Say hello, wave goodbye...

"This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Hamlet, Act 1 Sc iii, 78-80.

I have loved that quote since I first came across it as a nerdy teenager, struggling with working out my place in the world and sense of who I was. The answer, then, was to throw myself into becoming an Army officer – later switched to Royal Navy. It then came to the fore again when I was playing Laertes, to whom Polonius imparts such kernels of wisdom, in an amateur dramatic production of Hamlet. Because all of a sudden I was again searching for some sense of self.

There’s this thing that happens when you leave the military. Not the clearing out of your cabin and packing up your desk; or the handshakes and awkward farewells with people who you barely know outside of an (admittedly all-encompassing) workplace; or the official act of cutting up your ID card by an indifferent clerk. Honestly, for most of us who leave the military, the terminating act is conducted with as much festivity and fanfare as a field kit inspection in the rain.

I’m talking about what happens after. When it’s just you, a civilian – probably for the first time in your adult life – trying to make sense of both who and what you are.

Because at this point, you are suddenly adrift from all of the certainties of life. As a serviceperson, you are literally institutionalised: you know when to sleep and when turn to; when to eat; what to wear and when; even down to what to think at times. Individuality is something that we actively suppress in subordination to a greater entity: uniform is not just something you wear; it is something you become. In some regards, being in the Navy is not too dissimilar to other institutions of ill-repute – as that great essayist and father of the dictionary, Samuel Johnson, noted, the only ‘advantage’ of being at sea over jail was the possibility of drowning!

For a while after I left, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I’d spent years in uniform, shaped by routine, responsibility, and the unthinking camaraderie of people who I would never mix with under normal circumstance: you don’t choose your oppos. You just expect them to be there, as they do you. But outside the gate, those things that I set such store by didn’t carry the same weight. I started to realise just how much of my identity had been wrapped up in the image of the soldier – or sailor – not just the job, but the myth.

You know the one I mean. The version we see in films and posters: all grit, all toughness, never rattled, always ready. It’s a trope we carefully cultivate – the stoical leader, calm in the storm – because it is ‘ally’ and gets us brownie points at reporting season, as well as being necessary under the pressures of combat. It was something I tried hard to achieve, pushing myself to be better at living up to that ideal of who I should be. I remember responding to my Sandhurst Colour Sergeant’s exhortation to move myself with a pearl of wisdom inherited from my father - ‘an officer never runs; it panics the troops’ – just to try and prove I was that leader, and it was something I continued well into my career. We all buy in to it, to some extent. There’s comfort in it - strength, belonging, purpose. But it’s also a cage; because not being stoical, being the trope, can be used against you both by others and yourself.

That image doesn’t leave any room for days when we cannot be strong. For the times I couldn’t sleep or breathe because my brain decided to throw a flashbang into my chest at 3 a.m., just for fun. It didn’t account for the depression. The panic attacks – and believe me, there were attacks as well as other bodily symptoms. The slow suffocation of wondering if I had any value outside a role I no longer filled. Because being in the military means that your sense of self is tied inextricably to the uniform; to the vision in the mirror; and to the role you are fulfilling. Lose all of that, and what else is there to you? The reality is, losing yourself is a form of grief. No wonder so many of us struggle.

That’s where things started to crack for me. And I mean really crack.

Imagine waking up and all of a sudden you have, not just a hole, but a vacuum at the centre of your being. A hole can be filled, but a vacuum? It’s like looking in a mirror and seeing nothing. I cannot begin to describe the panic, the out of body experiences, the lightheadedness and weightlessness that comes with being shorn of the anchor, the foundations that ground you. Routines help with the daily coping and masking, but they cannot fill something that, by definition, is an absence of matter. You can attach yourself to something else, but that is only ever exchanging one external source of validation with another and doesn’t solve the problem. So other approaches are needed.

Filling my time, I joined the local Shakespeare group in the Cypriot ex-Pat community, and found myself listening to Polonius’ monologue with more than just passing interest. I also started studying again, undertaking my Associate of King’s College degree, and thinking about what it means to be. And it was those two external interventions that got me thinking again.

I recalled something that I had read in my final job in the Navy – the concept of Innere Führung. It’s a German military philosophy that I’d first come across it when I was looking at an ethics education programme. It means "inner leadership" but, more importantly, it means seeing soldiers as citizens in uniform. Not warriors, not tools, not automatons for state violence, but rather citizens and human beings.

It was the first time I’d seen a formal military framework that recognised the person behind the serviceperson. That said: your humanity matters. Your moral compass matters, not just the Values and Standards of your chosen service. Values and standards that are mandated, trained and educated in annual competency assessments, and designed to mark you out from society. Your connection to society matters. And, crucially, when your service ends, your identity doesn’t have to die with it.

That was a turning point for me.

Because the truth is, if you spend years performing invulnerability (or attempting to), it gets harder and harder to admit when you're hurting. We train stoicism. We train discipline and commitment and loyalty and courage, and the ability to go further than your body thinks possible. To push yourself beyond what you think is your limit, and to do it time and time again. We measure ourselves constantly against a set of beliefs, of values and standards statements written on the walls of our gyms and promulgated in daily orders, and constantly find ourselves wanting. And when the military machine spits you out – job done, thanks for playing - you’re left trying to carry that weight on your own. Trying to be a perfect version for an authority that no longer exists in your universe.

The Wavell Room did a great piece a while back about the myth of the “warrior ethos.” It made the case that this idealised version of soldiering actually does real harm – not just in terms of policy, but to the people trying to live up to it. It creates an impossible standard. No fear, no doubt, no weakness. But we’re not made of stone. We bleed. We break. And when we leave service, that unspoken expectation follows us like a ghost.

It tells you that if you’re struggling, you’ve failed. That if you can’t find a job, or hold your family together, or function “normally,” you’re not just lost - you’re lesser. And let me tell you: nothing is lonelier than feeling like a broken version of your former self.

For me, that loneliness nearly swallowed me whole. There were nights I genuinely thought about disappearing. Not dramatically. Quietly. Slipping away from a world that I didn’t feel part of anymore.

But Innere Führung gave me language for a different way of being. A way to rebuild – not from scratch, but from within. I started treatment (late, but better than never). I started talking – really talking – to a friend who had been through similar things. Therapy helped, too, and I admitted to myself that strength didn’t mean silence. And slowly, painfully, I began to come back to myself.

Not a trope. Not an idealised version of what I should be. Just... me. And who I want to be.

I still believe in self-discipline. In showing up when it’s hard. But now I also believe in kindness – mostly to myself. In asking for help. In being honest when the day feels too heavy to lift. And I believe in being true to myself, not just to a set of externally directed values.

And I think that’s the direction we need to move in - culturally, institutionally, personally. We need to build systems and communities that recognise the humanity of service members - not just while we’re in, but long after we leave. We need to tell each other that it’s okay to feel broken sometimes, and that broken doesn’t mean beyond repair. We need to allow people to have a sense of self that isn’t mandated and expected from outside as something to be measured, but rather is grown and developed from within as a constant.

If there’s one thing I’d say to anyone going through it now, it’s this: you’re allowed to be more than the role you once filled. You’re allowed to hurt, to heal, to rebuild. You’re allowed to let go of the stoical warrior myth and come home to yourself.

And you don’t have to do it alone.