Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Surrounding Yourself with Good People

            Day in and day out you are always around people. People you may like, love, hate, despise, etc., but you still have to get along with each type of person within your job, school, or whatever places you around people each day.  What I want to talk about as far as transitioning from military to civilian life is the people you are around in your off time or free time.  Suffering from any kind of mental issue/disability from the military can be mentally exhausting especially working or whatever you do all week long within the civilian world.

            Good loyal friends are few and far between, you may only have a few true friends throughout your lifetime.  It takes time to find these types of friends unless it’s like a childhood friend you grew up with.  Suffering from PTSD there are so many things that trigger my PTSD symptoms, and I never know which one I may get really mad, sad, anxious, or depressed.  I don’t want to trigger these symptoms, so I try to surround myself with friends and family that I know I can trust and not place myself in uncomfortable places or situations.  I like to have someone with me at all times (unless I’m in the tree stand hunting) that I can trust to look out for me and can help me out if need be, in case something sets me off that wouldn't set off the normal person.  I have my small circle of family and friends that I truly trust, but expanding that circle can be a hard and hurtful, daunting task over time.

            True friends that care about you and want to succeed in life aren't always going to see eye to eye with you and you may fight or get really mad and say things you or them wouldn't usually say; but they will never hurt you physically or mentally and if they do, they will make the effort to make things better.  Sometimes they may be right and you have to make the effort to fix the problem and let them know how you were wrong and sorry and they will except that and be glad you admitted you were wrong; most times they will respect just that much more for admitting you were wrong and that you want to move forward and go on with life just like nothing happened.  That’s the people you want to surround yourself with, at least for me.  The ones that you don’t want to surround yourself with are the ones that go out of their way to hurt you and blame everything on you and never except the fact that may have been the one who was wrong.  One of the hurtful things about that is that you may have loved this person and been good with them for months or years and think that you know them, but you find out quick in all reality that you never truly knew them and that can tear you up inside, break your heart, or leave you feeling awkward and hopeless.  Those are the ones you have to branch away from.  It may be hard at the time and feel as if you should maybe forget about it and just go on like nothing ever happened.  But in the long run it may be best to branch away, because you don’t want to be around someone who has the ability to bring you down, (you will know in your heart if you should branch away or not from this person because like I said before good friends may not always see eye to eye, but you will know by what the person has done and how they act if you should branch off from them).

            The point I’m trying to get across is to surround yourself with good people who care for you, want to help and see the best for you.  These people need to be ones that you can trust to always be there for you when you need it and the ones that can help you throughout your hardships.  I’m also not trying to say never and go out and have a good time with new friends, but just to be careful and never put yourself in a possible situation to get yourself hurt.  There are many people out there who say they want to help you, (there are a lot of very good organizations) but you have to take the time and effort to be cautious in doing so to make sure they are someone or people who really do what they say they will do like the GallantFew organization has done for me.



-Bryant McNeill 

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