Package Contents
Application_Install.exe
The oath was being administered by prior-enlisted officer LtCol Robin “V-Berry” Vanderberry, of the 505th Operations Squadron.
Colonel V-Berry was the finest officer I have ever served underneath of.
I’m a United States Air Force disabled veteran, and Veterans Day is a very difficult day for me. It has been since my enlistment contract got signed. No, not because I lost a battle buddy. This year was worse. A fellow veteran betrayed me, then called in a completely unfounded report that I was suicidal and having a mental health crisis. Mental health swatting. Not the first time this year, either. I’m in the best mental health state I have ever been in and I am FIERCELY protecting it, so I went zero-trust with nearly everyone, including most veterans I was in community with before. Never trust, always verify.
Then I drove about an hour to a service in a different city. A Legion guy handing out programs said, “You look angry my friend, everything ok brother?” I thought I was fine. Good music on the drive, coffee, belly full. Then I sat down and asked myself if I was carrying anger. The answer was yes. And it wasn’t the betrayal. It was an unresolvable inner conflict I’ve had with being a service member since I was 17, and it comes from little-t trauma with my late mother. She grabbed the pen and signed my contract for me. Good grades, good behavior, Eagle Scout, Valedictorian, and Veteran. They were never my idea.
I’m a victim of this mess. The mess isn’t mine and it is my responsibilty to clean it up. Victimhood is not my identity and my identity is healing, sobriety, inner growth, ownership, accountability, and doing everything I can to reduce my suffering and not cause or increase suffering for others. I wrote this for the veterans who can’t say their story out loud. And civilians: when you say “Thank you for your service,” tell us why. We hear those five words all the time and they’re usually hollow. So, long story short, that’s why I looked angry today.
That is the application. The rest is the source code.
Source_Code.txt
The open-source code below is free, for you to analyze, modify, and build your own application with.
> why I dread this one: veterans_day.log
I am a United States Air Force disabled veteran and today is Veterans Day.
I was given the opportunity to meet him after performing logistical support for his visit to Nellis AFB, Nevada.
This is a day that is a very difficult day for me. It has been this way since my enlistment contract was signed. No, not because I lost a battle buddy or some stereotypical portrayal of a veteran struggling with life after their service ended.
This year was even more difficult in several ways. To answer why it’s difficult in a few sentences is nearly impossible for me. And this blog I am writing today, is why.
> a fake crisis with my name on it: unfounded_alert.log
First, I had to go off the grid this year and couldn’t celebrate this day with many veterans I was becoming close and connected with. If you are one of the veterans who watched me suddenly disappear off the radar and lose contact with me, I hope you didn’t take it personally. I had to do what I did because of an imminent threat to my emotional and potentially my physical safety. I initially had hope that only one person was involved with this matter, have learned otherwise since, and because I do not know the extent of who else may be involved, I had to go off the radar with nearly everyone.
A fellow veteran betrayed me this year in truly disturbing ways, and compromised the safety I felt in a community I had been working hard to be a part of for many months. I initially had hope that it was a misunderstanding on my part or an innocent mistake on theirs. I have since lost that hope because of another event that transpired.
This same veteran continued the betrayal and then actively harassed me after I went off the radar, calling in a completely unfounded report that I was suicidal and having a mental health crisis, when they had absolutely no basis or reason for that report.
This false report was called in directly to the board president of a veteran community I had been affiliated with and was well respected in. The board president was alarmed and worried that the report was real and that I was indeed suicidal and experiencing a mental health crisis. They immediately called the executive director of that organization, who had my phone number and then called me.
This veteran was not a part of my life, had no substantial contact with me, had not seen me recently, or had access to any direct information about my whereabouts or my life. This veteran was not connected to any of the people in my trusted circle, and nobody in my trusted circle, to include mental health professionals, have had any concerns of suicide or mental health crisis this year, at any time. In fact, all of them would agree I am the exact opposite of that concern. I am in the best mental health state I have ever been in, and I am FIERCELY protective of it, and I am FIERCELY protecting it. They have seen the positive changes I have made and how they have dramatically increased my mental health stability.
Because the report was unfounded and not in any kind of collaboration with anyone connected to me directly, I believe it was done solely to try to harass me, create stress for me, and interfere with my standing among people who respected me. I once had hope that these reports served a legitimate purpose. But I have found there is no other reason for them. None. Absolutely none.
Nobody makes these kinds of serious allegations of life-threatening behaviors without facts or at the very minimum, information that the average person would reasonably believe to indicate that my life was at risk, unless they are up to some kind of…as one veteran buddy would say, “tomfoolery” or some kind of malicious intent is involved.
You may be asking why would this one veteran do this to me when I have had no substantial connection to them in any way and barely even knew their name? It is because a third-party I did have a connection to at one point in my life, who I have found out is their associate, involved them in our interpersonal conflict, and then they chose to participate for reasons unknown.
What they did is known as mental health swatting, and this form of harassment had already occurred on multiple occasions this year through other people. This was not the first time this year I had been called out of the blue and asked if I was suicidal and in crisis. And just like the prior times, I answered the phone this time, unassumingly, was immediately asked if I was ok and if I felt suicidal…and replied…”ummmmm….yeaaah? Whhhhhhy? What’s going onnnnn???” And just like the prior times, I got a response that resembled “…so and so called me in panic and said they were concerned that you were suicidal and having a severe mental health crisis and didn’t know how to reach you and were so worried and so they called me to check on you…and and and…are you sure you are ok man?…”
“People have called friends, family, the police, and fellow veterans about me, saying I’m unsafe, manic, or suicidal. I’m sober, stable, safe, and in treatment with three providers who know the truth. I’m not responding to any of it.”
It_Was_Never_Mania_v1.zip
I won’t detail all the times this has happened. I will detail the first and last. I’ll let you decide if anything in these two examples sounds like a severe mental health and/or suicidal crisis, I put a guide below to reference. The other events have very similar details, so I am leaving them out.
