Even as a kid I was what he called hardheaded. I call it tenacious. I keep at it till I achieve my goal or I realize on my own that I need to readjust. On my own. That part matters.

I’ve come a long way from a 650 square foot tract home in a little town outside of St. Louis. I remember walking home from school one day, my usual route, past the Mayor’s house, past the Kroger’s, then across the tracks to my subdivision. And it hit me — I just crossed the tracks. The Mayor’s house is on the other side. That must mean I come from the wrong side of the tracks.

Seemed fitting.

I’m 69 now and if you’ve read any of my stories you know I should have been dead a long time ago. A beat-up kid with no prospects who barely survived getting out of my father’s house. I served my country honorably in the US Navy for eight years and would have made it a career if disability hadn’t ended it.

But God or the Universe had other plans. Instead of serving my country, I was sent down a rough and treacherous path to serve my brothers and sisters in the struggle.

December 1990. Honorably discharged. Medals. Outstanding performance reviews. And I was a broken mess sitting in a puddle of tears. Just like that I became another disabled veteran, nearly unable to function, afraid to admit I needed help, and clueless where to find it.

I ended up at the VA in ‘91. I’ll spare you the details for now — that’s its own story. What matters is that’s where I met my people. It was mostly men back then, quite a few Vietnam veterans, and they took a liking to me. Over coffee, in group therapy, they told me things. How the system worked. How it failed. How long they’d been fighting — as my chief used to say, since I was shitting yellow. They were military veterans but they were also VA veterans, seasoned in a war I was just entering.

I listened. And my righteous outrage grew to the point I had to do something.

So in 1997 I founded HadIt.com, for veterans who had had it with the VA claims system. I had to teach myself the web, coding, VA law — the internet was barely a thing when I started figuring this out in ‘94, ‘95. But I did it. Twenty-nine years of helping my brothers and sisters not get lost in the maze. If it helps one veteran, it’s successful.

Turns out the only thing my father ever got right about me is I have a hard head.

The vets at the VA hospital used to ask me, “How you doing?”

“Ducky,” I’d say.

They’d look at me sideways. “What the hell is ducky?”

“Cool and calm on the surface. Paddling like hell underneath.”

One guy laughed. “Yeah. We’re all ducky.”

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Coming Home Broken

I came home from eight years in the Navy with more than I left with—some of it visible, most of it not. PTSD, major depression, chronic pain, and a nervous system that never seemed to shut off. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know how to ask for help.

I was broke. Living in a haze. The first year out, all I did was cry, dissociate, keep myself away from suicide, and repeat. I read and read and read anything to keep my mind occupied. To block out the other thoughts even for a few minutes. Because when it got quiet, it got dark.

Motion, Not Hope

It wasn’t about hope. It was about motion.

Work gave me a reason to make it to the next hour. Some nights I wanted to live. Some nights I didn’t. What kept me here wasn’t clarity or faith—it was repetition. A kind of survival autopilot. One task. One conversation. One more bench at the VA.

The Bench at the VA

On my second or third inpatient stay at the VA mental ward, I met some Vietnam veterans. They were a hard group to click with—they didn’t welcome newcomers. But somehow my PTSD and my story passed muster, and we started talking.

They explained that I had a claim for Major Depression and maybe PTSD, and what I needed to do. My therapist and psychiatrist said they were going to treat me for both anyway. I was officially diagnosed once the DSM criteria changed.

In the meantime, I kept chatting up veterans. Not just the Vietnam vets, but every veteran who sat down next to me on the bench at the hospital. I was there every day for a Day Hospital program, so I met a lot of them. I asked a ton of questions about claims.

And I realized: more veterans needed to know what I was finding out.

The Information Vacuum

In 1991, there was no Google. No forums. No central database. Service officers were overworked and unreachable. Libraries didn’t stock the CFR or VA manuals. If you wanted answers, you had to find another vet who’d already fought your fight—and hope they’d talk to you.

I had originally thought of flyers. But when the Web hit in the early 1990s, I knew that was how I could share the information.

That’s how HadIt.com started. Not as a business plan. Not even as a conscious mission at first—just something that was needed, and I thought I could provide it.

The Crowdsourcing Breakthrough

I thought: what if veterans could crowdsource their claims questions?

If a vet in Texas with a service-connected back condition got approved and a vet in Minnesota with the same condition got denied—they could compare notes. See what the Texas vet did differently. Figure out what evidence worked.

That’s not just information. That’s power.

Vets started showing up. Talking. Sharing tips. Comparing decisions. Teaching each other the rules the VA never explained.

Still Ducky, Still Here

Twenty-nine years later, HadIt.com serves over 30,000 veterans a month. We’ve helped thousands get service-connected. And we’re still teaching the VA’s own rules back to them.

Now I still run HadIt.com and I’ve added TbirdsQuietFight.com where I break down VA policy, legal updates, and the reality of surviving systems that weren’t built to help us. I’m also writing some stories from my memories in Diary of a Mad Sailor under my Substack.

Same mission. Bigger megaphone.

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If you’re reading this because you’re fighting for your benefits, your dignity, or just trying to make it to tomorrow—I see you.

You don’t have to be fine. You don’t have to be strong every day.

Sometimes, barely is good enough.

Cool and calm on the surface. Paddling like hell underneath.

Still here. Still fighting.

— Tbird
Founder of HadIt.com and writer at Tbird’s Quiet Fight

I told him the story of what I did in hopes that it would help him. I explained it to him using Einstein’s equation. E=MC². Bear with me.

