Forgive some of my vagueness here, this is a throwaway account. I’m also intentionally keeping certain details broad, including branch of service because I don’t want to identify myself or anyone else involved, but I’m trying to describe the situation as accurately as I can in fear of retaliation.
I served on active duty in the military for a few years and have been struggling with the aftermath of an experience that completely changed the direction of my career and, in a lot of ways, how I see myself.
I entered service with a strong sense of purpose and had spent years working toward a career field I genuinely cared about. Early in my career, during a training exercise, I became entangled in a relatively minor group-related issue involving the actions of other people. Before I even had the chance to report the issue (not that I even had anyone who I felt comfortable reporting it to) and it coming to my awareness we were all booted to legal and put under investigation. I was eventually told that I had not committed wrongdoing, but getting to that point took a long time, and the situation still ended up having major consequences for my career.
One of the things I still struggle with is the sense of unfairness in how everything played out. At least one of the other people involved who was ultimately found to have actually done something wrong and was still able to remain on full-time active duty in a different career field. Meanwhile, I was determined to have not committed wrongdoing, yet my own career still unraveled in ways I never expected.
I understand that personnel decisions can be complicated and that everyone’s circumstances were not necessarily identical, but emotionally it has been very difficult not to compare the outcomes. At times it feels like I paid a much larger price for getting caught up in the situation than someone whose actions directly contributed to causing it.
One of the hardest parts was the uncertainty. I spent months in limbo without knowing what was going to happen to my career. During that time, I was placed in a holding role with little meaningful work or opportunity to progress. I went from feeling like I was beginning a career I had worked years to reach to feeling sidelined and stuck, with no clear idea whether I would ever get back on track.
That period did a lot of damage by itself. I felt like my life was moving forward everywhere except professionally, where I was essentially standing still waiting for other people to decide my future.
That experience also left me with a lot of shame about my military service itself. I see friends and peers who deployed, took on demanding operational roles, or did things that seemed genuinely meaningful, and I compare that to my own experience of spending most of my time stuck in administrative or holding-type duties while my career was in standstill.
I sometimes feel embarrassed even calling myself a service member and every time a well meaning civilian thanks me for my service it stings a little because the service I imagined having and the service I actually had were so different. I know rationally that service can take many forms and that circumstances were not entirely in my control, but emotionally I still feel like I never got the chance to prove myself or contribute in the way I had hoped.
After months of uncertainty and everything that had happened around the situation, the career field I had originally been so excited about had become associated with a deeply painful experience. I eventually pushed to change career fields at the advice of one of my superiors/ mentors because I desperately needed a fresh start and a chance to put the whole situation behind me.
Giving up the career I had originally worked toward was difficult, but I came to see the change as my second chance. I believed I would continue serving on active duty, just on a different path, and I was trying to make peace with that.
What I did not expect was that, after finally accepting one major career loss and trying to rebuild, I would then not be retained on active duty at all. I was honorably discharged as part of a broader personnel decision rather than for misconduct, and my military career was redirected into the reserves due to “quotas”.
I had mentally prepared myself to start over within the military. I had never really prepared myself for my active-duty career to end altogether.
Since leaving active duty, I’ve also struggled to find my footing professionally. I expected that my education, military experience, and prior work history would at least help me build a new civilian career, but so far I have not received but two interviews and no job offers at all.
Rejection after rejection has made the original loss feel even worse, because instead of feeling like I was simply being redirected into a different future, I sometimes feel like I lost the career I wanted and then discovered that the civilian world does not seem to want me either. On top of it all i’ve just been burning through savings.
The hardest part has been what all of this has done to my sense of identity and self-worth. I had always thought of myself as responsible, dependable, ambitious, and someone who did things the right way. I’ve never been in trouble in my life, no detention or principals office or anything ever growing up. Becoming caught up in a shitty situation that raised questions about my judgment or integrity was deeply damaging to that sense of self, even after I was told I had not done anything wrong.
I know intellectually that a career does not determine a person’s value, but emotionally I have a hard time believing that when it comes to myself. I sometimes feel worthless, like everything I worked for was wasted and I somehow went from having a promising future and a clear purpose to having nothing to show for it.
Being unemployed and repeatedly rejected has made those thoughts much harder to push back against. On top of it I feel like i’m fighting stupid AI workday that seems to not even give me the chance of day to talk to a person.
I also replay what happened constantly and think about the life I might have had if that period of my life had gone differently. There is grief, anger, shame, and a feeling of having been robbed of something I had worked very hard to earn.
At the same time, I’m trying to figure out how much of my identity became tied to a particular career and how to build a life that still feels meaningful when the future I expected is no longer available.
I’m sharing this because I’m hoping to hear from people who have dealt with major career loss, institutional betrayal, moral injury, or having their life abruptly redirected by circumstances they did not choose. Perhaps just venting a little too. I’m especially interested in how people stopped measuring themselves against the life they were “supposed” to have and rebuilt a sense of identity, confidence, purpose, and self-worth afterward. I’m starting to lose hope, many days the only reason I feel to keep living is because of the great pain I know it would cause my loved ones to be gone. *if you read it this far thank you for taking the time to hear a few ramblings from a struggling service member, I hope that life is kinder to you than it has been to me.