> a good day, then my phone rang: morning_8am.log
First time (summarized directly from my hand written journal notes): The day prior, I had a wonderful day. I had gotten up that morning after sleeping in till 10AM, read my meditations, took my morning medications, drove to my coffee stand, and then went to a scheduled doctor appointment for some joint pain I had been having. That afternoon I had a really great phone call with a new friend. I went to Barnes and Noble after that phone call, and bought a new book I was really excited to begin reading, called The Mountain Is You, by Brianna Wiest. She is one of my favorite authors and her books have been my bibles through the inner work transformation I have been making and my sobriety journey. When I got home, I took a nap. After that I got up, and edited a recent dance video I had made. Then I drove to the pier for sunset meditation and photography. After that, I went and got some fast food for dinner. I ate my food. I took my nightly medications. I wrote my journal at 10:56PM, and called it a night.
The day prior, I listed several “wins” for that day: remaining sober, remaining in integrity with the boundaries I have with myself and others, living my amends, not repeating old patterns, taking care of my joint pain, deepening a connection with a new friend, photography/videography hobby time, working on the Sanadores peer-support project I had been building, and had a pier sunset meditation. I had been in contact with 13 people that day, to include both of my daughters. I wrote “I am grateful for the beautiful sunset at the pier because I am physically healthy and able to go there and because it brings me joy.”
The next morning, I had just woken up at 8:00AM, having slept for almost ten full hours, and went to grab my daily meditation book and noticed my phone (on silent) was ringing on the charging stand. A person with whom I normally only text message with was voice calling me, which alarmed me. Because why on earth would they be calling me at 8AM? They never called me. Ever. This certainly had to be some kind of emergency, so I quickly grabbed my phone and answered it. I said, “Hello” and the first words out of their mouth was “I am so glad you answered, are you ok?” I was confused as hell. I told them, “Yeah, I am good, what’s up?” wondering why are they asking me to begin with. They then told me that someone from my past, who I had not been in contact with for several months and had blocked, had called them crying and in severe distress, telling them they had read a blog I wrote, specifically the one about the positive healthy boundaries I have with myself now and what I will not tolerate from others, and said they were deeply concerned I was suicidal and having a severe mental health crisis and didn’t know how to reach me. I told the person who called me, “Well, tell them I am just fine and if they have any questions for me, they can send me an email.” They never emailed. The person who called me did call them back, and after what ensued in that conversation, realized that the initial crisis call made to them this was not out of actual concern for my wellbeing, but instead the so-called concern about my wellbeing was a manipulative tool to try to gain information about me, and also to try to damage the credibility I had with the person they called in the crisis to. In more direct terms, they used a fabricated suicidal crisis concern to try to convince that person who I had a close connection with that I was mentally unstable and dangerous. In even more direct terms, they tried to damage that relationship.
That wasn’t the last event, I’ll save you the details from the others.
> same phone, same question, 2PM: road_trip.log
The last time (summarized directly from my hand written journal notes): The day prior to the event was my fourth day on a multi-state road trip I was really enjoying and was my second day in that city. I had gotten up at 9AM, read my meditations, took my morning medications, ate breakfast, got coffee, explored a ghost town, offroaded a bit, went to a national park, drove up to a scenic overlook, completed an iconic highway goal, drove back into town, shot photography and ate dinner downtown that evening, fueled up my car and packed my cooler afterwards, then got back to the hotel where I showered, edited photos, journaled, took my evening medications, and went to bed at 11:20PM. I wrote that I had an amazing day and saw many amazing sights, that I was grateful for the ability to travel, drive, and be able to use my body to explore nature. I wrote that a win for the day was “consciously choosing less suffering in every decision I make”. I wrote that I was excited for the day of travel ahead of me the next day and that by bedtime that evening, I would have crossed off another iconic highway goal, visited and recreated selfies at two locations I had not been to in 22 years, and it would be my last evening in that state. I also mentioned that I had hoped to shoot some photos and light painting under the full moon at my destination the next day. That day I had been in contact with 5 different people, all very close to me, that know me well and are a part of my trusted circle.
The next day was great. I got up that morning, read my meditations, took my morning medications, ate breakfast, and grabbed coffee on my way out of town. On my way out, I called a close friend and talked with her for a good hour as I drove to my first stop. I got to my first stop around 11AM, re-created the selfie I took there in 2004, and began the stretch of the iconic highway I wanted to drive. Along that highway, I stopped at several locations to take photographs of the landscape and to just spend time in nature and enjoy the moments I had in those special places, because I don’t know when I will be able to go back again. At around 2PM, I had just finished re-creating a second photo from 2004 at the end of the iconic highway stretch, just outside of a really unique little town I was excited to visit. I had been outside of cell reception for a few hours, and this little town had a cell tower. As I got back on the highway to drive into this cute little town, I got the crisis call. “Hey brother, are you ok man?”…”Yeah, I am good, what’s up?”…”I need to ask if you are suicidal or in crisis right now”…”ummm….no….why?”…. And then the same so and so called so and so in a panic and was worried you were suicidal and having a severe mental health crisis and didn’t know how to reach you and were so worried so they called this person and this person knew I had your number so they called me and I just wanted to make sure you were ok buddy.
Well I have heard that line before.
It’s the most annoying fucking thing ever. As I mentioned above, these people calling in the crisis bullshit are doing the mental health equivalent of swatting. That by definition is a form of unlawful harassment in which someone reports a false or nonexistent emergency to elicit some kind of response from the people they call in the emergency to. The people who receive this false or nonexistent emergency report are then suddenly involved with a conflict they had no participation in, and often it results in social consequences for people like me. It destroys connections and relationships by portraying people like me as unstable and dangerous. In this last instance, it has drastically impacted me socially, because now I can no longer trust that veteran community as a whole. If one veteran who I had no reason to believe would engage in this type of harassment is doing this, are there more involved? Who can I trust? Can I share personal private information with these veterans moving forward like I was accustomed to, or is this information now at risk of being disclosed in places I did not consent to? And last but not least, the leadership of this organization now sees me as a source of incoming drama from these people. It created distance between me and them that I never did anything on my own to create.