The Mass, The Multiplier, The Energy

Here’s how I think about it:

M is the mass. That’s the anger itself. The weight of it. Dense, concentrated, hard to move. It sits in your chest, your jaw, your shoulders. It’s the trauma you’re carrying, and it’s heavy.

C² is the speed of light, squared. That’s PTSD’s multiplier effect. It takes that anger and amplifies it beyond anything rational. A minor inconvenience becomes rage. A reasonable disagreement becomes a fight. Everything is accelerated, intensified, out of proportion. That’s the C²—it makes the mass exponentially more volatile.

E is the energy. That’s what you get when you stop fighting the anger and start aiming it. Not suppressing it. Not pretending it isn’t there. But choosing where it goes.

For me, the energy went into HadIt.com. Into research. Into writing. Into helping other veterans navigate the VA’s bullshit because I was furious about how broken the system was, and that fury kept me up at night building something that might actually help.

The anger didn’t go away. But it stopped running the show.

The Early Years: Recognizing the Pattern

It took me longer than I want to admit to figure this out.

In the early years after I got out, my anger was just... everywhere. I was sharp with people I loved. I couldn’t sit still. I’d start projects and abandon them because I couldn’t focus through the static in my head. I felt like I was vibrating at the wrong frequency, and nothing fit right.

I didn’t know it was PTSD. I just thought I was angry. And I was—at the VA, at the system, at the way veterans were treated, at the lies we’d been told. But the anger was bigger than the reasons for it. It had its own momentum.

And then one day I realized: I had more energy when I was angry.

Not good energy. Not calm, focused, productive energy. But energy. The kind that kept me awake, kept me moving, kept me from sitting still long enough to fall apart.

What if I could point it at something?

What if, instead of letting it burn me out or explode outward at the people around me, I aimed it at the work I wanted to do anyway?

So I did. I channeled it into the website. Into researching VA policy. Into writing articles that called out the bureaucratic nonsense that was crushing veterans. Into building something that might actually matter.

And it worked. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But it worked.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Here’s the part I told the vet on the phone, and here’s the part that matters most:

At first, you’re going to suck at this. I did. Before I figured out the channeling, I was enraged. Not angry—enraged. My face was hot, heartbeat fast, body keyed up ready to strike. I was trying to work on the site and my PC kept having problems, and it was only a couple of months old. I opened my back door, yanked the computer out of the wall, and threw it over the back stairs into the middle of the yard. And then every few days for a week or so I would go outside and jump on it. I thought, I can’t keep doing this. It’s getting expensive. I’d already gone through five dressers. So I was motivated to find a new way.

When I did start channeling it, it still wasn’t clean. I had a workbench in my basement and I would take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of it until I’d expelled enough to focus. Then I’d lay the bat down and go back to working on the site.

You may think that’s all fine and well for me, but I don’t know what you go through. That’s the point—I do know. The computer in the yard? The five dressers? That was me trying to work through the same rage you’re sitting on right now.

You’re going to aim the anger at your work and overshoot. You’re going to burn out. You’re going to redirect badly and still blow up at the wrong people. You’re going to think it’s not working, because the anger doesn’t just go away the first time you try to use it for something constructive.

That’s normal. That’s practice.

You know how you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

Redirecting PTSD anger is a skill. And like any skill, you’re not going to nail it the first time. Or the tenth. But repetition builds the muscle. You get better at recognizing when the anger is spiking. You get better at catching it before it explodes. You get better at asking yourself: Where can this go? What can I aim this at?

For me, it was the website. For someone else, it might be advocacy, or art, or building something with their hands, or mentoring younger vets, or perfecting the perfect polish on your shoes, or any other thing that matters enough to absorb that energy. It doesn’t have to matter to anyone but you.

The anger doesn’t disappear. But over time, you get better at the redirect. It stops controlling you. It becomes fuel instead of wildfire.

Not a Cure. A Redirect.

I’m not going to tell you this is a cure. I’m not going to tell you the anger goes away if you just find the right project or the right outlet.

But I will tell you this: if you’re sitting on that much anger, you’re also sitting on that much potential energy.

And the question isn’t “how do I make this stop.” It’s “where can I aim this?”

Maybe you won’t have success right away. The vet I talked to wasn’t sure he would. But the alternative—letting the anger run the show, letting it burn you out from the inside, letting it ruin everything you care about—that’s not working either.

So what do you have to lose by trying?

Point it somewhere. Practice. Fail. Try again.

The energy is already there. You might as well use it.

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“Am I willing to jump from a moving car?” I asked myself and myself said “Absolutely”. I looked over at Eddie as he drove the car and once again realized this could turn out badly for me.

It started with a friend Dave and his girlfriend Debbi. Eddie was a friend of theirs and one weekend they had invited me to spend the day with them in the city. To my surprise, when I arrived ready to go, they introduced me to Eddie and informed me he was going with us. I wasn’t thrilled—I was worried this was a setup. I made it clear to my friends that if they had hopes about anything happening between me and Eddie, they needed to adjust their expectations.

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They assured me it wasn’t about that. My friend explained Eddie was a young guy from a small town who my friend had taken under his wing. They were just trying to get him out for the weekend to get him to meet people.

I got a very bad vibe from Eddie. He raised the hair on the back of my neck. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be alone with him ever again.

Eddie didn’t say or do anything unusual. He was quiet. So it wasn’t anything he said or did. It was just something I felt radiate from him, and my instincts told me “Danger Close”.

After that outing, I made it clear to my friends that I would go nowhere with them if he was coming along. They insisted he was a sweet guy, shy around women. I said “nope, that ain’t it”. We agreed to disagree, and they said they wouldn’t invite me on any outings that he was part of.

