I Am a Man Because I Asked for Help

Airborne. Tired. Still here.

Tired does not mean done. Making it starts where the light still is.

I’m Airborne. I’m tired.

I just want to talk about making it.

Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I feel small. Sometimes I’m not me.

What a feeling, seeming so small.

Depression can feel so real it looks like it is going to take you apart. It feels that heavy. That close. Like the ground is already gone and you are still standing on it. That feeling is real. Falling apart does not have to be.

You were trained to see. To scan a field. To pick up what other people miss. And still the hardest thing in front of you can be the help itself.

Seeing the help in front of you can be the hardest part.

Please see it for once.

There are people who want to help. Not a poster. Not a speech. Not a number you write down and never call. People. Programs. A place that was built because too many of us came home and kept fighting a war nobody else could see.

Mission 22 is one of those places.

They exist for veterans and the families who carry it with them. No-cost programs. Recovery and resiliency work. Coaching. Fitness. Sleep. Nutrition. Mindfulness. Family tracks so the people who love you are not left standing outside the wire. Ambassadors in all fifty states. A 28-day self-guided program called Elements if you are not ready to walk into a room yet and just need a first step you can take from where you sit.

You do not have to be broken on paper. You do not have to wait until it is an emergency. You were trained to see things. Mission 22 is there for you. See it.

The hand already knows what to do. Letting it move is the mission.

I asked.

I am a man because I asked for help.

I was that because I needed the help.

That is not weakness. That is the same standard you already lived. You do not leave a man on the ground because he is proud. You do not leave yourself there either.

If you are questioning whether you should reach — this is the light. Not a speech about how it gets better. A simple true thing: asking does not make you less. It is how some of us made it.

I am still tired some days. I still feel small some days. I am still not always me. And I am still here. That is the part I needed someone to say out loud when I could not.

If you need a place to start

I am not writing this as a speech. I am writing it so the man or woman sitting in the truck, in the dark kitchen, on the edge of the bed — the one who knows the help is there and still cannot make the hand move — can see one of us say it first.

Ask. That is making it.

Jon - Owner of Veteran Valor Coffee

Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment

Medically retired. Still Airborne.

Veteran Valor Coffee donates 10% of profits year-round — 15% on Flag Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and the Fourth of July — to Mission 22. Not a slogan on a bag. A reason we brew.