> there was a mole: zero_trust.cfg
There was a mole. And as a former IT professional, I believe in zero-trust security. The traditional castle and moat approach, which automatically trusts anyone or anything on the inside of the social circle, is no longer effective. So now because there was an active attack within the confines of castle moat and walls, I moved directly to the zero-trust principle, which is “never trust, always verify”.
Every person, whether they are on the inside of the social circle, or outside of it, in this case the veterans in my social circle, are now going to be vetted and authenticated before gaining any access to me or information about me. And that meant, remaining off the radar even longer, and even further away from that surveillance beacon. Blanket access-denial and complete firewall-block of all inbound and outbound traffic and all ports disabled to all but a few people who have valid certificates. Full data encryption, with only the most trusted having the decryption keys.
In layman’s terms, only those I have vetted and I am 110% assured are not a piece of spyware hidden in a legitimate application, will have raw information about me or be able to contact me. All other access is severed.
“I am severing every one of those cords completely and permanently the moment the pattern shows itself, instead of keeping the door cracked open out of habit.”
Severed_v1.zip
> straight into the thunder and wind: buffalo_charge.sh
Back to Veterans Day. Oh what a glorious day I had reflecting on all of this. And this was just a tiny piece of the other storm of deep inner reflection I charged into today, like a Buffalo head down and horns forward. Straight into the thunder and wind. If you haven’t figured out by now, I don’t run from the storm. I feel my feelings and get real with where they are coming from. Because fuck avoidance.
“Bison don’t run from storms. They charge straight into them. Head down. Horns forward.”
Horns_Forward_v1.zip
Today, instead of celebrating with the community of veterans I had come to feel safe with, and subsequently had to go zero-trust with, I decided to celebrate off the radar in a different city where I was out of view of anyone who knows me and attend their Veterans Day celebration and service instead. That’s the cool thing about the veteran community. You can walk into any room of veteran strangers and you immediately are a part of that community and have belonging.
“The veteran community itself was a ghost for almost twenty years. I walked away from it when I left the Air Force and I didn’t look back.”
Ghosts_v1.zip
I got up this morning, read my meditations, took my meds, ate breakfast, and grabbed a coffee from my usual stand on my way out of town. I drove about an hour away, got to the service 15 minutes before it started, and walked into the building. I was greeted by some Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts that were volunteering there, and then entered the auditorium. As I entered the auditorium, there was an American Legion member handing out programs, and as he handed one to me, he gently said, “You look angry my friend, everything ok brother?”
I thought everything was ok and was surprised by his question. I was excited to be there. Had a nice drive with good music. Talked to a friend on the way. Had coffee. Belly full. I said, “Yeah man, I’m good, just got off the road. I appreciate you volunteering today”, took the program from him, walked in and located a seat. I told myself on the way to the seat, “my damned resting bitch face got me again, oops” and sat down. About two seconds after my butt hit the seat though, I asked myself “am I carrying anger today” and demanded an honest answer from myself.
The answer was “yes.”
> not where you think it’s coming from: inner_conflict.log
Didn’t think I would be angry on Veterans Day a few days later.
You might think the anger was about everything I wrote about at the beginning with the betrayal and mental health swatting, and having to go to a different town for a Veterans Day service and all that. No, that wasn’t the anger I was feeling today. Yeah, I do have anger about all that and I am doing the therapy and inner work around it. It’s kind of a moot point at this point these days. I hope that pattern doesn’t repeat, and I am living in the moment today without fear or worry about it happening again in the future. As one person I know used to say, “have hope and faith” when I was seeing things through a negative lens. I don’t have much faith left with the sequence of events I named earlier, but I do still have hope they won’t continue to occur.
That said, the anger today was about an unresolvable inner conflict I have had with being a service member since I first walked into the US Air Force recruiters office in Ontario, Oregon as a 17 year old and first met TSgt Larinda Meyers. A sweet Security Forces troop, with a pristine perfectly shaped black beret and a crisp set of ironed blues. A model Airman. And I still believe she may be the only recruiter in existence that didn’t lie to new recruits. I will always have respect for her and I always looked up to her in my time in the Air Force. She showed integrity first and excellence in all she did. The Air Force core values on display. Not one thing she told me as a recruit was a lie or false, ever.
One might easily think it is about the secondary-PTSD, permanent life-changing disabilities, and moral injury I have from my time in the service. I am going to explain those in detail because some veterans may not feel they are able or are unwilling to do it, and I want these things to be out in the open so those veterans don’t feel alone with what they are sitting with. I also want the public to know the darker side of serving our country, and that is the isolation many veterans feel from having to keep this all tucked away. I am not the first or only veteran that has not been welcomed by some people in my community and by some parts of our current society.
Isolation and the resulting negative impacts to mental health is a major contributor to veteran suicide. Veterans die by suicide at a rate that is frighteningly larger than that of the civilian population. The VA’s 2025 annual suicide report put the 2023 veteran rate at 35.2 per 100,000, more than double the 16.9 per 100,000 among non-veteran adults. Adjusted for age, its latest report finds male veterans’ rate is 56.5% higher and female veterans’ is 99.9% higher. Society tends to shut us up about our experiences in the service, downplay them, dismiss the damage, or stigmatize them. Up until I began writing this blog today, I really haven’t talked much about any of these things on a public level, and really haven’t shared much of any of it even with some of my closest people. Sometimes because it’s emotionally unsafe, and often because people don’t have the actual desire or capacity to listen to it. A lot of people just say “thank you for your service” so they feel better about themselves. We as veterans know the difference between those five words being said out of genuine gratitude and those words just being empty words. Many of us hate hearing them because most of the time they are hollow.
