As previously relayed, I joined the military to kill people. One of the many underlying issues that led me to that point was insecurity – insecurity that I wasn’t manly enough, that my body wasn’t what it was supposed to be, that I didn’t really know how to talk or be with women, that I would never be enough for whatever it was I was supposed to be here in life, and numerous other areas of self-doubt. 

I felt that by joining the military, I would become something more … part of something bigger than little doubtful, insecure me; and, at the start, for the most part, it worked. The military breaks you down from whatever it was you thought you were before joining, concept by concept. So you thought you were a fast runner? There’s someone there faster than you. You saw yourself as a joker? There’s someone there with way more banter than you. You fancied yourself as a tough guy? There’s someone there much harder, who’s banged out more people than you’ve had hot meals. You go to war, have a few contacts and see yourself as a killer? There are people there who have had more contacts than you’ve got in your phone book.

I loved my time in the Marines – the people I met, the experiences I had, and the role it played in my life journey. However, once I left and was no longer ‘a Marine’, my identity crisis began, because if I wasn’t ‘a Marine’ anymore, then who and what was I? And, in all fairness, I hadn’t entirely stepped away from what is within a soldier’s remit. I guess some could even say it was more of a lateral move, for I had managed to stay within the comfort zone of what I had come to know in my new line of work, when taking on the role of a close protection operator … albeit less of a frontline role than the one a soldier encompasses, and yet still … there they were, all of my insecurities. 

It seems I hadn’t really overcome any of my self-esteem issues, I realised that I had hidden under the guise of a new identity that had been given to me – ‘Marine’ and ‘soldier’ … so much so, in fact, that when they were gone, and I was no longer officially neither, I was still very much the ‘doubtful, insecure me’, looking for the next thing in which I might be able to find a sense of completeness.

Again, it always seems to come back to the same lesson: it was never about learning how to be more of a man, how to be better with women, how to be physically stronger … how to be more of anything, or any identity. Healing our insecurities is only ever going to be about being our most authentic self, because that way it’s impossible to be insecure, and it’s impossible to fail – we are already all and everything we will ever need to be …

Right here, right now.