This story is a blend of fiction and memoir. Some details have changed, but the heart of the story is the same. I will warn you that it deals with #suicide and #hanging as well as the #navy, #death, #sexualassault, and #sailors. If any of this will be a #trigger for you, please wait for another piece that won't be triggering for you. I'm #notoffended.
The #story:
I’m screwed up. There’s a long list of reasons why, but the biggest one is my monster of a temper. I get it from my mother’s side and it has made my life hard.
The worst part?
My temper was not the only one destroying my life; my mom’s was too. When my mom was angry, she would threaten to make my life miserable. She would get angry over something as small as failing to clean to her standards, but the mistake she made on this day, two years ago, in particular?
I had no boyfriend urging me to stay in the Austin, Texas area. I was single and living it up with sex and enjoying online shopping. I think my mom’s anger with stemmed from that, whether jealousy or disappointment, I’m still unsure.
I was getting a glass of water in the kitchen after a good work-out on my day off, from the shop my parents owned, when my mom slammed through the door. I knew I was screwed because the house wasn’t spotless and she was already angry. I braced against the winds of her fury.
“You couldn’t even be bothered vacuum,” she accused, gesturing at a mountain of fur that hadn’t existed when I left to go to the gym. “You’d rather be out with some boy.”
“I was running errands and getting groceries” I explained, walking toward her.
“Sure you were. Maybe we pay you too much since you’re always shopping,” she yelled.
We argued and after years of making me angry over things that I had little to no control over, this was the last straw. I got in my car, drove away, and concocted my plan to join the military.
A few days later, I spoke to Army and Air Force recruiters who told me I was too fat to enlist and began to lose about fifty pounds. When I was finally only ten pounds too heavy, about four months after the decision to enlist, I decided I’d go to a Navy recruiting office in a strip mall.
I walked in the door and greeted the recruiter with, “Um, hi.”
“How can I help you?” he said.
I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but next thing I knew I was filling out paperwork then, a few weeks later, headed to MEPS in San Antonio (where potential service members go for initial processing).
My monstrosity of a temper changed my life in ways I never thought possible and six months later: I anxiously sat on a plane from San Antonio, Texas to Great Lakes, Illinois. I was more excited than nervous and the next two months were a blur of pain and exercise. I passed out a few times, but was cleared for duty, reassured it was nothing major, and sent on to the next step in training (a year later, these “episodes” would become a greater concern, but they were brushed off at this time).
I was headed to A-School (initial job training) and once again filled with anxious excitement. I ended up in the Navy’s nuclear program and for someone who spent their life being called stupid, finding out I was smart came as a shock. Everyone says they could’ve, should’ve, would’ve with getting into the program, but that’s really not true. You’re pretty much forced into it if you qualify. Way back at MEPS, I was taken into a special room then given a paper, told it was my only option, and instructed to sign some papers.
I’d never been good at school, but A-School was less stressful than expected. After A-School, the class waited a few months to continue on to Power School (where we learned how a reactor worked). This was painfully stressful.
I was stationed in South Carolina when hurricane Matthew hit. We were evacuated and I went to my mom’s friend’s place in Georgia where I enjoyed about a week off of work.
Prior to this, I had struggled to meet fitness standards after an injury to my left knee, so I was placed on something called FEP (Fitness Enhancement Program), when we returned from, what we affectionately called, “hurrication,” FEP resumed on its regular rotation, in its regular location; however, the area where FEP took place was not regular. Hurricane Matthew had damaged it and when I began to run the path, I stepped in a pothole and fell. With nothing more than a scraped knee and some sore spots, I continued my run.
My knee started to bleed a tad, but I was running the best time I’d run in a hot minute and it felt good, until I was within sight of the halfway mark.
The stresses of school, a boyfriend breaking up with me after the New Year, missing home, leadership that refused to listen, bullies, and the physical ailments that plagued me—all of this changed me. I started passing out frequently. These episodes had me on edge; I was constantly irritated and terrified that something worse than bumps and bruises might happen.
I remember the instance that first made me think something was wrong. One classmate kept asking everyone the same pointless question, so I researched an answer which I attempted to relay, but he refused to listen.
“You need to shut up,” I practically screamed in the middle of a quiet room before explaining again.
“Yes, but why?”
“Go talk to a fucking instructor and stop wasting our goddamn time.”
The silent looks of horror on my shipmates’ faces scared me and I sat in fear of explaining it to Chief, not because I feared him, but because I was afraid I’d pass out again and be forced to go to Medical and be out of a job.
A week later, I was hiding in the head (bathroom) until the feeling passed, but it wouldn’t. The longer it lingered, the more furious I was becoming which made it linger longer, serving to further infuriate me, so on and so forth, until I gave up. My vision was blurry, my head felt like a balloon and all I could smell was the period trash in the head. My SLPO (the guy in charge of my class and a few others) saw and stopped to check. He knew I’d been having issues, as I had asked his advice about seeking help.
