Latest / Who’s Your Person?: Friendship, Trust & Belonging / The Unspoken Bond: Why Military Friendships Hit Different | Who’s Your Person?
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that only exists between people who have seen the same thing happen at the same time. It’s not empty; it’s heavy, sacred, and completely untranslatable to anyone else. I want you to think about your closest friend for a second. The one you call when you’re three beers in and crying over something small. Now, imagine if you and that person had stood back-to-back in a place where the ground wasn’t supposed to be safe. Or maybe it wasn’t combat exactly, but it was isolation so deep it felt like falling. There are friendships built on shared laughter, which is beautiful. And there are friendships built on shared survival, which is different. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the unique architecture of bonds formed during military service or overseas deployments. These aren’t just friendships; they are anchors. When you leave that environment, you don’t just lose a job or a city. You lose the only other person who truly understands the texture of your days. Let’s sit with that for a moment. That loss is real. It’s a grief that doesn’t get enough airtime because we often celebrate the homecoming without mourning what was left behind. You know how some couples can finish each other’s sentences? With these friends, they don’t even need words. They have a language made entirely of glances, shifts in posture, and micro-expressions. If you were ever in that unit, or lived in that compound abroad, you know this feeling. A look across a crowded room says, 'I am overwhelmed right now.' Another look says, 'I see you, and I’m here.' This intimacy bypasses the usual social filters we wear in civilian life. We spend so much energy performing competence, acting like we have it all together. But with these friends, the mask drops instantly. You don’t have to explain why you’re tired. They already know. They’ve seen you tired before. They’ve seen you scared before. So, there’s no need to perform recovery. You can just be broken, and they will hold space for that breakage without trying to fix it immediately. That is a rare gift. It’s permission to be human in its rawest form. But then comes the hard part. The return. You come home, or you come back to normalcy, and suddenly you are surrounded by people who ask, 'How was it?' expecting a story, not a soul-sharing. And you realize you cannot translate the experience. You try to describe the smell of diesel and rain, or the taste of stale coffee at 3 AM, but the words fall flat. Your civilian friends mean well, but they are looking at a painting from the outside. You are still standing inside it. This creates a distance that can feel lonely, even when you are in a crowd. I remember speaking with a listener once who said she felt like an alien in her own hometown after serving. She missed the chaos, the clarity, the sheer intensity of her comrades. Here, life feels slow. Too slow. Everything seems trivial compared to what you survived. What did that cost you? The ability to connect easily with people who haven’t walked through fire with you. It’s not that you’re broken. It’s that your frequency has changed, and most radios around you aren’t tuned to it anymore. This leads to a painful truth that many struggle to admit. You might outgrow the people who were once your entire world. Not because they are bad people, but because you are no longer the same person they knew. In the service, identity is collective. You are 'Sergeant,' 'Private,' 'Team Member.' Out here, you have to rediscover who Eden is, who you are, without the badge or the rank. Sometimes, that journey requires letting go of ties that keep you anchored to a past self. This isn’t betrayal. It’s evolution. I hear this fear constantly: that if I move on, I am forgetting them. But remembering isn’t about staying stagnant. It’s about carrying them with you as you grow. You can honor the bond while changing your life. You can send a text once a month instead of daily. You can attend a reunion but not live in the memory. The relationship changes shape, like water freezing and melting. It’s still water, but it looks different. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to outgrow the uniform, even if you never outgrow the love. So, how do we navigate this transition without losing ourselves? We find new forms of belonging. Maybe it’s another veteran group, where the shorthand still works. Or maybe it’s a hobby community, a volunteer organization, a creative circle. We build bridges from our old life to our new one. We learn to speak the language of the civilian world again, slowly. It takes patience. It takes grace. And it takes the courage to be vulnerable with people who don’t share your history. That is terrifying. It feels risky to open up to someone who hasn’t seen you bleed. But it’s necessary. You can’t stay in the bunker forever. Eventually, you have to walk into the sunlight. And yes, the sun might hurt your eyes at first. But eventually, you’ll adjust. You’ll find new friends who love the person you are becoming, not just the soldier you were. This isn’t replacing them. It’s expanding your heart. Love isn’t a finite resource. You can hold space for the past and make room for the future simultaneously. If you are listening to this and you feel that ache, that pull toward a life you can’t quite return to, I want to validate that. It’s okay to miss the intensity. It’s okay to feel disconnected from the mundane. Don’t rush yourself to 'get over it' or 'fit in.' Your feelings are valid evidence of a profound experience. Take small steps. Write letters you might never send. Talk to a therapist who understands trauma and transition. Join a group where you don’t have to explain everything. Create rituals that honor your service without defining your entire existence. You are more than your uniform. You are more than your deployment. You are a whole person, deserving of joy, connection, and peace in this quiet chapter of your life. Let yourself breathe. Let yourself heal. And know that you are not alone in this silence. There are others who understand the weight, even if they can’t carry it with you anymore. Take care of yourselves, my friends. You are loved, you are seen, and you are doing better than you think. Until next time.