“I sit with people who are in the middle of the hardest things in their lives and I listen.”
Wisdom_Mirrored_Back_v1.zip
The anger today has nothing to do with any of that directly though. Those things do all amplify what it does have to do with. And that is the little-t trauma from my childhood specifically with my late-mother. That little-t trauma is the reason why I struggle with Veterans Day. That little-t trauma from my childhood is much more harmful than the impacts of military service in my mental health. Exponentially so.
“The little t traumas are the ones that fucked me up the most.”
Sharp_As_A_Thumbnail_Scratch_v1.zip
Content warning: the next section covers childhood abuse, graphic descriptions of war violence involving civilians and children, suicide, and substance abuse.
If reading that could be emotionally unsafe or triggering for you, stop here.
Come back when you’re ready, or don’t.
Either is okay.
If you are struggling right now or in any kind of mental health crisis, you don’t have to wait.
Veterans: dial 9-8-8 then press 1, text 838255, or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.
Everyone else: call or text 9-8-8. In an emergency, call 9-1-1 or go to your nearest emergency room.
I am about to blow the roof off a lot of things by the end of this piece.
Buckle up, because here we go.
> the word that felt like a punch: traitor.log
As I took my seat in the auditorium with over 1000 people in attendance, and asked myself about my anger, the service soon began. The MC got up, introduced himself and the other guests on the stage, and gave a general introduction of the service that would follow his comments. He then went into sharing his genuine gratitude for the military, our great country, the sacrifices veterans have made, and all the things you would expect to hear on Veterans Day at a service of this kind. It was when he said, and I quote, “These veterans stepped up, unselfishly answered the call to serve their country and defend our nation” that I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I am sure there were some drafted Vietnam veterans who also felt the discomfort.
That sentence makes me feel like a traitor, even though I did serve my country honorably and upheld the core values of the United States Air Force in everything I did while I was in. I was not and have never been a traitor to our country by any means. I am a decorated US Air Force Veteran, who never had even a speck of dust of anything negative in my time of service. I have been devoutly loyal to our country my entire life, and I will uphold and defend the United States constitution until I am put to rest, because my oath of enlistment has no expiration date.
Traitor? Yes. It made me feel like a traitor. To myself. One common definition of traitor is “a person who abandons or works against beliefs they previously supported.”
This traitor feeling is because of a story that has roots beginning 12 years before I took the oath. So let’s go to childhood, then the day I first went to the Air Force recruiter, then the secondary-PTSD and moral injury, then the disabilities, and then you can see how it all holds hands together. Why a day like today, is not something I feel great about. I don’t know if I ever will.
> perfect or punished: report_card.exe
From a very young age, I had high expectations placed on me. My mother demanded complete obedience and absolute perfection from me in everything I did and how I behaved. School was no exception. I remember being terrified of report cards and parent-teacher conferences all the way back into kindergarten, because anything less than perfect behavior and grades meant punishment. That could include beatings, hard labor, humiliation, shaming, being grounded, having my belongings threatened, destroyed, or taken away, and oh, so much more.
In kindergarten, I threw a snowball at a car and received a “pink-slip” from the principal Mr. Kessler that I had to take home and have my mom sign. It wasn’t a suspension, detention, or any of that jazz. It was basically like “Hey, your kid broke a rule today, talk to them, and sign this so I know you did…and if they do it again, there will be a larger consequence.” It was a warning. Not punitive. Not end of the world. I was fucking five years old for Christ’s sake. It snowed in Wyoming enough for me to actually make a snowball, and I did. And I threw it and hit a parked car, and nothing was damaged and nobody got hurt. A kid being a kid, breaking a rule like five year old kids do. I got caught, scolded by the principal which was more than enough to make me learn my lesson, and that should have been enough on its own. When I got home a gave the pink slip to my mother, all hell broke loose. I got my ass beat. And from that day on, I viewed pink slips like a death sentence. I remember it like it was yesterday. Trauma burns permanent scars in you like that. Even the little-t kind.
In late elementary school, I was enrolled in Boy Scouts by my mother and an expectation was placed on me to be an Eagle Scout, with no exceptions. “You will become an Eagle Scout.” I didn’t want to do Boy Scouts, and certainly didn’t like merit badge crap and being bullied by the older scouts in the troops I had been in. No choice though. Do what your mother says, or else there was certainly some form of hell to pay, and I really didn’t want to find out what that was. She had a motive for me being an Eagle Scout, that I wouldn’t discover until after I met the US Air Force recruiter for the first time.
This pattern of expectations of perfection and performance continued through elementary school and middle school. If I didn’t have perfect grades, I was punished in one way or another, grounded and having my belongings taken away or destroyed, and then fifth grade through middle school, I began being sent outside in the cold to split firewood. Yes, as a 12 year old I was throwing around an 8lb steel maul. My stepdad made it custom just for me, and he spared no expense in making sure it was heavy and unbreakable. More than once I tried to break it on purpose. One time I was ten minutes late home from school, and was sentenced to four hours a night of splitting wood, for an entire month. And let’s not forget that at parent-teacher conferences, if there was even so much as an indication that I had misbehaved, I would have to endure some kind of similar hell for that too, and any kind of misbehavior report also meant that I was going to have my ass beat on top of that.
> the house had a door, my bedroom didn’t: loft_bunk.log
Then came my high school years. I have written about the forced isolation my mother put me through and her intentionally making contact with my father difficult in a way that felt like punishment if I wanted to talk to him. I wrote about that isolation in Sharp_As_A_Thumbnail_Scratch_v1.zip.
“My mom moved me away from my hometown and my dad, onto 53 acres in rural Idaho. Middle of nowhere. Off the grid. No electricity. No internet. I had to ride my bike 7.5 miles down a washboarded dirt road to a pay phone, call my dad on a calling card, and hope he was around to answer. Then ride 7.5 miles back.”