And so it came to pass that one Sunday evening I was at my friends for a housewarming party. Dave’s girlfriend was supposed to drive me back to the barracks.

The evening had gotten late and it was a work night so around midnight I asked Debbi to take me back to the barracks as she had promised. By that time the only ones left were Dave, Debbi, me and Eddie.

Dave and Debbie were too drunk to drive me and Eddie was going back to the barracks. After some back and forth with Debbie I realized that the only way back to the barracks was with Eddie.

What a long strange trip that was. I got in the car and thanked him for the ride. He sat ridged in the drivers seat hands at 10 and 2 and looking straight ahead silent. It was creepy and I tried to make small talk, he was silent, I don’t mean quiet, I mean the kind of silent you feel. He kept driving I thought well at least we are going in the right direction. I kept up my side of the conversation while I thought “Am I willing to jump from a moving car?” I asked myself and myself said “Absolutely”. I moved my hand to the handle and kept on chatting.

Then the silence broke as he suddenly said “Let’s just go somewhere” I was like “Uh, somewhere?” he replied “I’ll go by the ATM and get a lot of cash and then we can just go anywhere” I started talking about how I couldn’t miss work, taking off somewhere on a work night was just not something I could do. He continued driving silently and I thought the idea of throwing myself from the car seemed reasonable.

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When he pulled into the bank parking lot, alarms went off and my brain transitioned to survival mode. Had my bladder been full I’m sure it would have emptied. I thought I’m going to disappear and no one will know what happened. So I got out of the car and walked back and forth in front of the ATM so they would at least know I was there. As I sat back down I thought well it looks like it’s throwing myself out of a moving car or talk my way out of this. He got back into the car and the heavy silence returned.

So I started with “hey Eddie it just sounds like you don’t feel like being alone we all feel that way. I know I do. It’s tough in the barracks when you don’t know anyone. Why don’t you come up to my room for awhile we can hang out and watch some TV. I thought the safest place I could be was my barracks and my roommate I had for over a year had always slept in our room.

I just kept repeating the same thing over and over. Thank God, we ended up in the parking lot of the barracks. He got out of the car silently and followed me up to my room. Now it’s 01:00 or so and as fate would have that was the night my roommate didn’t come home.

He sat himself at the foot of my bunk and I turned the TV on. I asked if he wanted anything to drink, he sat silently eyes fixed on the TV. I sat down at the head of my bunk I surveyed the room for weapons I could use, I took a long look at him head to toe, no obvious vulnerabilities he had heavy work boots on the same kind I was wearing, feet can be very vulnerable so I spent a few minutes trying to talk him into taking his boots off and get comfortable. That way stomping his feet with my work boots would be a force multiplier. He just sat silently staring rigidly at the TV, now it’s around 02:00 and we sat silently like that till about 03:00 when I asked him to leave because I needed to get some sleep, he just sat silently and I swear his eyes got dark. I kept saying this up till around 04:00 and finally I told him I got a chief with a real hard on for me. If I’m not there at 05:00 he will be at my door at 05:05 and believe me you don’t want to get on his radar. I kept this up till around 04:45 when he silently got up and walked out.

I breathed. I wondered had I just been freaked out about nothing, was I making it something it wasn’t? had my past violent experiences colored what I felt? Was I being “paranoid”? I pondered that for a while and came to the conclusion that trusting my gut has kept me alive so far and I wasn’t going to stop now.

Not long after that Eddie moved off base and Dave and Debbi gave him a housewarming party. I didn’t go, as I stuck to my “no Eddie rule” but they did tell me they gave him a big stuffed penguin which he named Cujo, I mean come on man he was a strange guy how did nobody see it.

Not long after that I got a call from Dave asking if I’d heard from Eddie, no I hadn’t, It would have been strange if I had. Dave asked if I saw the news about a local woman being stabbed to death and that they were looking for a sailor. He said that’s Eddie they are talking about. They found a woman who had been stabbed to death in his parents home. He was nowhere to be found and a note had been left on the mirror saying something like “we have your son” They looked for a month or so before they found him, I believe he pled guilty but wouldn’t say what the motivation was.

When the guys at work found out I knew him and had spent an evening with him they called me Petty Officer Lucky for awhile.

Lucky.

I kept thinking about that night in my room. Four hours of him sitting there staring while I talked and talked trying to find a way out. Four hours I didn’t close my eyes.

It was eerily reminiscent of the several hours I had spent convincing my father to put the gun down.

I thought about Debbi too drunk to drive me home. Dave insisting Eddie was harmless. That stuffed penguin named Cujo.

Nobody saw it. But I did. And forty years later, I’m still checking exits.

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For the first couple years after getting out of the Navy, my mission was simple: don’t kill yourself. That was the only job that mattered. I had no real work to throw myself into, nothing to tether me to the world. I tried. I still had some old software, a computer. I taught myself everything I could about every program I had, trying to stay busy, trying to stay alive. It helped—but just a little. I was missionless, untethered, surviving on instinct.

But like they say—when the student is ready, the teacher appears. When I was ready, my mission appeared. And with it came back the beautiful narcotic of work.

I created HadIt.com out of righteous outrage. The VA was treating veterans—myself included—with indifference, delays, and a stunning lack of transparency. I was furious. There was no centralized source of information. Just pamphlets. Fragments. Silence. So I began gathering. I called every state for their veterans benefits. I hoarded brochures, reports, any scrap of data I could get. I went to the library, took notes by hand, read everything I could. I saved up and ordered my first copy of NVLSP’s Veterans Benefits Manual in 1992 and devoured it. I bought Black’s Law Dictionary so I could understand the language of the system I was up against.

