The Structure I Didn’t Know I Needed

I never thought I was someone whose identity became their service to country. I always believed that when my time in the military ended, I would walk away cleanly—that little would change. I looked forward to the day I could take the uniform off and simply move on.

It wasn’t until I left that I began to understand how wrong I was.

What I didn’t miss was the military itself. What I missed—what I needed—was the structure. The routine. The predictability. The way my days were held together by something outside of me.

Without it, I struggled to function.

For most of my career, this wasn’t obvious. I was a capable Soldier. Reliable. Disciplined. But whenever the routine shifted, everything seemed to unravel. I couldn’t find my dog tags. A piece of my uniform would be missing. Something small but essential was always out of place. At the time, I chalked it up to stress or distraction. I assumed it was a personal failing I just needed to manage better.

Looking back now, I can see the pattern clearly.

If I had known more about neurodivergence then, I might have recognized that I wasn’t careless or undisciplined—I was different. Routine wasn’t a preference for me; it was a necessity. When the structure was intact, I thrived. When it was disrupted, I struggled.

I was fortunate in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. I always had battle buddies to my left and right. They noticed what I missed. They reminded me of what I forgot. They quietly stepped in without judgment. Long before I had language for it, they were providing the support that made it possible for me to function.

I masked so well that I didn’t even know I was masking.

For most of my life, I thought this was just what discipline looked like. I assumed everyone was working this hard just to stay upright. I believed that pushing through exhaustion, confusion, and overwhelm was simply the cost of being competent.

Then perimenopause hit—and everything collapsed.

Not gradually. Not gently. It was a complete meltdown: mental, emotional, physical. The systems I had relied on stopped working. The routines that had held me together were gone. The ability to power through disappeared. And without those supports, there was nothing left to hide behind.

That was the moment I realized I hadn’t been “fine” all those years. I had been compensating. Constantly. Successfully. At a cost my body could no longer pay.

Retirement, disability, divorce—all of it landed in the same season. The external structure vanished at the same time my internal capacity did. What remained was the uncomfortable truth: I didn’t lose my identity when I left the military. I lost the container that made my life manageable.

This has been one of my biggest challenges since leaving service—learning how to build structure without orders, routine without rigidity, purpose without burning myself out. It’s slower work. Quieter work. And far less visible than anything I did in uniform.

But it’s honest.

And for the first time, it’s built around who I actually am—not who I learned to be in order to survive.