I am sitting here at 2am and I cannot stop thinking about the look on their faces and I am so angry at how weak I have become since I left the service. I spent four years where every single breath was part of a command and every movement had a purpose and I knew exactly how to hold my body together but now I am in this studio with these people who do not know what real discipline looks like. I teach these classes because it is supposed to be quiet and I need the quiet to stay sane but the quiet is exactly what betrayed me today and I can’t stop replaying it, I can’t stop. I put on this performance of the calm instructor every single day, every day, and I wear the expensive gear and I speak in that soft, airy voice that makes me want to scream because it is all a lie. I look at these civilians and they are so soft and they have no idea what it is like to be truly still and truly ready for anything but I try to give them a piece of that discipline because it is all I have left to offer. We were in the middle of a ninety-minute silent meditation intensive and I had twenty people on their mats and the air was heavy with that expensive incense and the sheer weight of their expectations and I was supposed to be the anchor for the entire room. We moved into a deep pigeon pose and I was at the front of the room on my mat and I felt my body failing me in a way it never would have back when I was downrange. I was supposed to be the example of perfect form and perfect control and I was breathing through the tension in my hips but my gut was knotted up from the cheap coffee and the nerves I can’t seem to shake since I got out and I reached forward to deepen the stretch and I felt it coming. I tried to lock it down and I tried to use every muscle in my core to stop it but my body just did not listen to me and it happened, this loud and echoing sound in a room that was supposed to be sacred and silent and perfect. It was not a small sound and it was not something I could hide because it was a roar in that hollow room and it bounced off the mirrors and it hung in the air like a physical thing and I saw the woman in the front row flinch like I had fired a round right next to her head. I stayed frozen and I did not move a muscle because that is what I was trained to do when things go sideways but I could feel the heat rising up my neck and I could hear the muffled snickers that they tried to hide behind their hands. They were laughing at me and they were judging me and I have never felt so small and so undisciplined in my entire life, never. I wanted to stand up and yell at them to shut up because they do not know what I have been through and they do not know that I have held my breath in holes in the ground while people were looking for me but here I am being undone by a biological function in a room full of people who spend sixty dollars on leggings. I am so angry at myself for losing my grip and I am angry at the studio for making me feel like I have to be some kind of porcelain doll and I am angry at the way they looked at me with pity once the initial shock wore off. Pity is worse than the laughter and I saw it in their eyes and I wanted to break something, I really did. After the class ended I had to stand by the door and smile and say the same repetitive nonsense to every single person, every person, while I was dying inside and wanting to crawl into a hole. One woman actually patted my arm and told me it was okay and she said it happens to everyone and I wanted to shove her hand off me because she has no idea who I am or what I have done. I am not just 'everyone' and I am not some yoga-obsessed civilian and I am a soldier who can’t even control his own shadow anymore and I am stuck in this cycle of pretending to be okay while I am rotting. I went home and my girlfriend asked how my day was and I couldn’t even tell her the truth because she thinks this job is so good for me and she thinks I am finally becoming a normal person but I do not want to be a normal person. I hate being normal and I hate that this is my life now where my biggest failure is a noise in a yoga class but it feels like the end of the world because it is just one more thing I can’t control. I sat in the dark for three hours just staring at the wall and thinking about how I used to be a leader and now I am just a joke in a room full of strangers and I can’t breathe, I just can’t. So now it is 2am and I am typing this on my phone because I have no one to talk to who would understand why this matters so much and why it makes me want to burn everything down and start over. It is not about the gas and it is not about the embarrassment but it is about the fact that I am losing my edge and I am becoming one of them and I am failing the only thing I ever valued which was my own iron will. I feel like a fraud every single day, every day, and today the mask did not just slip, it shattered, and I do not know if I can go back there tomorrow and pretend that I am the one who should be leading anyone anywhere. I just want to be back where the stakes actually mattered and where a mistake meant something real instead of this pathetic, silent judgment that I have to live with now.