I'm a child of a veteran, and my family never talks about PTSD. Only because it was very real growing up, and yes, my family has experienced service-related PTSD. Everyday people can get it from any traumatic life experiences, but when its your own family, it hits you in a completely different way. I am not a veteran, but I was diagnosed with PTSD at 17. I don't talk about what it actually does to my body, but when you cry it almost feels like you're being choked to death. When you're angry, you repeatedly stress and upset yourself until your mind decides to let it go. You go through a fight or flight of adrenaline, which caused me to do actions that I wouldn't have taken if I wasn't in that state of mind. Violent outbursts, punching walls, and even psychiatric hospital visits because the police truly believed I was a danger to myself and others around me. Apart of PTSD is strong physical reactions when your mind thinks it's threatened, its like I feel no pain. When I first got held before I was diagnosed, I was in denial and told the hospital that they can just release me now, and that I wasn't going to stick with the 48 hour hold. I was naked in a hospital room, they took my clothes, and took my phone from me. The social worker came into the room, told me it was jail or a psych-hold because I was hitting the locked door too many times. When I went to the ward, they had to give me sleeping medication to keep me from trying to leave or have a violent outburst because they took my cigarettes, phone, and shoes. When I was set to go home, they spoke to me for an hour total out of the 5 days that they held me, and I had a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder I and PTSD. I was deeply in denial, there was another time the police had me on a psych-hold and a different doctor actually allowed me to actually leave before he knew about my diagnosis record with the hospital about 6 months later. Its been 8 years since that happened, and I still cannot believe that the doctor let me leave. That is how PTSD victims are treated in today's time, and the system has less patience with men who have it. They handled me less-harsh for me being a small framed female. Seeing how service-members will experience almost the same things but with less help and support. It angers me to no end that they allowed me leave, because I could have actually been a danger to myself at the time. I feel like there needs to be much better protocols with people with PTSD, seeing my own father with it while it being a topic we didn't want to discuss in the household -- leaves pain for me and my family. I didn't feel like I deserved help afterwards, because there's more people who has been through worse than me but that's the mindset of just about every other person with the same illness. Now I try to talk about it with friends and family, stay active in groups online, and just try to talk to people who are dealing with the same illness. Some are service-related, some aren't, but that's the problem with PTSD, most do not feel they have the right to complain about their illness since there are others who has it worse than they do, and that needs to change.

I'm a daughter of a Navy Veteran, and one thing my dad always told me was as long as it is a career that you can help the people around you with, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do something with your life. His time in the military wasn't long, but he overcame a lot when he enlisted. At the time of him enlisting, he was a high-school dropout. He wanted to take the ASVAB test to see if he could be qualified to join the military with his scores, and he scored so high that they allowed him to enlist without a Highschool Diploma. He scored a 97/99, and got his GED and his waiver to join. He was in the Navy as an electronic warfare technician, which dealt with jamming radar signals, and would use countermeasures in submarines to elude threats away from any spot they were at. Afterwards, he worked with computers in the military until he left. After you leave a job like that in the military, you'll usually get a job as a software engineer, coding engineer, or a hardware engineer since the military worked with cisco telecommunications. It was almost impossible to find a job in Southern Ohio in the middle of 2007-2008 as a telecommunications agent, so for the first two years of my dad taking care of us, he worked at a Golden Corral washing dishes. Eventually, we moved to a much more populated area for work and he never would miss a day of work. If there was an emergency, he had a great work ethic. There would be times that he had jobs that he loved, coding with his coworkers in the middle of the day in the living room, and other times that he would have to go to the office and sometimes would bring me with him. He would tell me how much he misses working at home around his family. That changed me and my ideas about working, since I never thought my dad actually liked to sit on a computer in the living room, but he would always say he has to take the bad with the good. Anytime I got discouraged with work in my adult years, he would remind me that it doesn't matter if a janitor works his job for 40 years, as long as they're a productive member of society then they should be proud of what they do. I learned a lot from this since my dad always beat the odds. Especially how he joined the military without being a Highschool Graduate, which is usually unheard of for that time. This shaped me to never boast about my accomplishments, although others may be proud of me for them. He would never brag about his past ASVAB scores, and I always get shocked by remembering him talking about them. My career aspirations will always be to do the best job I can do at any task or job given to me. Regular people work regular jobs, not everyone can have the six-figures like my dad always able to manage. Now, I am going to college for STEM Mathematics. I want to apply myself like my dad was able to when he was my age. I want to be proud of what I do, and I want to see him proud of me for beating the odds, just like he did. I was carried through life by him, and I want to show him that he did a better job than he thinks.

