If you have PTSD, please please please don’t go it alone. There’s no point in pride, or its sister, shame. Doing it alone doesn’t get you a cookie. There are pros who can save you years of struggle.

Brace yourself, this post will be longer than you, me, and anyone in between could anticipate. It will be long, rambling, and make me cry several times. I feel no shame, because lives are no small matter. I won’t feel shame because I draw my strength from my struggles. I can’t feel shame because no one is whole, everyone is broken, and there is nothing wrong with it. If other posts haven’t made it clear, I think about death a lot. It’s a great motivator to smile with each breath. Dividing the people into the self and others is a natural, often unconscious distinction. This post deals with the others part of that distinction. If you haven’t discerned it, this article is about killing others.

People are connected in all sorts of ways, and killing just one rips a whole void in the web of personal strifes, mundane boredoms, and peals of laughter that the timeline once had. It rips a conscious soul out of the [fabric of our universe] and leaves you staring at the stillness left behind. It’s when all armchair philosophies fall by the wayside. All that’s left is the boy convulsing on the street. The words mercy, strength, and peace make sense all of a sudden. It comes as a tidal wave, crashing away all but the strongest in you. You know you won’t be the same. I didn’t know how to be okay with it. I was intending to be an Air Force PJ, jumping into ridiculously dangerous situations and performing emergency responder duties to save lives. They’re there to save lives, but were well trained to dish out what they could fix. I couldn’t imagine the future where the kid on the ground didn’t tell his friends of the time he stole the wrong guy’s bike.

I did martial arts for a little less than a third of my life. To a certain extent, my reactions are hard-wired. It’s like a cold, quick beast who only knows the soft spots of human anatomy and figure out to stop bodies. Autonomy is closest to sanity, and this beast doesn’t care for my free will. I know now I had control which is strength. I had slight control over my reflexes. As anyone with a mental health issue knows, a strong enough wind can blow a predisposed brain sideways.

I started working for Jimmy Johns as a bike courier in the spring semester of 2015. My manager and I were standing around in the shop when it started to snow. Being a rare occurrence in North Carolina, my manager pointed it out. As we looked outside, we saw a kid hop on my rusty mountain bike and take off with it. I dashed out, ran him down, and flung the thief into some patio furniture. As he got up in a daze, I got behind him and choked him until he went limp. His last gasp for air is a sound I wish I could forget. My autonomy gave a little spark and I let the thief fall to the ground. It clicked as I watched his body crumple that he wasn’t older than eighteen.

I heard a yell and saw a kid running towards me, assumedly the thief’s partner. The beast grinned its wolfish grin. The boy’s chin was up. I threw a punch aimed for his adam’s apple. In the moments before it connected, I felt the malice of the beast release me. My body released all desire to hurt these kids. It was a permanent release, the most powerful emotion I’ve ever felt. A whole identity was shaken to its core. I understood mercy and love in that instant. My fist loose, I pulled the punch with all that I could.

Unfortunately for both of us, the boy ran into my limp fist with his adams apple. He fell backwards and spasmed for a bit. I watched in horror. This kid was stealing a crappy bike I got for free, and he nearly lost his life doing it. I then realized I wished the first thief was faster on my bike. I wish they were smoother with their operation. I wish they didn’t feel the pressure to steal. I wish I could talk to these kids. I wish I could show them how to run a smoother op, and maybe, just fucking maybe, talk them out of doing it at all. It might have been a gang initiation. Maybe they needed the money, which is funny because that bike was probably worth $25. But these are wishes and maybes, neither of which happened. I still see that kid, on the ground struggling to breathe. I see such a stark difference in the subsets of fate, on the ground struggling to breathe. I see somber church ceremonies, crying mothers, the talk in his classroom. I think of how the soft beginnings of a hearty snowfall was his last day on Earth. His social network would have a hole punched in it. I’m incredibly, blissfully greatful it didn’t.

The first boy had gotten up behind me and I guess shaken off the haze of passing out. The second boy was started to struggle to his feet. I felt a punch in the flank and a shove. A coworker, a loving single mother, came out and shouted with the voice of a woman who has stopped a number of fights. The tension was broken. As I stumbled from the shove, I saw the first boy help the second to his feet and take off running into a neighborhood. I didn’t give chase. This all took place in the span of five or so minutes, and some passerbys were noticing. A man in a black sedan asked me if I was okay and which way the boys head off. He zoomed away chasing these kids as a woman came by and picked up my glasses near the patio furniture. Was he in on it? My suspicious nature was turned to eleven.

I guess my body needed time to process the emotions. It took me a few months before I noticed my mental state changing. I couldn’t stop replaying that fight. I just got lost for a few minutes every goddamn few minutes. For the next year, I was skittish. People touching me could make me freak out and leap away. I couldn’t relate to people for a long time. Anytime someone mentioned killing others lightly, I leapt to defend the sanctity of life in brash offensive ways. I stopped talking to people and withdrew, which was a terrible mistake. I still have nightmares, but they don’t have the emotional engulfment they used to. It’s like playing that one dusty DVD on your shelf in the background. I still have breakdowns where my heart starts racing and my vision and hearing get blocked out and I’m taken back to watching that kid struggle for air. Certain plastics make a crunching noise that reminds me of the sound of a boy being choked. When triggered, my heart pounds like it’s life or death when it’s really just breakfast. Honestly, the old tics don’t die, they just wither. I let myself water them on occasion, but not as often anymore. I recognize the sullen spiral.

