Veteran Voice

Opinion, Politics  ·  veterans, oath, voting, civic duty, democracy

I took an oath to a document, not a man. The document is still here. The oath is still mine. The country I signed up for never quite existed, and I am still showing up anyway. That part is not for the news cycle to decide.

The oath I took at eighteen was specific. Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I have been thinking about that word, domestic, more than I used to.

A vote is the one act of citizenship that completes the oath I took in uniform. It is not a feeling. It is not a hashtag. It is the small, repeated, unspectacular work of showing up at a polling place or a mail slot and saying who you trust to hold the line.

I have been deployed to four countries where this kind of citizen act was either forbidden or dangerous. People stood in line anyway. Some of them did it under threat. None of them treated it as small.

So I will keep voting. In every primary, in every off-year, in every school board race nobody is paying attention to. That is what I am still showing up for. That is what the oath asks of me now that the uniform is in a box.

Go deeper: Read our complete guide — Veteran PTSD: Understanding, Treating, and Living Beyond Post-Traumatic Stress.

Related Reading

• Why Mental Health Advocacy Matters for Veterans
• 2am Wide Awake: Veteran Insomnia and PTSD
• Veteran PTSD: Understanding, Treating, and Living Beyond It