The Monster Within

My head is pounding. My body is exhausted. My teeth are clinched. As I drive, I recognize the signs there is something wrong. My mind is searching for something, for what would become these words. With every passing letter, the headache subsides, the body rejuvenated, and the jaw begins to release. My mind never seems to stop. It is always watching, processing, and obsessing. It triggers a deep impulse to immediately act and resolve everything. More and more I must admit I have deep seeded obsessive compulsive tendencies, and it is something I have struggled with my whole life. Something that runs in my family.

As a child I hated sand. I wanted things clean and neat. I spent hours solving puzzles, fixing things, and understanding how things worked. I hated my hands being dirty. I had trouble sleeping, kept awake but an issue unresolved. As a child, they were minor. 

But why has it become this monster? Why do I spend hours after work talking to others, insisting I fix the issues I see? Why do I do so, knowing it is at my own expense? Each passing hour, day after day, I sleep less and less. Why am I always interjecting? Why can I not forget the smallest problem? Every passing piece of trash on the ground I want to stop and rectify. From the person with the most minor problems to the person with most profound problems, my mind obsesses. Without resolution, it will not let go. 

Why has it manifested itself into this monster? It is because I owe so many people debts I could never pay. I am who I am because so many people stopped when so many passed me by. I am here because some died while I lived. I am here at the grace and shoulders of so many others. Who am I to piss away such a gift? When the mind sees, it screams. Every step I take away it gets louder. “How fucking dare !!”

How dare I walk away when I can help. How dare I ignore what I can fix. How dare I let a man starve when I could teach him to fish. How dare I hoard the lessons bestowed upon me by others, as if they were ever mine to have. They were and are only mine to borrow. They are only mine to share, as they so graciously shared with me.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on December 23, 2024.

Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.