Sharp_As_A_Thumbnail_Scratch_v1.zip
The actual isolation was much more than what I wrote about in that piece. They were building their completely custom dream log home, off the grid. At 13, I helped them build a shop first, put up some temporary walls in it, and they called that our house. No electricity, no running water or normal indoor plumbing for most of it. I had a “bedroom” in the loft, no door, no privacy. I had a very unstable metal platform sitting on top of four rounds of firewood with an uncomfortable used twin mattress that was my “bed”. My mom routinely went through my belongings and read my journals. Sounds like a prison cell in many ways. I was in charge of making sure the portable toilet seat platform that we placed over a hole I had to dig in the ground was operational. If the hole filled up, I better have another hole ready. In the winter, they decided to make a contraption of a toilet seat on a bucket, and when we used it, we would cover our shit with sawdust to tamp down the odor. If I didn’t want to use that disgusting thing, it meant my ass was going outside in the winter to use the outhouse. And what did they do with the bag of shit when the bucket filled up? They burned it in the wood stove that heated our home, because why waste all that “fuel”. A 10F toilet seat is a special kind of experience. So is a bucket full of a week’s worth of sawdust-covered shit. And let’s not forget the experience of the smell of burning shit smoke. You never forget any of that.
If I wanted to shower, I had to heat up a pot of water on the wood stove. I would then carefully put that water into a box wine plastic bag they had covered into a shower contraption. A gallon of water. I would hang that bag up in a shower stall they had piped a drain to outside the converted shop we lived in, and pray that I had all the soap rinsed off me before the 1 gallon of water ran out. If I didn’t I was just going to have to towel off the suds and call it good. That wine bag began to smell, and the one and only time I complained about the odor, I was told that if I wanted “the privilege” of a shower, I better just shut my mouth. So I did.
I was their primary source of labor as a teenager. My labor was a priority at all times. I received my age-in-dollars each month for an allowance in exchange. Pennies per hour of labor. I was digging foundations, moving bags of concrete, pounding fence posts, handling huge logs, lifting shit that was dangerously heavy, working high up on ladders with no safety gear, working around welding and paint fumes, you name it. If there was a hard labor task, they didn’t hire out help, because they had me. I was zero-cost.
Having friends, or heaven forbid, a girlfriend was intentionally made impossible. In one fun moment, I was dating a girl, which my parents were furious about, and I wanted to go see her. It was the weekend. They had told me that morning I could see her that evening as long as I helped them do all the assigned tasks with the home they were building. So around 5PM, I finished the tasks. I was so excited, I had a full five hours until 10PM curfew that I could spend with my girlfriend that I hadn’t seen for a week. Seeing her meant that I had to drive about 90 minutes round trip because we lived so far out in the sticks. That meant that I would have 3.5 hours of time with my girlfriend. 210 minutes of time with her was like a dream for me. I walked into the shop house, and let my mom and stepdad know I had finished the tasks. I was met with, “Actually we need you to do these two other things for us before you go.” Those two tasks would easily take me 90 minutes. So the 210 minutes with my girlfriend just got cut to 120, at the maximum. So, because I had no actual choice to say anything otherwise, I said, “Of course” and went to work. 90 minutes later, my stepfather comes out to the house site where I am just finishing up, and says, “Oh, there’s one other thing I need you to do before you go.” “Of course” I said. That one other thing took me a full hour, so now I am down to 60 minutes with my girlfriend, and 90 minutes of driving just to have it. As I am wrapping up that task, he comes back out to the housesite, with a broom. He walks up to me, and says, “Before you go, you need to sweep the house construction site” and pushed the broom towards me wanting me to take it from him. This construction site was not small, and it was a mess. Sawdust, nails, trash, dirt, and debris everywhere. Sweeping it up was going to easily take another 30 minutes, likely longer. And I immediately saw what they were doing, they were chopping away my ability to do what they promised me I could do earlier, they didn’t want me to see my girlfriend, and I blew a fuse. I took the broom out of his hands, and lunged forward towards him to show my anger. I said I wasn’t going to do it, and that I had worked all day for them and had hoped to see my girlfriend, and this was absolute bullshit. He exploded in anger, and beat me with the broom handle, and ordered me to the wood stack and told me to split wood until he said I was done. Because we had no phone, my girlfriend had no idea I wasn’t coming. She had no idea if I had got in an accident on the way. At 11pm, I was told I could stop splitting wood, come inside, clean up, and promptly go to bed. I was ordered to split wood every evening for the next two weeks after I finished helping them with all their labor for the day. I wasn’t allowed to call my girlfriend, explain anything, or leave the property at any point. She sat in the dark not knowing what had happened to me and why she hadn’t heard from me in over two weeks. Radio silence.
> it was always a privilege, never abuse: reframed.log
I was told that this way of living in fear and extreme control, in a temporary converted metal shop, with no bedroom door, no privacy, no indoor plumbing other than a shop sink with a cold water faucet and a shower stall that only had a drain, a shit bucket or frigid outhouse as a toilet, the aroma of burning shit, a one gallon smelly box wine bag shower, no running water, no electricity, no way to call my dad, not being allowed to have reliable connections with friends, and being their free source of the adult-level heavy labor they needed, was a privilege. It was an educational experience and I would have so many skills as an adult. It was making me resilient and able to survive what flat-landers (city folks) couldn’t survive. That it was making my body strong. That I would value and remember the experience for the rest of my life. It was always reframed into them “helping me” or it being a “benefit” to me.
The bus stop was a 0.6 mile walk.
Rain, snow, 10F, whatever…no ride to the bus stop, we walked.
In a small community, word travels fast. I heard people in the community within a few months of us moving there calling my parents “deviants” and when my parents learned of it, they took it as some kind of badge of honor. Like they were proud of the living situation I explained above. They said that the critics were the actual “deviants” and that we were the ones who had life figured out. That the kids I went to school with were going to be losers when they grew up, and I was going to be successful and strong because of this once-in-a-lifetime amazing opportunity and experience. I would leave home with so many skills and be extremely independent. And at many points, I believed them. I was completely brainwashed. It wasn’t until I started opening up about this in my mid-20s that therapists were like, “Uh….that’s not cool. Or normal. That’s abuse.”