And while I did all this, I was still struggling—suicidal thoughts, flashbacks, disassociation, hunger. Picking smokes out of the VA’s butt kit just to get through the day. But the work gave me something to hold onto. A reason to stay.

Therapy helped. The Day Hospital program gave me structure. Compensated Work Therapy gave me a place to go every day. In 1993, I got a job at an information technology company—just as the Mosaic browser was introduced. When Netscape took over in 1994, the World Wide Web exploded. And with it, I saw a way forward. A way to share everything I’d been collecting. The knowledge. The experience. The warnings. The hope.

That was the breakthrough. The mission had found its medium.

I gave up a personal life—but not because of the work. That was PTSD. That was MDD. They took plenty from me. But the work gave something back. It kept me breathing. It gave me purpose. It connected me to others who were struggling in the same dark waters.

I’m not sure if this story ties neatly into the others I’ve told. Maybe it repeats some things I’ve already said. But that’s part of living with trauma—memories echo and loop until you find new meaning in them.

If there’s a thread I want to leave you with, it’s this:

Even in the worst of circumstances, you can make a difference in someone’s life. You can make an impact.

People said to me, Why are you doing this? There’s no money in it. You really think people are going to find your little site on the web?

My answer was simple:
“It beats walking the streets.”

When I got out of the Palo Alto Day Hospital in 1991, I wasn’t ready for the world—and the world sure as hell wasn’t ready for me. I’d spent about a year going to therapy five days a week, trying to keep the ground from collapsing underneath me. It helped, don’t get me wrong. But there’s a long stretch between not being actively suicidal and actually living.

So I was placed in the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy Program.

That’s a fancy name for a not-so-fancy reality.

They put me in the basement with a stack of envelopes to stuff. I stayed because I needed money to eat—I got a nickel for each one. I stayed because I needed a purpose—and because, for the first time in a long time, no one expected me to be okay.

Let me tell you, nothing grounds you quite like folding paper for hours under fluorescent lights, trying not to think about how this became your life. I was an E-6. I’d written award citations. Managed people. Won medals. And now?

I was making a nickel an envelope stuffing marketing material for a Silicon Valley information technology company—one that I had no hope of ever working for.

But something happened down there.

The Quiet Basement Was a Kind of Healing

Nobody expected me to perform. I didn’t have to smile. I didn’t have to explain the scars behind my eyes. And the truth is, the routine started to help. I showed up. I stuffed. I breathed.

Eventually, they noticed I had computer skills. Basic stuff at first—data entry, filing, keeping spreadsheets clean. Then one day, someone asked if I could build a tracking system for inventory.

I said yes. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could. But the task lit up a part of me that had been dormant since the Navy. The problem-solving part. The “I can fix this” part. The mission-driven part.

That new inventory system—along with a few other process changes I made—got noticed. And not just by the VA.

It caught the attention of that same Silicon Valley tech company I’d been stuffing envelopes for.

They arranged for me to start working part-time in their office during the week, serving as a direct liaison between their marketing department and the VA workshop. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was building a bridge—between the world that had forgotten me and the one I thought I’d lost.

After about a year, they offered me a full-time job as their Marketing Systems Analyst.

It was terrifying. And thrilling. And I said yes.

More money than I had ever made. A team that respected me. Work that I actually enjoyed. I felt like I’d won the lottery.

This was 1994, maybe ’95—and that’s when I was introduced to the web.

It wasn’t long before I started teaching myself HTML. I was fascinated. The web felt like possibility.

And somewhere in that spark, the old mission came roaring back.

A Website for Veterans—Because the System Wasn’t Enough

One day in 1993, after a long day of waiting on VA appointments in the heat, the last thing I had to do was pick up my meds. I turned in the slip and waited—45 minutes later, they closed. No meds for me.

I went home to my tiny studio apartment, vibrating with rage. I stood there, fists clenched, and yelled up at the sky:

“You will rue the day you fucked with me, VA.”

From that day forward, I started gathering everything I could about VA claims. Regulations, case law, paperwork samples—anything. I didn’t know exactly how I’d share it yet. I just knew I would. Because the next veteran shouldn’t have to go through what I did.

So in my spare time, I started building something.

It began with a handful of pages: basic claim info, a few links, some step-by-step guides I wrote myself. I called it HadIt.com—as in, “I’ve had it”—because I really had. Had it with the runaround. Had it with the silence. Had it with watching other veterans fall through the cracks just like I had.

I didn’t have a grand plan. No team. No funding. Just a mission—and enough web skills to keep tinkering.

By early 1996, the site was live, and in 1997 it was registered as HadIt.com.

That Basement Was the Bridge

We don’t talk enough about the in-between places. The basements. The not-quite-broken but not-yet-whole seasons of life where you’re just surviving.

But that basement gave me back something I didn’t know I’d lost: agency.

It didn’t cure me. It didn’t erase the trauma. But it gave me a path. And sometimes, that’s everything.

Because of that basement, I built a tracking system. That system led to a job. That job introduced me to the web. And the web gave me the tools to build HadIt.com—a place that’s helped thousands of veterans over the years.

Not bad for a nickel an envelope.

🔔 Before you go:

Have you had a “VA basement” moment? A time when life forced you to slow down—and change direction?

Share it in the comments, or send me a note. I read every one.

“I fought with myself over that call. So much of me wanted to be dead. Then I dropped to my knees and asked God for help. And He did. I made the call—and that’s one of the reasons I’m still here today.”

