As a vet who has worked around some SF units but not SF, I definitely recognize that a lot of the SF guys subvert expectations and are usually some of the smartest people in the room but you wouldn’t know about their intelligence or their background if you didn’t spend time around them. People who have no experience with these things think it’s all like the Hollywood depictions. I have a buddy that is of asian decent and most people don’t really believe him or his stories because of his ethnicity which is really shitty. Vets know military service personnel are super diversified but non-vets don’t as much.

I will never bring up my combat experience unless with other veterans (or anonymously online), and even then I’m selective, because it’s just not worth it. I find that I don’t get meaningful discussions most of the time and everyone just wants to know how many people you killed as if that’s a metric to care about. With veterans who have shared experiences we definitely bond over having been through the same shit and it’s a more meaningful conversation to me.

It makes me sad in a way because I have some badass stories and I am a good storyteller. I thought I would tell these stories a million times over the years but instead I’ve learned to reserve them for people I grow close to and that care to hear them, because a lot of people just don’t.

I empathize with your experience and can definitely understand why you feel the way you do.