The kids at school made fun of me. Relentlessly. I had one kid spit in my face one day. After all, I was the kid shitting in a bucket, with no electricity, or phone, and “deviant” parents. I wasn’t allowed to do extracurriculars or sports, because that would prevent me from using the free school bus for transportation to school. In a class size of 12, yes twelve total, I was the black sheep. I was the weird odd one. I was the “deviant” from the rest of my peers. I was rejected and spent my high school years feeling depressed, hopeless, and alone. I had no therapy or support. I had a school counselor that would talk to me from time to time, but I was very careful not to tell her any real details because she might call CPS.
And the high school academic experience? Well it matched elementary and middle-school. The only acceptable GPA was a 4.000. An A- on a paper, test, or report card was considered an F by my parents. I would be punished for A- grades. I was told just before high school started, “You will be valedictorian.” But not just that, I was told, you are good at computers, and “college is a waste and is for fucking idiots” and you will join the military and do computer work for them and you will do computers as a career for the rest of your life.
> my mother signed the contract: delayed_entry.log
Okay, here’s where the Air Force comes in.
In the second quarter of my senior year a month or two after turning 17, I was told “we are going to the Air Force recruiter next week, and you are enlisting in the delayed entry program.” The next week, we met the recruiter, she guaranteed the 3C0X1 Communications Computer Systems Operations job, and printed out the contract. I was 17, and couldn’t legally sign it. So my mother grabbed the pen, and signed it for me. She singlehandedly put me in the military, it was not some “unselfish act of volunteering and patriotism” that resulted in my military service. That day, I was now under contract to serve in the United States Air Force. I took some kind of oath into the delayed entry program. And on the way home, my mother told me that she still expected me to be an Eagle Scout, because it meant an automatic promotion to E-2 upon completion of boot camp. Ah, now I knew what the god damned Eagle Scout thing was all about.
After I went to MEPS for my physical health evaluation and crab-walked naked and had my asshole examined by some angry old man, I realized that just because I was guaranteed the computer job in the Air Force, I was still going to be trained and expected to defend our country, which meant that I may be ordered to do anything, up to and including pointing a gun at someone and killing them, or even worse, dying in the defense of my country. The thought mortified me. I am not a fighter, I have never been one. I don’t like conflict. I don’t believe in war. I didn’t want to die. I told my mom I didn’t want to do the military, and she first reminded me the contract was signed and there was no going back, and then reassured me everything was “just fine” because we weren’t at war and the world was in a peaceful state. This was in late 2000.
In May 2001, with not a single A- or lower on a report card over the past four years of high school, and all requirements met for being Valedictorian, I graduated high school as a co-Valedictorian with a classmate that tied me for the title. It was one of the best moments of her life, it was her dream, she worked hard for it, and she made it. For me, I wanted to burn the plaque because there was no part of me proud of it, because it was not something I wanted, and the only reason I stood on the stage and gave a Valedictory speech that day was because I lived in fear of abuse if I didn’t attain that title.
Military service is in the Gustke bloodline though.
Two days before the deadline of my 18th birthday in early September 2001, I finished my Eagle Scout service project and was awarded the “prestigious” rank. All these people congratulated me and told me how proud they were. I also wanted to burn that certificate and badge because no part of me was proud of it, because it was also not something I wanted, and the only reason I had the patch on my Boy Scout uniform was because I lived in fear of abuse if I didn’t attain that rank.
Then the timing got worse.
On September 11th, 2001, only a few days after my mom made good on her promise to kick me out of the house on my 18th birthday, I reported to the James A. McClure Federal Building in Boise, Idaho at 7AM to MEPS where I was going to be sworn in, put on an airplane to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for basic military training, aka boot camp. While us recruits were waiting in the lobby and watching news on TV, something happened, and the news shifted to a live video of the first World Trade Center building on fire, following some kind of a plane crash. At that time, the news had no idea what was going on, so they just had a live feed of the twin towers showing the one billowing in smoke. We had nothing to do, so we were all just watching the TV like people do when there is breaking news. And 17 minutes later, a second plane flew into view of the camera and hit the other tower, and there was an explosion and huge clouds of smoke. And then 34 minutes later, the Pentagon was struck. And then 26 minutes later, the crash in Pennsylvania. The military folks in MEPS told us to stay in that room, and they would tell us next steps because all flights had been cancelled. We looked out the windows outside, and saw that the federal building we were in was being evacuated, and there were armed guys in black uniforms all over the place securing the perimeter. The MEPS floor wasn’t being evacuated, and for all we knew at that time, all Federal buildings were targets of the terrorist attack, and we were sitting ducks inside one. To say I was scared, is putting it lightly.
6 days later on 9/17/2001, they had a flight for us to boot camp, and off we went. When I arrived to the base on a bus, the bus was boarded with heavily armed security forces members shining flashlights in our eyes and yelling at us to show our IDs and orders. The base was extremely locked down. Force Protection Condition Delta, the highest security level that exists. And you can imagine how I felt then, considering how scared I was of having to actually defend or die for my country when I was signed up during peacetime.
> my fingerprints were on all of it: moral_injury.log
Fast forward to Camp As Sayliyah, near Doha, Qatar.
I look hungover, because I probably was.
Did that every day.
