Thank Me for My Service: A Veteran’s Cry for Help

by Chris Sparks

In July 2018, I was medically retired from the Army after bouncing off of the earth as a result of a parachute malfunction. I came back to Louisiana with my family, telling myself that peace, at last, would greet me at the door. But there is a stark difference between homecoming and refuge, and I was about to learn it the hard way. The quiet of my past wasn’t still; it was merely lying in wait. I returned to a landscape of broken families and silences louder than any military operation, to the old dance of divorced parents who wouldn’t speak, the strained gatherings and tense holidays of two families bound by marriage but fractured in spirit. In the Army, duty shielded me, miles kept me safe. But here, surrounded by the ghosts of everything I had left behind, I saw that peace was not something given but something fought for. I was not yet free from the fight.

The boundaries that distance had once enforced were gone. When we were stationed in places like California or North Carolina, family could only reach us through the phone or the rare visit. But in Louisiana, those barriers disappeared. The expectations came flooding in, demanding that I be all things to everyone. Every holiday, every visit was a reminder of the roles I was meant to play—the reliable son, husband, father—each piece of me claimed by someone else. But I didn’t know how to be any of these things anymore.

There is something brutal, something relentless about being misunderstood by those who are meant to protect you, those to whom you turn in moments of your deepest need. When I tried to talk about it, what I got in return was a quiet, implicit message: you’re different now. It was as though my trauma, my pain, was something I was meant to carry silently, like it was some kind of invisible debt I owed. I was supposed to soldier on, adapt, move forward.

So, I ran.

I took a counterintelligence contract in Afghanistan. Twelve-hour days, seven days a week, caked in dust and the constant hum of something almost like freedom. There, my voice mattered. I was respected, I was useful, I was in control. But even as I found a strange peace in that barren landscape, I knew I was running from what waited back home. Six months in, my son on a FaceTime call, told me he’d draw me a map so I could find my way back home. That cut through everything. So, I came home, knowing full well I wasn’t ready.

I joined a city law enforcement agency, hoping the uniform would bring some of that purpose back. But it was hollow. I worked strange hours, saw things no one should see, and told myself it was noble to suffer in silence. I wore my misery like a badge, a testament to my endurance. But eventually, the weight of it became too much. So, in October 2021, I submitted my letter of resignation. It was a quiet acknowledgment that it was time to move on.

With nowhere else to turn, I tried therapy. Erin, my talk therapist, was the first person in years to make me feel seen. I told her how I was always getting in my own way, how I wanted to take ownership of my life. After a few sessions, she suggested I see a psychiatrist for medication. I was already taking Vyvanse for ADHD, but under my psychiatrist’s guidance, they added Lexapro to the mix. This was the start of a series of medications, each layered on top of the last.

At first, I thought things were getting better. By Spring of 2022, I began to lose weight—quickly. I dropped down to 145 pounds, nothing but skin and bones. I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn’t recognize, yet my doctors didn’t seem to notice. I kept going, despite the red flags. Eventually, more prescriptions followed—Cymbalta, Gabapentin, Valium, Flexeril—medications intended to restore me but that only pushed me further into the darkness.

By August 2022, I was unraveling. I’d locked myself in a New Orleans hotel room, determined to work on my one-man show, Thank Me For My Service: A Veteran’s Cry For Help. It was raw, unfiltered—a piece where I’d bait the audience into thanking me, only to show them the hollow echo of those words. But this attempt to reclaim myself backfired. My psychiatrist, worried, pressured me to come to her office, and when I resisted, she threatened to file commitment papers if I didn’t comply. It felt like an assault on everything I was fighting to hold onto. Isolated and misunderstood. I channeled my desperation into creating a documentary by the same name.

It became a last plea for someone—anyone—to listen. Raw and unpolished, it mirrored the chaos within me. It wasn’t about art; it was about survival. I secretly recorded a final session with my psychiatrist, hoping it would bring some clarity. And as she spoke, she said things unbecoming of any professional, remarks that exposed a profound ignorance about what I was going through. I realized she was not going to be the one to help me, and I fired her. But I kept the footage. Paired with the recordings I’d made in the hotel room, they became the documentary—one that wasn’t a success by any standard that matters. Sure, it found an audience, earned praise, but it nearly ruined me. I became delusional about what it could do for me, standing in four-million-dollar apartments I had no business considering, convinced that this film would change everything. In the end, whatever its success meant was only another weight, pulling me further from myself.

In time, new people entered my life. These were people who knew nothing of my struggles, who hadn’t seen me stumble but who truly saw me as I was. They accepted me in all my complications and jagged edges. And their acceptance was a gift that planted the faintest glimmer of hope. They were a reminder that maybe, just maybe, I could be loved without hiding the hardest parts of myself. That I could be seen in all my humanity, my frailty, my resilience.

Eventually, I did what I should have done from the beginning: I entered each of those medications into my Apple Health app. Seven warnings came back for serotonin syndrome. Seven. And in that moment, everything sharpened into clarity—the relentless mania, the confusion, the feeling of slipping away—it was all there. A year of misdiagnosis, an endless haze of medications, a whirlwind of misunderstandings. It was as if I had spent a year submerged in murky water, gasping, only to finally break the surface. I found myself not broken, but instead bruised by serotonin syndrome, hidden beneath layers of medical oversight.

It is important to say that this is not an indictment of those who tried to help me. Most of the time, the system does work. Most of the time, doctors and therapists offer a lifeline that saves lives. This was an unfortunate misfire, a tangle of well-meaning actions gone painfully wrong. People should still seek help, should still reach out and trust where they can. But in that seeking, we must remember to extend grace—not only to ourselves but to those whose calling it is to heal. They are human, flawed and fallible as we are, and they too carry burdens unseen.

For me, healing came in reclaiming myself, slowly peeling away the layers of labels until I could face what lay beneath. It came in forgiving the system, my doctors, my family, my friends—even when they failed me. Perhaps most profoundly, it came in forgiving myself. The people who stayed, who saw me through the darkest hours, were there not to save me but to remind me that survival, at its core, is an act of grace. And that love, real love, does not ask us to be perfect but to be present, to try again when we feel least able.

We must be our own advocates and hold ourselves accountable—not because the system is malicious or our loved ones uncaring, but because both are imperfect. In recognizing these imperfections—in them and in myself—I can begin to mend what was broken. Healing, after all, is a journey, not a destination. In the end, grace is all we have—an acceptance of ourselves, of others, a quiet humility in knowing that we are bound to fail one another and yet, somehow, we remain. For it is not perfection that makes us human but the act of forgiving, the act of seeing each other anew, and the decision to stand together despite all that we cannot understand.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on October 24, 2024.

Chris Sparks is an Army veteran, former police officer, and stand-up comic who brings his raw, personal experiences to life through darkly comedic storytelling. After being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and grappling with serotonin syndrome, Chris turned his chaotic journey into a powerful narrative that explores mental health, trauma, and self-reconciliation. His unflinching humor and introspective writing make him a unique voice in the conversation about mental health and the military experience. Follow his journey and insights on Instagram at @mrmaryclarence.

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.