day, if there's another war this summer... Then, just like last summer, the call is mine. The responsibility is mine. And it's easy to say that it's for no other reason then for my own beliefs... but as I said to

morin, if not for those of us with those beliefs, everyone else wouldn't have the privilege to opt out.

Oh, my darling friend, I didn't mean to imply blame on you or anybody else, really I didn't and I apologize profusely if it came out that way, that wasn't my intention and it certainly isn't the way I feel.

It does sometimes seem that we sat in different places and it's mainly this war that made me feel about war (in general) and how I react to phone calls from the army. But I love you very much and I don't regret one minute of being there with you.
I just really regret the circumstances and unfortunately I can't help how I feel about that.

Oh, hon. I know that you don't blame me. I know that if we both faced that choice again, knowing what would come, we'd both make the same call and live with the same things later on.

But.

But I feel that during the war, you kept face in front of me. I'd had to learn from you LJ what was going on with you, when we were spending those crazy shifts together two days out of three, and the result is that maybe - maybe - I didn't know enough to pull you out in time. (Like I had pulled Ziv, for example.)

But it's still me who made that call, still me who told everyone so confidentally that you can do it, still me that because of whom you got into this training - fuck, into this unit.

Because I read what

morin had said in her comment above and I wonder - are these things still going on? Is it still that bad? Why do I have to hear of those things from other people in roundabout ways, what is so wrong?

I did keep face for you, because that's I felt I needed to do in order to a good job. We both talked about this, I felt that my job was to keep our heads above water if that happened because I happen to be a bit taller and I gave you a piggy bag then that's the what i had to do. And just like you would have refused to move to night, so would I, because you know I never would have agreed to be bumped.
I do get nightmares, but rarely and only after triggers (such as phone calls) and I am handling it, I'm not constantly thinking about it, or trying not to think about it. But sometimes these thoughts come unbidden, you know.
And it's not a roundabout way if I'm just writing it here, I don't feel the need to talk about it face to face, I write it down and I feel purged.

If the whole lot of you lined up and told me i'm moving to night shifts? If you caught me told me, "Hon, it's time"? I would've moved to night shifts. I know better than to make those calls entirely on my own. I counted on the rest of you that you'll take me down should it be time, and I do hope that had it been time, you would've have fought it, either. Because the Right Thing To Do is also to know when to stop pushing yourself. And if you weren't able to do that - if you kept pushing over that red line, if you think you wouldn't have gone down to night, if you kept up face for that, then yes, you shouldn't have been there. You weren't up for it and my judgement call regarding you was wrong.

I repeat to you now what I had said to Ziv at the end of his last day shift: "I know you're not totally burned out yet. I know you still have strength left. But I don't think you should burn all the way through. I did that, when I was a regular, and i'm not going to let it happen to another person if I can do something about it."

That's what Moshe had essentially told me when he kicked me out of my first section, what I didn't understand then: just because you can handle it somehow, doesn't mean you have to handle the 'somehow'.

And if you didn't understand that, then I was wrong regarding you.

/

"A bit taller"? *wry smile* Oh, I don't know. In ways, you hid behind my back as much as stood on your shoulders. I did shoulder more responsibility than anyone else of the station, and you did shoulder much of my emotional burden. It's called "working together".

We make a good team.

A lot of this is after the fact, at the time I didn't know what my red lines were and again, at the time that was a good thing, but now that I know better where I stand on the issues and how I feel about the whole thing I know I will not be able to handle it again.
I am burned out when it comes to war and war is evil because of many, many endless things, but I'm not naive and know that people, you and my brother and others, have to do what they have to do and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I think a lot of us don't know where are limits are, the first time around. Some of us get lucky enough to have other people catch us before we burn out too much. Which is why not keeping face is important.

And re second paragraph - *salute*.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So the Army called me last night...

I don't mind the 'intrusion' :)

Well

Thank you

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My beliefs are simple

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