Soon after discharge, I started experiencing abdominal pain. I went to the VA. It was chaotic—veterans standing in line, pissed off. The line curved around the room, barely enough space to stand. The irritation and anger in the air was palpable. I felt it. It hyped me up. Now I was agitated and in pain.

I finally got called back to an exam room. I’m sitting there, waiting—always waiting back then. A nurse comes in, looks at me, and tells me I’ll have to wait in the waiting room. Only my husband is allowed in the exam room. I said, “I’m the veteran.” “I’m the veteran” was something women used to have to say repeatedly back then.

The doctor comes in. Asks me what’s going on. “Pain in my abdomen,” I tell him. He takes a little history, and when we get to my ovarian tumor surgery and the radical hysterectomy that followed soon after, he says he needs to do a pelvic exam.

I didn’t think he needed to. I certainly didn’t want one. I’d had enough punishing pelvic exams in my last couple of years in the Navy. But he was the doctor, so he left the exam room to get a speculum.

That proved to be a bit of a quest.

Sometime later, he returned—holding a huge metal speculum. For my brothers here: they come in different sizes, and that size, I was not. So I said, “Nope. Not going to do that.”

We went back and forth a little, and he finally agreed not to do the pelvic. But by then, I was in tears. Terrified of retribution. He didn’t offer a CT scan or any other diagnostic options. Just told me to go home and come back if it got worse.

So I went home. The pain lasted a week or so. I realized later it was probably what the VA would eventually call IBS—though years down the line, it turned out not to be IBS at all. It was Microscopic Colitis.

So that was my first visit to the VA hospital. I had no idea how anything worked. I left confused and agitated. That would become a recurring theme in my journey with the VA.

I left the U.S. Navy in December 1990 after eight years of service. It wasn’t easy to say goodbye. As a Data Analyst (DA), I had risen to the rank of Petty Officer First Class (E-6). Throughout my time in the military, I received a perfect performance eval (4.0) every year, starting from my promotion to Petty Officer Third Class (E-4) until I left. I earned two Navy Achievement Medals and received several commendation letters from Admirals. I received recognition as the “Best Analyst on the West Coast.”

The day after I left the Navy, it hit me hard: total aloneness. Boom. I was no longer part of something bigger than myself. I was no longer part of anything.

I had resolved through therapy my childhood trauma, but the trauma I suffered in the Navy seemed to break open everything in my past—it flooded me. Still, I continued to perform in an exemplary manner. Work was the only place I could shut my mind down from all the craziness going on up there. Albeit, my anger and rage started to show up in different ways that last six months I was in. I think between my medical situation from the last surgery and my performance, they gave me a break—because honestly, there were a couple of instances where I should have been written up. Like the time I suggested the Warrant Officer was pussy whipped by an E-5 in his division and that she should stick to her fucking pay grade. Normally, as they say, that would not be a career-enhancing move. But they gave me some leeway. They were well aware of my treatment at medical and had read the narrative I sent to Navy Medical OIG. Yeah, it was messed up.

I had my guard up—but not for the day-to-day harassment or the way medical sometimes did more harm than good. It included not returning calls, making me drive five hours just to see a gynecologist, and flat-out refusing to believe I was in pain. Every time I complained, they’d subject me to another pelvic exam—painful, invasive, like punishment for speaking up. And they lied. It felt like gaslighting.

I kept my mental fucked-up-ed-ness to myself. I just knew that letting on I was crumbling would be very bad for me. In the beginning of this, I had asked for therapy—and that turned into a waste of time and caused new harassment from the Command Master Chief. It was rough.

The month I left the service—Dec 1990—a Disabled American Veterans (DAV) representative looked at my medical records, saw the fact I’d had major surgery while in the Navy (I’ll save that for another blog post), looked me straight in the eye and said, “You will be 50% for the rest of your life.”

Later in his office, as he filled out my Veterans Affairs claim for my physical disability, I started mentally breaking down right in front of him. He urged me to file another claim for Depression and PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). But in 1990–1991, I didn’t meet the criteria—that came later when the DSM-IV changed the definition, but I wasn’t hearing it. I was in denial. Mental health issues are often much harder to admit, even to ourselves. Besides, no one talked about PTSD back then. I thought it was just a bunch of bullshit.

Everybody seems to know about PTSD now. My niece even tells her friends, “Oh, my aunt lives with me; she has PTSD,” and they’re like, “Oh yeah, you know, my brother’s cousin has that.” It’s so common.

Back then, I didn’t know about it, and I was in so much denial I couldn’t even talk to myself about it. Just couldn’t do it.

Bad idea.

A few months later, I was staying at a friend’s apartment in northern California, and luckily, she wasn’t there that night, or she would’ve thrown me out because I wasn’t doing well. So for the first time, I called the suicide hotline.

The folks on the other end of the hotline talked with me for a while and then told me I could call the VA, which I didn’t know because I was just so fucked up. I understood nothing. Leaving the military and entering the civilian world is very confusing. Even more so with my mental health unraveling.

I took their advice, called the VA, and asked to speak to the psychiatrist on duty. He spoke with me for a long time and eventually told me he would send the police to my house, and they would bring me to the VA hospital, and I would be safe there.

Having the police come to my house at two in the morning seemed like a bad idea, and it took him a while to convince me. But killing myself also seemed like not a good idea, so I finally agreed to it.

Well, about four cop cars showed up with all their lights flashing, pulled up at weird angles like they were coming onto a violent crime scene. I thought, Oh my fucking God! The cops knocked on the door, and I said, “Look, dudes, I don’t have any weapons. I won’t hurt anyone. Can you send some of the other cops away and turn the lights out?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, sure,” they said. Thank God. After the “crime scene” calmed down, the two cops that were left came in and asked if they could look around and check for weapons and drugs and the sort, and I agreed. With that done, they said, “Well, you’re coming with us.”

