Thanks for the welcome folks. Here comes the follow up with a couple of repeats.
I left the service in 2007, I had a good plan for exit and transition. I was engaged to German a woman and had been accepted to the university in Bremen for an electrical engineering program. I ETS'd Feb 27th 2007. I moved in with her. I left her May 31st 2007 and flew home. When I landed I had about 50 grand in the bank, no job, a broken heart, and a rucksack.
My father picked me up at the Airport and drove me home. I lived with him for about three weeks when my brother offered me a room in his condo, and got me a job as a security guard at a ski resort. I worked graveyard shift there for about a year, and then was laid off. I was laid off because a fellow officer put his hands in my pockets while telling me a story about being pulled over by a belligerent cop. I dropped him, and told him to never lay his hands on me again. It was just a reaction, but a week later I was given a month severance, and laid off.
I spent about 3 months unemployed and hooked up with this girl I met at my previous job. Things went well with her until I found another job. Well, we had good sex anyway, but I never really connected emotionally with her. She left me December 2008. She said I was working too much at my new job, and that she couldn't handle me being on graveyards. I was working a ton of overtime and it wasn't going to end anytime soon.
My reaction to her leaving me was cold and callous. I went up to my room packed all of her shit and left it at the front door. She lingered for a couple of hours, broke into tears and finally left. I was a total bastard. I had zero emotion or rather I showed zero emotion. In actual fact I was pretty bummed out. She was a cool chick, and I was just about ready to open up to her.
As soon as the overtime stopped I decided to buy my own place. I did that in May 2009. Since then I have been a total loner. I've tried to make friends, find a lover, etc... But I just can't seem to do it. I pretty much think everyone is just pulling some angle on me. Especially women, but I haven't made any guy friends either. I didn't realize I was withdrawing from society until about a month ago. That's not entirely true, I realized it last January but I buried it again. So what made me realize it?
I went out with this girl I had a crush on years ago. We hit it off pretty well, and the only stories I had to tell her were four or more years old. She noted it, and asked why. I told her I didn't know. I said I just became a monk and I called her because I was lonely. We went out a few more times, and I did open up a little. That must've scared her because she dropped me into the friend zone, whereas before I was at least a potential lover.
Anyway after that, I mulled over what happened. I realized then that I had been scaring off everyone I had met since I left the army, and I thought maybe it's some kind of PTSD. So, I got to googling. I was displaying all the symptoms then, but I denied it. Then by chance, right after I lost out with this girl I got a big project handed to me at work. That was February this year.
I poured myself into that until around August this year. I finished the project before deadline and was asked to help our counterparts in the south. I discovered that our counterparts were lying, cheating, thieving bastards and reported it with the proof. This didn't go over too well, so I started looking for another job. I can't work with unethical losers.
While looking for another job, I contacted this girl again. I was cleaning up clutter in my house and found an old PC. She volunteers at an organization that takes old PC's and puts linux on them, then gives computer instruction to poor children. I called her and told her I had a computer for her. We hit it off again, she took me out for drinks and dinner. She told me about her life since January and then kind of blitzed me with some crazy offers. She wanted me to move back to our hometown with her. I told her no. She kept contact with me, and that brought back all of those thoughts I was having last January.
About a month ago I realized again that I am total loner that pushes everyone away. I was not like this before the Military. I've been crying every day now for about a month. I cry about all kinds of weird shit. I have anger too, but I mask that with contempt. Then I couldn't sleep, and I started remembering some of the shit from my deployments, and it got worse. Finally, I started googling PTSD again, and I'm making an appointment to see someone this week.
Maybe it's something else, I don't know. I don't have an official diagnosis. So If I've overstepped my bounds here I apologize. I've read a few of the threads and articles, and thought. Hell, I'll give this a shot see if it helps me feel better.
Damn, it did. Thanks to anyone who reads it.
