Condemned to What You Know

As much as I told everyone that I did not want to write about military stuff, I kept coming back to it. It is not that I hate it, I actually love it in as many ways as I hate it, but there are just so many exemplified areas of theme and lasting memories attached that I have endless things to talk about in relation to it. So, this is where I end up again and again. Writing about the marginalized many who are uniquely loved and hated by outsiders who have no idea the struggles their developed culture attends to on the daily.

This is not regarding the wartime, shots-fired, Michael Bay-type explosions with Will Smith or Sylvester Stallone walking away from the destruction all cool.

I am talking about peacetime.

About warfighters trained to unleash their emotions on the battle being cooped up on base locked in endless red tape. I am talking about the rampant adultery problem on both ends of the marriage and its general acceptance. I am talking about a collectively assembled culture struggling to integrate while being forced to take double doses of motivation from a government assigned one. These people I lived with, drank with, and grappled with for years. I have come to understand their very particular differences from the norms of society in both them and I, so I think it is best I try to write about them to show who they really are.

It is what I know, so I should write about it. Or at least that is what I have been told. Something I am sure most everyone has heard way too many times. But when I look at the quality of work that comes out when I do write about it, I can see it is next level. There are layers of themes and history that just do not shine through if the writer did not experience it. Bar fights and back door deals. Shop get-togethers at tropical island nightclubs and bonding over the blood shed servicing aircraft.

I lived and loved it and wanted to die often because of it.

But does that mean that my writing work best destined for success lies in it? Am I condemned to relive the hate and chaos infused in the culture of that place?

Much of my military work stems from that experience. Just a natural tendency. The culture is too ingrained; deep set by how immersive the world was, by what was so hidden away when I was not part of it. We are Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children. We prided ourselves on it, pressured each other to get better at it constantly. We made it through the tour-de-force lifestyle of ceaseless stress only to be cast off as forgotten toys when we were used up. It force-fed us motivation until some of us could not even walk right anymore.

And yet, we still cheered it on.

That mentality is hard to explain, just as the melting pot of American culture that comprises it. But that is not the point of this blog post. I am pretty certain that explanation of this marginalization, this society of self-immolation, is what I’m destined to write about successfully. Whether I love it, or especially when it pains me to tell the reality of it.

I know I can write other stuff fairly well, but I always felt a bit of imposter syndrome when I did. I don’t feel that when I write about the realities of peacetime military.

Do any of you readers have similar experience in subjects when writing? Does only experience really speak to you when you write and make its way to the page coherently? I love what I write about military things, but I also feel condemned to master it. Maybe that is the way it should be for me.