What Scares You the Most?

John Halstead
4 min readFeb 10, 2022

JOHN Halstead

Dec 10, 2020

What Scares You the Most?

By: John R. Halstead

The uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic and the eventual economic disaster it will leave is going to make keeping a home in a safe neighborhood over your head even more difficult. I spoke with some veterans that lived homeless after their tours. They were suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety, medical bills, and they had been on the other side of the world for 4–12 years. Many joined the military because they did not have a secure home and when they returned, they had nobody to guide them. It was not their fault, but the world labeled them as bums, addicts, and the like. Hearing their stories of cold nights, thieves, and run-ins with the law sounded like things that would not happen in the United States. Even after the V.A. and other social workers found them help it took months for them to get treatment and assistance. They struggled with alcohol and substance use disorders that were not drugs of recreation for them. These were their pain killers for severed nervous systems, broken backs, mental illness, and while they killed the pain at first now, they are a new problem that threatens their finances, health, relationships, and families. These are the hero’s that fought on the front lines. These were the IED dodgers and the paramedics that saved countless young lives of young men and women that they will never see or hear from again. Now, with a worldwide pandemic and an economy that is floating on funny…

--

--

John Halstead

I grew up in New York, lived in Vermont for a decade, and then moved to Texas for twenty years. I am currently a school teacher a blogger and a podcaster.