My name is Faraz and I joined the Marines after high school in attempt to solve my identity crisis. The majority of the public sees an image of a limbless man when mentioned the words “disabled veteran.” What is overseen is that the majority of disabled veterans comes from a psychological perspective. I was a normal boy who played sports, was social, loved looking at girls, and enjoyed a wonderful childhood. When I joined the military I started with this personality and didn’t know what would happen to me or how I would be changed. The only thing I wanted was friends or the brotherhood.
Both of my parents are from Pakistan and were born there; therefore, I mark a resemblance to a Middle Eastern man. The first thing my drill instructor said to me when our platoon met him was, “I will make sure you don’t kill any of our people Terrorist.” He called me that as if it were my name. As if it defined who I was and the image that I gave to my environment. I could go through everything that happened to me during my service years but I won’t because I am not able to articulate about it without becoming angry.
Throughout my service years I became ostracized and bullied by own brothers that were to fight with me if we went into battle to risk our lives. I had no one to talk to or smile with to let go of these hard. I developed a deficiency of sleep every night which has become a normal objective factor today. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about what happened to me and my psychiatrist has told me that I will probably have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for the rest of my life to a certain degree.
I feel that it being finally diagnosed after leaving the service was the worst entity. It actually wasn’t because when I had no one to talk to or to protect me from everyone else I developed voices in my head. These voices sometimes talk so much that I cannot stop them. They always told me to burn down the buildings that the people who bullied me were in or sometimes worse than that. I hear three voices today that I have named and been able to know very well. Sometimes they mean well but other times I feel like they are trying to compensate on getting back at the people who were so foul to me.
Maybe the worst is the major depression I have had for more than 3 years now. My psychiatrist tells me that there is strong possibility I will always remain this way. It makes me think if it was even worth it to go through all this hardship for solving an identity crisis. Every day the voices in my head remind me of all that I try to avoid. They may be very hostile at times and those times I even cry because of what they say to me. The Veterans Association has deemed me qualified to receive 100% compensation for disability because of the psychological exams that I have had.
I have headaches every day from this, sleeping sometimes 3 hours a night for a couple of weeks and anxiety from being in even the smallest crowd of people. I can’t think straight sometimes as I am sitting in my Trigonometry class because my voices my head don’t stop talking. I have hope for myself as I still have my ambition in becoming a revolutionary designer in the engineering field. I hope to one day overcome this hardship and will never stop to truly grasp my dreams. Certain people have said that the world is like a pond, and that any time a person does the smallest things, it is as if a stone had dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by that one tiny action. I hope to be that one tiny action to change the world in the field of engineering.