“OK,” I replied, “I agreed with the psychiatrist that you guys would take me to the VA hospital.”

“We can’t take you to the VA hospital. We have to take you to the state hospital.”

“I ain’t fucking going!”

“No. You gotta go now. You’ll have to work it out. The VA will have to transfer you from the state hospital.” And I realized … I’ve got two huge cops in my house, and I’m going to the state hospital whether I want to or not. So, discretion being the better part of valor, I decided not to fight with them and got into the back of the police car. But the whole time, I was thinking, This is not good. This is not good!

They took me to the state hospital where I sat in this little, tiny waiting room coming un-fucking-glued. I started plunking all my change into the pay phone and called the VA psychiatrist. “What the fuck did you do to me? I’m over here, and you’re not here. I trusted you!” The psychiatrist replied, “Well, tell them you need a taxi voucher. Then call a taxi and have them bring you to the VA.” So I went to the window and said, “I talked to the VA psychiatrist, and he told me to ask you for a taxi voucher.” The lady at the window said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing. And you can’t leave because you’re suicidal.”

I sat down for a minute, wondering what I was going to do, when this gurney rolled in with a guy strapped to it screaming, “I’m going to kill you all! I’m going to kill you all!” And that was it for me.

I went to the window and said, “I’m not suicidal,” and ran out into the night.

Now it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I have no idea where I am, aside from the fact that I’m in a parking lot hiding behind a car thinking, OK, things have gone really badly for me here. I just needed to get home. I knew I had maybe sixty bucks in the bank, which was supposed to be food money for the rest of the month, but at least it was there.

I snuck back into a side door to a different pay phone and called a cab, had the cab take me home, got my ATM card, had the cab take me to an ATM, paid him, and then called the psychiatrist again. He said if I promised him I would go to the VA the very next morning at 8 a.m., he would not send the cops back to my house. I promised him I would do it and showed up promptly at eight o’clock the next morning. But that whole night, I half expected a helicopter with spotlights to fly over me at any minute. Then I’d know things had really gone south!

I will say that the two cops who came in couldn’t have been more compassionate or kind. They were super, and I felt very safe with them. I didn’t feel like they were tricking me at all, but I felt like the psychiatrist didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. This would be my first in a long list of people at the VA who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about.

That wild night was the start of my recovery, and though I didn’t know it, it was the beginning of me learning everything I could about filing VA claims that would lead to the website HadIt.com. Helping other veterans file their claims, get the compensation they deserve, and find community through HadIt.com for the past twenty-five years has become my life’s purpose.

I used to think I was broken. But I was just being remade.

The other veterans at the VA hospital used to ask,
“How you doing?”
I’d say,
“Ducky.”

Cool and calm on the surface.
Paddling like hell underneath.

Turns out, we were all ducky.

Coming Home with More Than I Left With

I came home from the Navy in 1990 after eight years of service—carrying more than I left with.

Some of it was visible. Most of it wasn’t.

PTSD. Major depression. Chronic pain.

Insomnia so bad, night after night, I’d do anything just to keep my brain from eating itself alive.

I wasn’t living—I was white-knuckling my way through.

Some days, just brushing my teeth felt like a win.

So, I worked.
Whatever I could find.
For whatever money I could scrape together.

I needed to eat.
I needed to quiet the thoughts screaming at me to give up.

Working meant surviving.
Anything to keep my mind busy enough to stay here.

The VA System: A Jungle Without a Map

Back then, trying to deal with the VA was like being dropped into a jungle with no map, no compass, and no backup.

I was broke. I was angry. I was alone.

The forms didn’t make sense.
The decisions felt random.
Nobody explained a damn thing.

I didn’t have much.
Skipped meals.
Stuffed envelopes in Veterans Compensated Work Therapy.
Counted pennies.

But I had one thing:
A dial-up internet connection.

And an idea.

The Birth of HadIt.com Veterans

I started working on what would become HadIt.com in 1995 or 1996—trying to make sense of the system and not lose my mind doing it.

Then came the moment.

January 1997.

I’d already been on hold with the VA twice—over an hour each time. Both times I got disconnected.

The second time, I slammed down the phone and yelled:
“I’ve had it!”

And just like that, I knew what to call the site.

HadIt.com.

At first, it was just a few bare-bones pages and a forum.
Nothing fancy.

But it gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time: purpose.
And it gave other veterans something they hadn’t felt in a long time: a place.

We weren’t lawyers or experts.
We were veterans helping veterans—
teaching each other how to survive the very system that was supposed to help us.

I knew what it felt like to open a VA denial letter with shaking hands.
To see “not service connected” next to a condition that was ruining your life.
To fight for every damn percentage point.
To chase every overlooked word in a C&P exam.

And the community?
We filled in the rest.

No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just help.

Still Here. Still Fighting.

Twenty-eight years later, HadIt.com has helped tens of thousands of veterans.

It hasn’t been easy.

My body’s worn down.
My shoulders are shot.

But the mission?
Still here.
Still strong.

The Quiet Fight Begins

Now I’m expanding that mission with this newsletter: Tbird’s Quiet Fight.

It’s where I’ll keep showing up—just like you do.

Here’s what you’ll find:

• Plainspoken breakdowns of VA policy, law, and how it affects real people

• Personal reflections on life with a disability, and what the fight for benefits really feels like

• Essays on survival, trauma, resilience, and why we keep going

• Civic Fallout: how national policy quietly hits home for veterans and working Americans

For in-depth guides on VA disability claims, SMC levels, and how to build your case—
that’s what HadIt.com Veterans is for.

