John Ballen
speaker
344 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
John Ballen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This is like you're deploying and you're living there, but you're just sort of like a teacher. That's the gist. And that's, that's an amazing thing to do, but it's definitely not combat. But as a result, I really didn't like mentally prepare myself for what it would be like to be in Peru. And if you don't know this, like Peru is a totally Spanish-speaking country.
It's very – at least where we were, there was very little English, like very, very little. And so I remember I had to go late to Peru. So my team had gone with a group of us that was deploying there. They went early to Peru and I went like a week later. And it meant that I had to fly into the airport in Peru by myself. And I had to like navigate the airport.
And I speak a little Spanish, like barely conversational. And I didn't take it seriously at all. They gave a Spanish course as I blew it off. And I remember I got to Peru, and it was like, oh, my God. As soon as I landed and I look around, no one speaks English. I'm trying to figure out where to go. Everything's in Spanish. I can't find my ride.
My ride, by the way, is a local who speaks Spanish, doesn't know what I look like. And my bag got stuck, and they were trying to figure out what was in my bag, but I don't speak their language. It was so stressful. And then I finally get in the vehicle to get brought to our – But to get there, it required driving through like a true like slum, like a very, very unsafe place.
And I remember thinking like I am in a totally foreign country. I'm so far from my family and I'm going to be here for six months, which is not long by, you know, deployment standards. But that's a long time to be away. Yeah.
and it was like i didn't put any thought into this i can't believe i'm gonna be here it like i had suddenly i feel like i was in afghanistan again a little bit i struggled so so bad on that deployment with just being sane like i was so miserable there there was like to the point where i was borderline having delusions i was so depressed i can't even describe it i had this recurring dream
where I'd be lying on my bed. And it's also, it's always moist in Peru. Like it's, everything's wet. Like no matter what, like your sheets are wet, your clothes are wet. It's like a very humid environment. And I'm like laying in my bed. I don't have a fan. It's like humid in this crappy little room. And outside I just hear the chaos of like the Peruvian streets.
And I would like fall asleep and I'd have this dream that I was in Russia standing on the corner of this like embassy or some federal building. And somebody would come out of a car and like grab me and like hijack me and like take me hostage. But it was like over and over again. I had this dream to the point where I began to believe I was losing my mind. That like, how can I have the same dream?
I'd wake up in a panic. I missed my wife so terribly. She was pregnant with our first child. It was awful. It was like the worst time of my life. And it's hard to even now to put it into words. It was just like I had bordering on like a mental collapse. And it was in part because I just didn't appreciate the fact that like you're going to another part of the world where everything is different.
And I also sort of began to confront, I guess, my demons from the deployment to Afghanistan, there was just some things that I, that we did, that I did, that were not necessarily wrong, or like, illegal at all, but just like, it's war and war is like this horrible thing. And seeing it up close, man, it's, it's just, it's rough, you know, and at the time, you're so conditioned to
to not only see war and be okay with it, but to practically revel in it. Because how else do you get young men to keep going to war and keep fighting and dying? You need men and women. But it was like, yeah, it was like I had a breakdown, like a mental sort of questioning, why am I in the military? You know, questioning who I was. And so I ended up getting medically retired.
And it was not really from Peru at all. It was more like I was so unhappy. I came back from Peru, and I just detested the fact that I was in the military. I didn't feel like it was the place for me. I also was physically injured. I was dealing with the injuries. And I ended up getting medically retired. But it was my choice if I wanted to continue to see a therapist after I got out.
And at first, I didn't. At first, when I got out, when I got medically retired, I just was like, whatever, I'm done. I'm on my own. But I was so angry all the time. Like, just everything made me mad. I was so like, on edge, not even like jumpy, but just I was just like,
so high strung and it got to the point where like nobody wanted to be around me like my kids didn't want to be around me my wife didn't want to be around me and ultimately they were like I think you need to see somebody and I was like you know what I think I do too like I feel like I'm a mess and it was through therapy that I this is like 2018 or so that I realized I had some very deep-seated issues with myself with my service with just stuff I saw and did and
And it was only when I began to sort of openly talk about those things that I actually began to sort of forgive myself and begin to feel content. What's the word? Content again. It's not about like therapy is not meant to make you forget stuff. It's to give you perspective that you didn't have. And I think I had fallen into a cycle of just detesting who I was. Why?
I think that it was like ultimately if I were to boil it down to its simplest part, it's like I wanted to be a Navy SEAL in part because I just wanted to go through the training. I wanted to serve in the military, but I didn't really think that hard about that.
It was mostly like I want to serve because it's an honorable thing and I know people that have done it and that's something that means something to me. But it was really the draw to be a SEAL that was the challenge that I saw. That's the thing. It's going to take years to do it. It's like this really hard thing.
It was like the idea of even contemplating what life would be like as a SEAL felt like even cart before the horse. It's like, who do you think you are thinking about what it's going to be like to be a SEAL? Like, if you ever get there, you'll figure it out. And this is actually a – I think it's a relatively common phenomenon that the people that become SEALs, it's almost surprising. Yeah.
Like you become a SEAL and you're like, wait a minute. Like now I'm going to be a Navy SEAL, which sounds goofy, but it's years to get to that point. And all the way up until the end, to a degree, you can not make it. You can like fail out. And so you finally become a SEAL and you realize like the reality of the job.
And I say this not because I have deep exposure to this, but because it's just true, which is in this job, people die. and you kill people. Like, that's kind of the gist of the job. There's way more to it than that, but it's like, that's the job, guys. Like, why do you think they make video games and movies about it?
Showing 261–280 of 344 · page 14 of 18
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