Hi everyone! I have been blogging off and on for a few years now. Some may recognize my work and my writing has always led me back to this amazing journey we call "life". I wrote about many different topics such as music, fitness, and mental health, which are all seemingly related in some way. I have always been a mental health advocate due mainly from my own personal experience with the darkness that seemingly overcomes me from time-to-time.
I served in the military (honorably discharged) and then moved on to working in a law enforcement agency, where I recently retired. Along the ways, I have had symptoms of post-traumatic stress and continuously ignored my mental health. I typically wrote it off and dealt with it alone. I joined the military at a young age and during that time I served two tours overseas in a combat zone. It was quite an experience. Within that short-term of four years, my brother, Jun-Jun, who was also in the military was Killed-In-Action on his third tour overseas. I have never seen anything destroy a family so quickly, infiltrating the most secure borders and exploiting its weaknesses. The loss of my brother destroyed my family.
I was simply lost and alone. I was trying to decipher the meaning of my experiences in my young mind, but I could not make any sense of it so I locked it away in a box in the coldest and darkest place in my head. I never dared to open that box and never attempted to relive those horrifying moments of my life. After doing the same things over and over, it seems to become the new "normal". The noise in my head would become normal and I was used to it. It was like I needed the noise in order to feel normal.
All this took place while I was in my late teens and early 20's. Today I am 39 years old and I still struggle with things from my past, but what I come to learn is that it is exactly that...my past. My past does not define me nor does it describe the person I am today. This is my story...Rooted Kingdom.
