Game Time is Pain Time

Let's Fucking Go!

A Grumpy Combat Veteran Gearing up For a Long Ruck on His Birthday

Howdy,

Over the last year, I’ve lost so much:

• My family, through divorce caused by the VA’s neglect

• Part of my sanity along the way

• Innumerable Afghan allies due to our country’s shameful, bi-partisan neglect of our brothers and sisters trapped behind enemy lines

• My home

That’s quite a bit for one year, let alone retiring from the military and moving for the 18th time in 20 years.

An exhausted Grumpy Combat Veteran passed out on the ground

But, on the other hand, despite all the heartache, we’ve also accomplished the following:

• Stood up

  Grumpy Combat Veteran
  , boasting nearly 2,000 subscribers, and have supported numerous first-time writers in the process

• Stood up a Moral Injury Support Group with our partners at Give An Hour that provides free support to veterans and active duty servicemembers

• Stood up the Afghan-American Veterans Alliance, which will be working closely with Global Friends of Afghanistan

• Successfully “relocated” 50+ Afghans to the United States

• Helped innumerable Afghans obtain their legal permanent residence

Life is never easy; it’s always a struggle. Although this year has been one of the worst in my life, I’m still standing because, like my Afghan brothers and sisters, I’m a survivor. I’ve been blown up, shot at too many times to take it personally, dumped, divorced, and everything in between.

But I just keep coming.

That’s the secret to life: get up. Just get back up and keep going. No matter what. No matter what has been taken from you. No matter how cruel the world can be. No matter how much pain you’ve endured.

Get. The. Fuck. Back. Up.

That’s what every Afghan who made it to the United States did. Despite the odds, they all got up and fought for their freedoms.

If they can do it, then I can too.

Today, I ruck for our Afghan brothers and sisters, who are trapped behind enemy lines to a vicious gender apartheid regime that murdered 2K Americans, 1K Europeans, and 70K Afghan soldiers.

They are not forgotten.