In March, 2004, I was deployed to the middle-east to support Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. I was assigned to a joint special operations unit in Qatar. That deployment is where the secondary-PTSD was formed and where the moral injury occurred. The base I was at was practically a resort, it was a rest-and-relaxation base and headquarters of CENTCOM and covered in lots of military brass. Rest and relaxation means that combat troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan would come there for 2 weeks in the middle of their one-year combat tour to “decompress” and have a mini-vacation. I went to the bar on base every night, because at the age of 20 I was already abusing alcohol and the TCNs (third country nationals) running the bar didn’t care if you were under 21 as long as you paid for the beer. The R&R troops also went to the bar. And when alcohol flows, so do the war stories. In those war stories and in other information I was exposed to in the performance of my duties, I learned that innocent civilians, including children and women were being routinely killed by our forces. If the forces entered a home that they had “intel” was harboring an enemy, and anyone in that home felt like a threat, they just killed them. Sometimes they just killed them anyways. One soldier told me he had to “blow away” a young child with a backpack on that was standing on a sidewalk as the convoy approached, waving at them, because he “might” have an IED (bomb) in the backpack. “I don’t fuck around anymore, I just shoot anything near the convoy path,” he said while chuckling, “it’s my life or theirs.”
I learned that hospitals and schools, and literally anything they thought might have an enemy in it, were being bombed and destroyed, and every person in those buildings was being killed or seriously injured in the strikes. Doctors, nurses, emergency aid, women, children, didn’t matter, because bombs don’t discriminate. I was told stories about the details of what that aftermath looked like. Body parts all over the place. Maimed survivors limping out with limbs missing. Kids missing eye balls, or having their bodies charred. Mothers holding their dead children and wailing. No details were left out in the stories being told over beers. NONE.
“Open 3215’s” folder in the background. It’s empty. Because I closed tickets like a MOFO.
One day, I was doing my IT work, and I was called over to a computer in an intelligence facility that some Army intel buddies were at, and one guy said with a smile, “Dude…check this shit out.” I didn’t know it, but it was a live video feed of a public execution being streamed from somewhere in Saudi Arabia. And just as I walked up and looked at the screen without any warning, I saw the sword come down, the man’s head chopped off, blood squirting out of his neck and all over everywhere, and the head rolling down the steps and the crowd cheering.
On another evening, I got to hear all about one soldier’s battle buddy being shot over a hundred times when he was ambushed by enemy combatants. When the unit returned fire on the ambush, several other members were killed and/or seriously wounded. I got to hear about him ripping his shirt off and stuffing pieces of it into bullet holes of a comrade, and watching his best friend bleed out to death as bullet after bullet hit him, unable to get to him and save his life.
I also got to hear about all the terrible things terrorists were doing to service members they captured, and learned all about what that torture included. Ripping off fingernails, hot irons to the eye, burning/branding them in other ways, you name it. If it is something one might see in a SAW movie, the terrorists were doing something ten times worse, to my brothers and sisters in arms, and I was learning all about it.
Each day I reported for duty, and made sure the communication systems were operational that supported these specific military operations “up north” I felt sick and guilty. Because I directly supported and enabled the critical communication infrastructure of the operations, my fingerprints were all over the innocent people murdered and maimed. My fingerprints were all over the charred toddlers. My fingerprints were all over the rubble of the hospitals and schools. My fingerprints were all over all kinds of lives destroyed or seriously damaged. My fingerprints were on the mother holding her dead child. And on top of that, my fingerprints were all over the soldiers who were dying up there in the gruesome and terrible ways they were. My fingerprints were all over the spouses, children, friends, and families of the service members who didn’t come home alive, were missing, were imprisoned, or came home completely fucked up.
And the last traumatic event was one evening when I was outside smoking a cigarette in the middle of the night. We heard a weird hissing noise and a thud come from a few hundred yards away on the other side of a wall between our compound and the Qatari military base. We shrugged our shoulders and didn’t think anything of it. Finished our cigarettes. I got off shift at 6AM, and went to bed. At 7:30AM, my supervisor was beating on my door and told me to report immediately for duty. I threw on my uniform, and went to my unit. When I got there, we were all taken into a secure briefing room, and we were given a briefing on a terrorist event that had happened overnight. A terrorist had climbed to the top of a water tower outside our base, and fired a shoulder-mounted RPG (rocket propelled grenade) at our base. That grenade landed just over the wall from where we were smoking, and malfunctioned, and luckily didn’t detonate. Had it detonated, I may not be writing this blog right now.
This is one of Saddam Hussein’s gold-plated AK-47 that was seized a palace of his in Iraq.
> told I wasn’t hurt enough to qualify: no_ptsd_here.log
Here’s what coming home looked like.
When I got home from deployment, I was deemed as not having PTSD because I had never been to an actual combat zone. I was told I didn’t need any mental health services because I wasn’t exposed to any kind of military trauma. I actually believed all of that until August of 2025, when in circle with a group of veterans, I learned about moral injury and secondary-PTSD. I learned in that moment, that I indeed had both, and I had been carrying it for over 21 years, with no treatment, and without ever having discussed any of it in any amount of detail, with anyone. I believed the combat guys were the ones that got messed up psychologically, and there was no way I got messed up because I didn’t get shot at or see people die. I thought I was actually undeserving and unworthy of expressing any negative impacts of my deployment because I was at an R&R “resort” base and never went to a combat zone. I told myself things along the lines of, “I can’t possibly complain about anything because I didn’t set foot in Iraq or Afghanistan, I had it easy. My deployment was hardly a deployment.”
The “resort” nature of the deployment essentially gaslit me into believing I didn’t and couldn’t possibly have any trauma from it.
By the end of my enlistment in September 2007, I had developed several physical and mental health conditions. I was told my lower spine had more arthritis than they see in people in their 60s. I had unexplainable gastrointestinal issues, severe mental health problems, sleep problems, and unexplainable skin conditions. I was eventually given a 100% Permanent and Total Disability rating with the Department of Veterans Affairs. In the time since my discharge, I have had unexplainable random joint issues in nearly every joint in my body. These issues appear suddenly without a known cause, mimic something one would have from an injury, and then often disappear suddenly with no explanation for the “healing”. I will always question the long-term health impacts of the three experimental anthrax vaccinations I received, and the 12 weekly “flu shots” I received in tech school that were never documented in my records and the military denied happened.
