I'm not upset with you. I am angry at what your T is doing though. You haven't done anything wrong yet. Your just thinking about it. I want you to think out what going into the military or law enforcement entails. I'm almost 48, and have "been there, done that" and would hate to see you go into a profession that ends your progress in recovering from PTSD and instead ruins your chance at a semi-normal life. I don't want you to enter a profession that endangers someone else's life. I have the highest regard for those who put their lives on the line to defend others regardless of country, branch of service, civilian or military.
War is not guts and glory like in the movies. It's about fear. You fear for your life every day. You fear you may die at any moment. You fear you might fail at a critical moment and someone on your side dies. You may know them, you might not, but you feel for every person who dies on your side. For all those you kill directly or indirectly on the other side, you will remember them as well. Every death weighs on your mind.
One thing people have noted on is my empathy and general understanding of people, as well as my strong sense of right and wrong.
In the military, sometimes you have to simply follow orders regardless of whether or not you think it's right or wrong. If it involves killing people, it will eat at you endlessly if you do have any empathy. If innocent civilians are killed, it only makes it worse. If some of those civilians are women and children...
As radicalgratitude said, I'm trying to let you see how your possible plans may have deadly consequences for others. Having a strong sense of empathy in a career where you cause and deal with death isn't a very sound decision. Especially if you have PTSD already. I know that what I did in the military (fixing F/A-18's) indirectly caused the death of hundreds, maybe thousands, which indirectly lead to the death of thousands to tens of thousands. I've seen the aircraft targeting video (FLIR camera) of buildings, vehicles, and bunkers being blown up. I was a shop supervisor in Gulf Two. I lead 25 people fixing the structure and hydraulic systems of 12 F/A-18's. Because of my drive, and the hard work of those in my shop and the other shops we had a 98% sortie completion rate. Our squadron was one of the most effective squadrons in the battllegroup in dropping ordinance on target on time = we killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of war machinery and weapon systems. One of the things in war is, that sometimes innocent civilians are killed and horribly wounded. Including women, children and the elderly. Cowardly governments use civilians as "Human shields". In war, depending on the priority of the target, civilians can be an acceptable "collateral damage".
I saw many aircraft FLIR videos from many missions of our and other squadrons. I saw one video in particular that haunts me. The video was of one of my squadron aircraft flying over a SAM radar control building. As the aircraft was starting to fly over the building, a man came running out of the building as fast as he could. He fell as he ran in terror down over the stairs. I say "ran over the stairs" because he was running so fast, he never set foot on the stairs and fell face first into the dirt outside because he was running in terror. He got up and made it 10-15 feet before the building exploded behind him and he was obscured by dust and debris of the explosion utterly destroying the building. I don't think he survived. If he did survive, what condition was he in. If he survived the blast, but was mortally injured, how long did he survive? What were his last thoughts, and how long did he have to think about them? The building was out in the desert, isolated so help probably didn't arrive any time soon. Did he think of a wife and kids? Did he think of brothers, sisters, mother, father? Was he a true volunteer, or was he like most Iraq forces, forced to serve or die? If it wasn't for the war, and he and I met at some point after the war, could we have become friends? There are many stories of veterans of opposing sides, meeting, and with full knowledge of each others war status, becoming friends. How many other people were in the building when it blew up?
I saw many other videos where I know beyond the shadow of a doubt people were killed. I saw people walking around before the bombs exploded, but weren't walking around (dead) after the bomb went off. When you see a video of a person or group of people get blown up from a bomb dropped by a jet you were directly involved in making sure it could drop that bomb you never really get over it. In the dark hours in your mind, they replay over and over and over. Is that something you want? If you join the Army or Marines, those memories that play over and over in your mind might be of you looking down the sights of a rifle
personally ending the lives of many, many people. You may later find that the person or people you personally killed were innocent bystanders who were misidentified or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Am I proud of all the death we caused? No. It haunts me almost every day. It is a large part of my PTSD. Are you really willing to enter a profession knowing that you have PTSD before you even start, then deal with any of the above I've described over and over and over in your head?