No Promises. Just Truth.

I’m not promising a post every week.
I’ll write when I can. I’ll rest when I must.

But you’ll always get the truth from me.
No bull. No fluff. No hype.

If you’re new here—welcome.
If you’ve been with me since the early HadIt.com Veterans days—thank you.

Either way—
You’re not alone.

The fight may be quiet.
But it’s never been weak.

—Tbird

💬 Want more?

Subscribe to Tbird’s Quiet Fight and never face the system alone.

Got VA claims questions? Visit HadIt.com
Want to talk to other veterans? Join the forum at Community.HadIt.com

Know someone who needs this? Share this post →

I didn’t come home to family. Or friends. I came home alone—after eight years, it was all just gone.

One day after discharge, I started crying—and didn’t stop.

The next day, I woke up already in tears. That was Day Two. The same day the medal showed up on my doorstep.

No ceremony. No handshake. Just a cold, padded envelope—like a thank-you note from a job that had already erased me. Inside was my second Navy Achievement Medal.

I hadn’t even known it was coming. That made it worse.

I held it in my hand—shiny, official, meaningless.

How could I be unraveling like this while the Navy was still sending me medals? The same Navy I felt had betrayed me.

Nothing made sense.

I had poured myself into that work. Fought for it. Bled for it. And now it was just… over.

I was unraveling and didn’t know it yet.

PTSD. Major depressive disorder. Surgical menopause. No one had given me the hormones that might’ve cushioned the fall.

That first week, I looked at my closet and saw my uniforms—and in a frenzy, I threw them all out. My sea bag. My socks. Everything.

I regretted it later. I had no job. Barely any civilian clothes. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was just trying to survive.

By Day Four, I couldn’t take being so close to the Navy. That night, I threw what little I owned into a friend’s van and drove six hours north to Palo Alto.

I got there around 2 a.m. on Day Five. I pulled into the driveway of a couple I knew.

I sat there for hours—crying, chain-smoking—waiting for the sun to come up.

When it finally did, I knocked on their door.

When the door opened, I broke down. Couldn’t even speak.

It took nearly an hour before I could say a word. And even then, I couldn’t explain what was happening.

I didn’t know. I only knew one thing: I was losing my mind.

---

I’m not sharing this for sympathy.

I’m sharing it for the one who’s still sitting on that couch. The one white-knuckling it minute by minute. The one who thinks it’s only them.

It’s not. You’re not.

If this hit something in you—or made you think of someone you love—consider subscribing. I’ve got more stories to tell. Stories about trauma, survival, and the quiet fight to build something out of the rubble.

You're reading Tbird's Quiet Fight—where survival meets truth.

📬 Subscribe for free or support my work with a paid subscription: https://tbirdsquietfight.com

🗣️ Share this post. Someone out there might need it.

🧭 Explore more stories at https://tbirdsquietfight.com

Some stories never get easier to tell.
But silence never saved anyone either.

I was nineteen, still living at home in a small town just across the bridge from St. Louis. I’d graduated high school in May 1975 and started working that fall. It should have been a step toward independence.

But at home, there was no such thing.

My father was a violent man—unpredictable, cruel, manipulative. He could be charming, too. That made it worse. I learned early not to fall for it.

Once I started working, things got even harder.

He was retired, so he was always home, always in my face. I didn’t have a car, and he wouldn’t let me ride the bus. So every morning, he drove me to work. Every night, he picked me up.

The only time I got away from him was when I was at work.
And even that came with a price.

The moment I closed the car door after a shift, he’d start:
“Those bitches aren’t your friends. You can’t trust them. You’re too stupid to see it.”

We’d get home. My mother would set dinner on the table. He’d pull up a chair right next to mine, start eating off my plate, and keep going:
“You’ll end up raped and left in a ditch somewhere if I’m not around to protect you.”

He still beat me. Still controlled everything.

When I opened a checking account, he did all the talking. I just showed my ID and signed where I was told.

He bought a new car and told me to make the payments. Said when it was paid off, he’d give it to me. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to drive it.

I bought my own car later, but at the time, it was just easier to go along. Survival, not agreement.

Despite everything, I was starting to push back.

I made a few friends. After enough battles, I even got him to let me stay overnight at a friend’s house.

But everything was a war of wills. Sometimes it ended in bruises. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes I won. Most times, I didn’t. But I kept pushing.

I was tenacious even then.

By the fall of 1976, I chose a day and told him I was leaving.

His eyes went dark. He turned and walked away.

Not a good sign.

We went back and forth for hours. That night around 10:30 PM, he was lying on the couch in his usual uniform—wife beater and boxers.

I sat down on the edge of the couch and brought up the car I was paying for.

“What do you want to do?” I asked. “Give me some money back? Let me take the car?”

He growled without looking at me.
“There’s no money. And you ain’t takin’ nothing.”

I stood up.
“Well, I’m not tired. I’m going across the street to visit Frank.”

Frank, my oldest brother—23 years older—lived just across the way.

And just like that—he snapped.

He jumped off the couch and stormed down the hallway to his bedroom. And for some reason I still can’t explain—I followed him.

He came out holding a nickel-plated, pearl-handled snub-nose .38.
He pressed it against my forehead.
“You’re not going anywhere.”

I felt the barrel against my skin. Cold. Hard. Then I felt nothing.

I kept my voice calm.
“Well… if you feel that strongly about it, I’ll just stay.”

He didn’t move. I didn’t move.
The only sound in the house was the living room clock ticking.

