My Tired is Tired. Chapter 2

My Tired is Tired

Chapter Two

When Tired became more Tired

His introduction to army life was almost exactly what he had expected, and strangely enough, it suited him down to the ground. Discipline did not frighten him. Orders did not bother him. Looking after his belongings, keeping his uniform in order, standing in lines, following instructions, and doing what was expected of him were things he already understood. Years of boarding school had prepared him for that kind of life. He had already learned that there were rules, that there were consequences for breaking them, and that sometimes you simply had to do what you were told, whether you liked it or not.

Even sleeping became part of the routine. There were nights when he barely slept because his bed had to be perfectly made for inspection the following morning. Sometimes he slept on the floor. Sometimes he slept wherever there was space. Standing in lines for food, waiting for showers, marching, cleaning, polishing, and preparing himself for another demanding day became normal. None of it seemed particularly strange to him. In many ways, the army was simply another version of the life he had already known.

The first three months of basic training were, however, physically hard. He had never been an athlete. He had been a bookworm, more comfortable with books and his own thoughts than with running, climbing or pushing his body to its limits. The army quickly changed that. His body was forced to do things it had never been trained to do before. Every day demanded a little more from him. Every march, every exercise, every punishment, and every exhausting training session pushed him closer to a physical limit he did not know existed.

But something happened along the way. He became fitter. Day by day, his body began to adapt. What had once seemed impossible slowly became possible. The boy who had spent much of his life feeling different was becoming a soldier. Then came the day he received his rifle. For him, that was a special day. He was almost besotted with the rifle. It represented something far greater than a weapon. It represented belonging. It represented responsibility. It represented the beginning of a new identity. He was no longer simply the boy who had struggled to find his place in the world. He was becoming someone who had a purpose, someone who was trusted with something important, someone who had a role to play.

Perhaps most importantly, he was beginning to find brothers. As the weeks turned into months, a bond started developing between the men in his section. It was not the soft, protective love of a mother or the unconditional love of a family. It was something different. It was the rough, uncomplicated brotherhood of men who shared the same hardships, the same exhaustion, the same jokes, the same fears, and eventually, the same dangers. For the first time in his life, he experienced something he had spent years searching for. Acceptance.

He did not have to constantly prove that he was worthy of being there. He did not have to continually change himself to fit in. He did not have to wonder whether people accepted him because of who he was or because of what they expected him to become. He was accepted for what he could do. That was enough. For a while, that acceptance quietened something inside him.

The tiredness that had followed him through childhood began to disappear. Not the physical tiredness. That came every single day. But the other tiredness. The invisible tiredness. The tiredness of always trying to belong. The tiredness of wondering whether he was good enough. The tiredness of carrying memories he did not know how to put down. The army gave him something he desperately needed. A place where he belonged.

The months passed. Training became harder, but he survived it. He learned to endure pain. He learned to keep going when his body wanted to stop. He learned that sometimes the only way forward was simply to put one foot in front of the other. He learned something else. He learned how to hide his pain. That lesson would become important later.

He became tired many times, but in those early days it was a different kind of tired. It was a physical tiredness. A tiredness that could be cured by sleep, food, a shower, and perhaps a weekend away. It was the honest tiredness of a young man's body being pushed beyond what it thought it could endure. It was not yet the tiredness of the soul.

When weekends came, and he was allowed to go home, he sometimes chose to remain at base camp instead. To outsiders, that might have seemed strange. Why would a young soldier choose the army over home? But home carried memories. Base camp carried something else. Safety.

There were too many sad memories waiting for him at home. Too many things that reminded him of a childhood he could never go back and change. Too many emotions he did not know how to deal with. At base camp, there were men who understood him without needing to know every detail of his past. They had shared the same mud, the same hunger, the same exhaustion, and the same discipline. They were becoming his family. Not because they shared his blood, but because they shared his life.

For a young man who had spent so much of his life searching for acceptance, that meant everything. Then came the day when training was no longer training. The army had prepared him for war. Now he was going to war. Nothing could truly prepare a human being for that. You can train a man to shoot. You can teach him tactics. You can teach him how to move, how to survive, how to recognise danger and how to protect the man beside him. You can teach him how to kill if necessary.

But there are some things no training ground can teach. No instructor can prepare a young man for the sound of another human being dying. No manual can explain what it feels like to lose a brother. No exercise can prepare the mind for seeing death at close range. No amount of physical training can prepare the heart for what war leaves behind. War changed him. It changed his mind. It changed his emotions. It changed his body. Somewhere deep inside him, something began to break.

The man who had once found comfort in being tired after a long day's training discovered that there were different kinds of tiredness in the world. There was the tiredness that came from marching. There was the tiredness that came from carrying equipment. There was the tiredness that came from sleeping too little. Then there was the tiredness that came from watching people die. That tiredness was different. It did not disappear after sleep. It followed him into the darkness. It followed him into the quiet. It followed him home. It followed him everywhere.

The loss of life, the enemy, the fear, and the loss of brothers left scars that nobody could see. Some scars were physical. Others were buried so deeply inside him that he did not even know how to explain them. His PTSD became part of him. Not something he could simply switch off when the fighting ended. Not something he could leave behind on the battlefield. The war eventually ended, but the war inside him did not.

Every experience added another layer to the man he was becoming. Every loss left something behind. Every frightening moment became another memory stored somewhere in the darkest corners of his mind. Slowly, almost without him noticing, his tiredness began changing. He was no longer simply tired from what he had done. He was becoming tired from what he had seen. Tired from what he remembered. Tired from what he could not forget. Tired from trying to be normal when nothing inside him felt normal anymore.

Yet he continued. That was what he had been taught to do. Continue. Keep going. Do not complain. Do not show weakness. Do not stop. A soldier keeps moving. So he kept moving. His twelve years in the army shaped him into a man who could survive things many people would never understand. It brought out a toughness in him that had probably been there since childhood. Every hardship he had experienced before the army had prepared him in some strange way for the hardships that came later.

But survival comes with a price. Every battle leaves something behind. Sometimes it is blood. Sometimes it is memories. Sometimes it is a piece of the person you once were. By the time his twelve years as a soldier came to an end, he was tired. Very tired. But this time, it was no longer the tiredness of a young soldier who needed a good night's sleep. It was a deeper tiredness. A tiredness that had accumulated year after year.

A tiredness made from childhood pain, rejection, memories, war, loss, fear, and everything he had carried without ever knowing where to put it down. Yet, despite everything, he looked forward to leaving the army. He believed that perhaps life outside the army would be different. Perhaps he could finally be normal. Perhaps he could finally live an ordinary life. Perhaps he could find the acceptance he had known among his army brothers somewhere in the civilian world. Perhaps, after twelve years of fighting, he could finally stop fighting.

He did not yet understand that the hardest battle of his life might not be the one he had fought with a rifle in his hands. It might be the one he would have to fight with nothing in his hands at all. He was leaving the army carrying everything he had experienced. The memories. The losses. The nightmares. The anger. The fear. The guilt. The scars. The tiredness. He thought he was leaving the army behind. He did not know that the army was coming home with him.

The tiredness that had once been cured by sleep was about to become something far more permanent. His tiredness was becoming tired of being tired. Life was only getting started.......

Created By  VETERAN

✍Author, Article Writer, Life Coach, Novelist & Poet✍

Marius F Robbertze (WOLF)

AKA (MFR ™) ©®