I was drenched in self-loathing for a while. I felt a vague satisfaction on performing the moves I’d so gladly built up. It was an incredible dissonance. Growing up I didn’t find a lot of love in my family, but the adults I trained with associated kicking ass with getting respect and friendship. Classical conditioning can be a bitch. I knew that the beast was inside of me, and it was set to a hair trigger now. I would be forced to watch myself commit atrocity due to hours of boyhood dedication to throwing a perfect cross. Even before the fight, I didn’t really feel much connection with people except when I sparred. Reading someone’s moves before they did was the closest thing to connection I knew. If the only way I could connect was through violence, I thought I must be a monster. Because the beast could take over and send me into a calm, violent haze, I thought I must be a monster. During my depression, I wanted to end my life. I wouldn’t have minded ending other’s lives either if it came to it. I held these beliefs too strongly, so I thought I must be a monster. It’s not rational, but mental health isn’t either.

Four months after the event, I got invited to spar with a friend learning to box. I was very hesitant, but I went anyways. I had a good time, and enjoyed sprinkling pointers and jokes. Martial arts was where I grew up, and where I found my first semblances of male role models. I loved it, but I hated its purpose. I hated myself for not noticing my boyhood strikes had the weight of a man behind them. Until recently, I couldn’t even consider going back to the mat. I had shunned a whole part of me, making me feel like a husk of a man. Until I can befriend my beast, I know I won’t be anywhere close to complete. When I think I’m close, I’m often shown I’m wrong and shown what true harmony is. If I was a punch drunk Rocky (time will tell), I would say life knocks you down but you get up harder-er.

Starting to make peace with the abilities discipline won me doesn’t mean the PTSD stopped. It’s a weird disorder. It can come out months, even years after an incident. A stiff breeze of symtpoms started coming on about a ten months after, and it weathered away what wasn’t needed. I was sketched out by crowds. There was a point where I was scared to go grocery shopping. I felt extremely isolated, and I isolated myself to the max. I still have some trouble watching action movies. I don’t get trapped by guilt or caught in fight-or-flight as often. I now feel blessed it happened.

Almost two years later, I don’t feel hesitant to do martial arts anymore. I’m currently looking for a good judo school. I defused a fight-to-be when a guy on the street insulted and spit on my coworker (literally, not via rhymes). I stood tall embracing the feeling of not having to hurt anyone. I’ve been training my kicks on some bamboo set up in the yard, and they’re not too shabby. If we weren’t meant to be scarred, we wouldn’t have been born. If I need to fight, I’ll do it and I’ll know I’ve failed as a mediator. But goddamn am I doing it to death. I’ll still bawl if a movie hits me hard or someone shares a similar story, but I know I’ll weather the storms. Life goes on if you let it.

“Let go or be dragged” has gone a long way for me. Meditation was my medication at times. To be clear, this isn’t hippy chai latte bullshit, this is sitting the fuck down, feeling your emotions, and watching them wither like the loneliest winter and the gladdest spring at the same time as you motionlessly grin on them with love, not necessarily joy. No emotion lasts for long under a mindful gaze. On the physical side, it means being able to do things with care. The identity that was dissolved during that fateful punch would keep dissolving under my focused mind’s eye. I’d overweighed the value of being able to destroy. Some part of my self needed to hold destruction highly. That part of my self had to be let go.

Thankfully, I did not kill. The meaning of mercy has been seared into my steps, my hesitations, my skittishness, my breakdowns in a secluded stairwell, my revulsion to violence. The path of empathy is clear, and I choose to hobble down it with what husk of myself remains. In a world of hypermasculinity, men are told they should kill without flinching. It is good to hurt those who hurt you. They should let their beast run free and wreck shit, fuck girls, and yell out their accomplishments. I sincerely say, fuck that.

There is room for compassion in healthy forms of masculinity. Men need to find the strength to break the mold of tough but callused. When raising kids, they say more is caught than taught. Martial arts trains us in violence, but it instills in us nonviolence. It teaches us our pride is not in the outcome of the fight, the pride is in fighting to be above our demons and lesser selves.

Sometimes, you need a soft touch. If you are still caged by your beast, don’t try and force yourself to be better. Take it easy. Counter your beast with humanity and make it your pet: not your owner, not your slave. Because of this beast, I see immense value in human life. Recently, I made a great friend who served in Aghanistan and Iraq. He had killed a kid and had wisdom to share. Talking out our experiences made breakthroughs I couldn’t imagine. Being heard by someone who can empathize has incredible power. I really should have tried finding a support group early on, but you only get experience after you need it. Find professional, or at least experienced, help. Be kind to yourself, and stay strong. It does get better, and you’re not alone.