He stood in front of the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway. I was facing him—so I saw the reflection of his back in the mirror.

It was surreal. In that moment, nothing existed but the .38 in my face.

I saw the bullets in the chamber, ready to pierce my brain, and the way it trembled as my father shook with rage.

We were frozen there. A minute? An hour? I don’t know.

I ran through every scenario in my mind and landed on one: de-escalation. Keep it calm. Keep it steady.

Eventually, the pressure from the barrel eased. The gun stayed pointed at my face, but he stepped back.

Then my mother appeared. She slid her arm through his. She was looking down. As far as I can remember, she never looked up.

He broke the silence.
“If you try to leave, I’ll kill you, your mother, and myself.”

I didn’t flinch.

I kept my voice steady and said,
“I won’t go anywhere. Why don’t we sit down and talk?
Mother, why don’t you make us some tea.”

That was all I had. I said it again. And again. And again.
Trying to get her away from him. Trying to move the moment.

She didn’t move. He didn’t move.
We stayed frozen like that for hours.

Finally, sometime around 2:00 AM, he lowered the gun. Walked back to his room. Set the revolver on the bedside table. Then lay back down on the couch.

Like nothing had happened.

I went to my room, shut the door, and sat down on the bed.

What in the actual fuck.

All the control. All the beatings.
And now this.

I remember thinking: I wish he’d just done it when I was little. It would've spared me years of hell.

A few minutes later, my mother opened the door. She stepped in and said:

“Don’t tell anyone about this. They wouldn’t understand.
Your father just did that because he loves you so much.”

I said, “Okay.”

She left.

What in the actual fuck. Again.

I made my decision.
Come sunrise, I was going out that door.
Toes pointed out—or up. Either way, I was leaving.

When the sun came up, I backed my car into his precious front lawn. I threw everything I owned into the trunk.

As I passed him at the door, he said,
“Look what you’re doing to your mother.”
And then,
“If you go out that door, never darken my doorstep again.”

And out the door I went.

That night, I wasn’t afraid of him. I was just done.
Done surviving for someone else’s comfort.
Every chapter that follows is a step toward the day I built HadIt.com Veterans—for the ones still standing at their own doors.

Have you ever faced a moment that split your life into before and after?
I’d be honored if you shared it—or passed this along to someone who needs to know they’re not alone.

📘 Coming Chapters in Diary of a Mad Sailor

1980 — East St. Louis, John Lennon Dies
Two men. A gun. A fight for my life on the same night the world lost John Lennon.

1981 — Struck by a Truck
One moment I’m walking. The next, I’m flying. And somehow—still laughing.

1981 — The Oven Explosion
Gas. Fire. A blast that knocked me across the room and changed everything.

1982 — Car Flip on I-55
When your life literally rolls upside down at 60 miles per hour.

1983 — I Joined the Navy
After everything, I still believed in service. This is how I took the oath—and never looked back.

Before You Go:
If this chapter spoke to you, I hope you’ll subscribe, share it, or drop a comment. Your voice matters—and I’m listening.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I work the way I do.

Why I can spend hours neck-deep in VA law, buried in code on the back end of HadIt.com, writing arguments, tweaking layouts, organizing claims logic—and somehow still feel like I haven’t done enough.

Why I sometimes can’t stop.

And maybe, more honestly, why I don’t want to stop.

It hit me the other day:

Work feels like a narcotic.

Not in some poetic, romanticized way. I mean literally—like something that numbs me just enough to get through the day.

I live with PTSD and Major Depressive Disorder.

Some days it’s quiet. Most days it’s not.

There’s a weight that never quite lifts. And when things are still, when there’s no task to focus on, no system to create or post to write, the thoughts come. The memories. The ache. The stuff I’ve learned to compartmentalize so well that even I forget it’s there—until I don’t.

That’s why I keep moving. Because when I’m working, I can breathe.

Focused work—especially work that helps other vets—gives me purpose. It organizes the chaos. It gives me a place to put the pain.

But here’s the hard part:

When I stop, the quiet isn’t peaceful. It’s jagged.

That’s when the fog rolls in. That’s when I feel like I’m sinking again.

And that’s when the depression tightens its grip and the PTSD reminds me that nothing is ever really safe.

So I keep going.

One more email.

One more forum reply.

One more tweak to the site.

From the outside, it looks like discipline. Productivity. Strength.

But sometimes, honestly, it’s just survival.

It’s me trying not to fall apart.

People call it high-functioning. I call it survival in a sharp suit.

What PTSD looked like in my day-to-day—and how ‘barely’ kept me alive.

The vets at the VA hospital used to ask me,

“How you doing?”

“Ducky,” I’d say.

“What’s ducky?”

“Cool and calm on the surface. Paddling like hell underneath.”

Turns out we were all ducky.

But here’s the truth about using work like a drug:

It comes with a cost.

The cost?

Rest I never take.

Relationships I neglect because I don’t know how to slow down without unraveling.

The physical toll of living on high alert—and never coming down.

The hardest part?

No one sees it.

Because from the outside, it looks like productivity. Like I’ve got it together. Like I’m healed.

But sometimes I’m not working because I’m okay.

I’m working because it’s the only way I know how to keep from falling apart.

This isn’t a confession. It’s just the truth.

If you’ve felt it too—if staying busy is how you stay afloat—you’re not alone.

We’re out here. Quiet fighters.

Cool and calm on the surface.

Paddling like hell underneath.

Feel this too?

Share this post with someone who needs it. Or just drop a comment to let me know you’re out there. That’s what The Quiet Fight is about—telling the truth out loud, together.