I never did love doing math growing up. I was the worst at it. Admittedly, I did terrible in high-school. After graduating, and becoming an adult and learning college math on my own, I realized that I'm pretty good at it. I started out by challenging myself, since i learned small equations when I graduated, and used quadratic formulas, I realized that I could apply myself in college. I was right, I am passing my college level math class, which is introduction to calculus, which I didn't think I could ever accomplish. I could barely bring a C to my father when I was a kid, and was always told that I needed to get it together, because life would be very hard without schooling. He was right. Now I'm 25, doing very well in school now, but what pushed me to take STEM is for the main fact that I was tired of working dead-end jobs. There is not a lot of job opportunities where I live, and growing up, my father always told me how bad he wished he stayed in school for the kids he found out he was going to have at only 17. He ended up going into the military and seeking a job that way, and when he was 18, I was born. My father was a child at that age, so I cannot imagine the pressure he was under. I would see my dad hating the jobs he was at for so long, so, before moving away to another state with my dad, he took me on a drive around town to show me why I should never want to come back here. I seen myself in the same position, at 25 years old, moved back to the same place he told me he wishes I would never come back to. I was working jobs that didn't better myself and hours would be cut because I was just a menial-worker with no degree. Anytime I needed to solve my finances, and no matter how bad I was at math, I would make my money stretch and bend as long as possible to survive. When I graduate, I will know that my love for learning new things will make sure my family will not have to choose between pawning an X-Box or paying a utility bill to make the month work.

Many challenges I've had to overcome with a STEM major in college is a couple of small things, I am a mid-twenties female, who is a regular in the math study hall everyday for 3 hours minimum after class. I am surrounded by males in my major, and usually not taken seriously when I tell them what I hope to achieve, as far as my bigger picture goes. After my first 4 years of completing my Math STEM degree, I would love to start furthering research with WHO, CERN and other organizations that have one common goal: to solve the biggest problems for the world that regular people cannot do on their own. I understand that I may be able to find a job as an actuary after my first 4 years, however I would love to have some personal studies at home to hopefully later contribute to the greater good of humanity. I cannot say that I want to worry about only one problem after years of school, but if I could, it would be the transportation crisis we have right now. Vehicles are not safe at all, and many scientists around the world try their best to understand how to avoid these tragedies. Even if I spend a year studying that, and I am told that I'm needed to help solve an accidental radiation explosion to clean up the environment, I would be happy with that. If I could solve a complex issue before I die, and save the rest of the population, I would be happy to die poor than be alive, rich, and solve nothing of importance. I cannot take money with me when I die, but what I can try to do is leave a positive impact on the world before it is my time.

During highschool, my friend was really in a depressive state and didn't want to play their videogames. They were in a rut over grades and their parents had went through a bad divorce. I convinced their brother to let me come over and mod their videogames with the craziest mods. one with the sims games - modded it to where if they died, the grim reaper was a princess. another mod if someone burns to death, they are dancing instead of panicking. Soon after, they were loving the game and didn't know who tweaked it. They ended up keeping the mods afterwards, and even now, they told me they still have the folder handy in their dropbox so it never gets lost. I still havent told them that me and their brother got together to mod her game to this day.

I chose to respond to my parent's addiction by lashing out and becoming an addict myself. I always told myself growing up that I wouldn't become an addict, or "like them", and I ended up in their shoes in my mid teens to my early 20's. If someone would have told me 10-15 years ago that I would fall into addiction just like my parents, I would not have believed them. It opened my eyes that it wasn't too late for me to get clean and that my life technically hasn't started 'til I turned 21. I agree with the statement, because when I chose to stop hurting myself and start trying to better my life in just one area, my challenges will make me stronger in the long run. After I finally got clean, I got better jobs and surrounded myself with better people, and I haven't relapsed since. Soon after my mother followed me to get clean, after she was using drugs for 20 years. She said she didn't see anyone in her life, except me, get clean so quickly, take care of her when I couldn't take care of myself, and grow up the fastest. Now, we both live together, and she has been 3 years clean since. You never know when it could happen to someone. Sometimes things are meant to happen to us so we can prepare others in the future for. If I had never had a parent in addiction, I never would have known what its like to go without because of it. If I had never had experienced my own addiction, I would have kept judging all addicts like I used to by drawing the "line in the sand". It is hurtful to feel that way and to see people treat you that way, but I'm grateful that I helped break the generational trauma I held since I was a kid after putting that away when I got clean.

It relates heavily, for the past several years this has been the common consensus on online communities in order to censor them. Nobody can say that an entire community works like a country. people have their own minds when they decide to take part in a forum, and since its not a personal environment and more on a virtual plane, its not the same as "monkey see, monkey do".