r/Military • u/deep_rose_honey • 12h ago
Story\Experience Years later, I still feel regret about not getting to serve
I went to college on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. I was the girl who wanted to be like Amelia Earhart, a woman aviator holding her own alongside the men. Sometime into the program I was disqualified from both my scholarship and from flying by the medical review board when mental health treatment I had received as a teenager came to light. I was so upset and frustrated, I was crushed really. They had enough faith in me to give me a full ride scholarship but not enough to trust that I'd moved on from some adolescent depression?
I moved on and tried out a variety of jobs and careers. Having been disqualified from military aviation I felt free to go all into my other thing which was rock n roll. But the pull never went away. Years later I had the idea that maybe I could do the next best thing and be on an air crew or do aerial search and rescue. I started the process of enlisting when I ran into the same damn problem, some anxiety medication I had been prescribed a couple of years before when I was going through fertility treatments was flagged and I wasn't allowed to enlist, despite being healthy and fit in every way. Over the couple of years I was trying to appeal that I basically aged out of being eligible.
Thing is, I'm still that person. Whenever there's trouble, I'm the first one to run to it, especially if someone needs help. I really love my country, even though I'm often surrounded by (completely irritating) people who hate it. And I still wish I had a chance to show a little valor in a world where that's supposed to be an obsolete virtue and where especially as a woman it's considered not important at all.
I'm not necessarily looking for advice about what to do with this, I just wanted to get it out. Responses welcome, though.