SSgt Gustke received an honorable discharge after 6-years and 12-days of active-duty military service.
I still have health conditions that doctors have not been able to successfully manage or control. I have sleep issues including chronic nightmares. I have been diagnosed with five major mental health disorders connected to my military service. My military service-connected medical conditions require me to take 19 pills a day for the rest of my life, assuming they don’t get more severe. I have had 12 major involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations. I am usually in an emergency room twice a year on average for acute sudden non-mental health problems, which are almost always connected to a military-service related medical condition. I have had 9 surgeries since 2006, all connected to my military service, and the anesthesia has caused damage to my brain that was confirmed in nuclear brain imaging in 2024. The toxicity related brain damage can mimic traumatic brain injuries in people. I developed substance abuse disorder directly linked to me self-medicating the nervous system dysregulation caused by the service-connected mental health conditions, physical pain, secondary-PTSD, and moral injury. I started self-medicating years before I even knew I had mental health problems. My deployment is when I began abusing alcohol and experienced my first black out. I didn’t even know I was self-medicating, I just knew that when I used drugs and alcohol, I felt better.
The military trauma combined with the childhood trauma has caused immense amounts of suffering for me and others in my interpersonal relationships, and led to me developing and perpetuating toxic patterns throughout most of my life. These patterns have destroyed many connections, or have led to unhealthy connections that I have later had to end. I have spent the last year identifying and eliminating those patterns, other sources of suffering, and becoming chemically sober. The mess I am cleaning up today and the reason I struggle with Veterans Day is the story I told you above. I feel like a traitor to myself because I abandoned and did things against my beliefs, morals, values, and ethics when I followed orders I was given in the military. I didn’t unselfishly sign up for that. I didn’t volunteer for it. I didn’t sign up for permanent disabilities. I could have had a full-ride scholarship to any school I wanted to attend, and never touched the military. Instead, I have permanent disabilities that come with a free GI Bill gift card.
Good grades, good behavior, Eagle Scout, Valedictorian, and Veteran. They were never my idea. Never something I wanted for me. And there is a piece of unresolvable anger, from that unresolvable inner conflict I have, that was created by little-t trauma from my childhood, that resulted in the military service that led me to becoming a disabled veteran, that I will carry to my grave.
“The IT career was never my idea. It was my mom’s. It was chosen for me. … I graduated as a valedictorian and could have had a free-ride scholarship to attend college nearly anywhere I wanted to.”
Interstate_42_v1.zip
> I went anyway: showed_up.log
The last part of this story is that 8 years after my military service ended, I was called in to assist with my mother’s care in the last weeks of her battle with terminal cancer. I did it, because I thought that is what a “good son” should do. I still wanted to make mom proud. Caring for her was not something I truly wanted to do, but I did it anyways because her happiness as she transitioned into death mattered more than mine. During the last weeks of my mother’s life, she never said sorry. Continued to mention ways I had failed in my life, and continued to talk negatively about my father with the hope that I would take her side. He had been dead for 12 years at that point and she had been divorced from him for over two decades. While my mother was alive, she never owned any of the damages caused, never apologized, shifted the blame onto me for not being “good enough” or meeting her standards, made herself the victim of me several times, and avoided all accountability for the emotional and physical abuse she caused and/or allowed others to cause me. Psychologists call this DARVO. DARVO has been a pattern I have seen time and time again throughout my life. They say, “you choose your mother” and for most of my life, that was the case. Not anymore.
So today, I went to the Veterans service anyways. I may not have signed up for the military and volunteered to enlist, but I did do the time and I did it with absolute dignity and honor. I am proud of how I served, even if I didn’t truly want to. I am a victim of this mess and I am also responsible for cleaning it up, which I am doing every day. But victimhood is not my identity. My identity is the one I choose in my life today and its how I live my life today. My identity is one of healing, sobriety, inner growth, ownership, accountability, and doing everything I can to reduce my suffering and not cause or increase suffering for others. This entire blog has been written in my head for years, perhaps decades, and it has been festering and tormenting me for that entire time. Keeping it in has caused me unimaginable amounts of suffering and led to substance and alcohol abuse. Keeping it in my head any longer, is knowingly increasing my suffering, and as I say, “knowingly increasing my own suffering makes about as much sense as eating broken glass or cutting off my fingers.”
Today is the day, that I exercise the constitutional freedom of speech that I pledged to defend, and honorably defended as a permanently and totally disabled veteran of the United States Air Force. My oath to the United States constitution has no expiration. I may not agree with how I entered the military, but I remain true to my word and what I promised this country.
This blog is written today for those service members and civilians who do not feel safe enough or able to say their story, to talk about their trauma, to share what they experienced in their lives, and to share how all of that has impacted them. It is for the people supporting the service members, so they can understand at a much deeper level the service connected challenges we face, and how our personal traumas before and after military service are often woven into it. It is for those who are disabled and lost parts of their health to earn the GI Bill. It is for those people who struggle with alcohol and drugs today that they began using to numb their emotional wounds. It is for the people whose secrets, fears, traumas, guilt, moral injury, remorse, and shame led to their deaths by suicide.
If this blog prevents one person from ending their life, or even decreases the suffering of anyone by a millionth of a percent, it will have served its purpose.
The final note I want to end this with. If you are a civilian, and you say “Thank you for your service” to a veteran, please follow up that statement with why you are thanking them. We hear those five words all the time, and they are often hollow. It would mean a world of difference to those of us whose lives are permanently changed as a result of our service to the country.
So, long story short, that’s why I looked angry today.
Peace.
I am 2KVYOT3. I am love. I am peace.
I am a proud United States Air Force disabled veteran.
If this post left you feeling unwell, you don’t have to sit with it alone.
Veterans: dial 9-8-8 then press 1, text 838255, or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.
Everyone else: call or text 9-8-8. In an emergency, call 9-1-1 or go to your nearest emergency room.