“Jackman,” he said. “Go to the Quarterdeck and get an escort to Medical.”
“Yes, MM1.”
I clung to the bulkhead (wall) as I stumbled toward the Quarterdeck (entrance/exit) where someone started asking me questions. I could tell he was either a Chief or an officer, from his khaki pants, which was all I could distinguish of him in that moment as I struggled to form words. He grabbed someone to escort me, and Chaps (the male Chaplain, who I only recognized by his voice) joined us.
I was partway into the parking lot when I woke up on the ground. Chaps was talking to 911 and seemed to think I was having a seizure. I tried to get up, but my muscles wouldn’t let me. I kept trying, but I couldn’t. I started to panic, which only worsened things. I was sent to many doctors, and told repeatedly I had this-or-that problem and given useless solutions. I was struggling in Power School, but failure was not acceptable. If my mom had a specific way to clean the house, then failing at my career would be worse. She couldn’t fire me, but with my Naval career on the line, my mom could give me no place to go should the worst happen. Fear became the thing pulling the strings and my anger got worse. I started having nightmares and could barely sleep. I started watching horror movies to remind me the monsters were fake.
The monster that wasn’t fake? My depression. The worse my medical conditions got, the more depressed I became, thus worsening my conditions. I turned to men for help. Sex had worked in the past, I figured it would work now. I started online dating again and found myself on a date with a strange, yet handsome man. Something felt off, but I was unable to resist the smile that he offered up with charm and a delicate glass of disgustingly sweet wine. This was our third or so date and we’d made dinner at his place with his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend, so I knew there would be certain expectations I wasn’t ready for. I took a small sip of white wine and asked him where the bathroom was.
“Through my bedroom, second door,” he told me.
I smiled, feeling too uncomfortable to stay much longer, and stood to head that way. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible was going to happen, so I took special care as I found the bathroom to let one of my friends know what was going on. Her texts encouraged me to give him a chance, but I decided to call an Uber. My driver was fifteen minutes away and it was a bad part of town so I wouldn’t wait outside alone. I resolved to keep him out on the porch until my Uber rescued me.
“Um, hey,” I said when I exited and my date was standing before me and suddenly I was very aware of the Axe body spray trying to suffocate me. “I’m gonna head out soon.”
“Well, don’t you think we should...”
“We should what?” I asked, playing dumb.
“You know.”
I tried to step past him, but he blocked my path. I moved again and my escape was thwarted once more.
“The thing people do when they’re alone together.”
I froze. After telling him, repeatedly, that I wasn’t ready for sex with him yet, he was trying to force it by not letting me leave.
“I’m not really interested.”
He blocked the doorway and took my phone.
“I’m not gonna let you go until we’re done,” he said, like some line he’d rehearsed and that had worked before.
“No, I want to go,” I demanded loud enough his roommate would hear.
“Sorry. You’re not leaving any other way.”
My stomach churned. I tried to duck around him, but he caught and dragged me to the bed by my arm.
“This will be easier if you’d just go with it.”
As he started, I gave in because I had no choice, and tried to get it over with quickly.
When he stopped kissing and touching me and pulling my dress up, I prayed to a God I don’t believe in that he’d changed his mind. I started to straighten myself, but he stopped me, hissing, “Where are you going? I’m not done.”
I returned to my position, as he tore the package of a condom and pulled it on. I breathed deeply as this monster entered my unwilling body. I tried to stay out of the moment, tears stuck in my eyes because I refused to give them to him.
When he finally pulled away, I straightened up and left his bed, in time to see my phone ringing and find the Uber driver trying to get ahold of me. I nearly ran to the door of the Uber van, relieved to feel safe.
Inside I tried to gather my thoughts. I closed my eyes. When I opened them my vision was completely blurred out and my lungs felt empty; no matter the number of times I inhaled I felt like I was suffocating. My mind raced through all that had transpired. I was learning something tonight; what mankind was truly like. Man was not kind. Man was cruel in a way no person should be. I mulled over this cruelty as my hands wrung, becoming furious. No person, great or small, mean or kind, hero or villain, man or woman, deserved to feel like this.
Over the next two months this lesson would break me in a way I never thought possible. It would lead to a dark place with uncontrollable outbursts of anger which would lead to a vital moment where the world became clear. A moment, the beginning of which was vague and the end of which was crystal clear, that would shape many futures. This man hurt me more emotionally than physically, and as a woman in the military, the fear of men he instilled made my life awful and one night, about two months later, I would find myself sitting on my bed alone.
Medically, I was not doing well.
Emotionally, I was worse.
I had begun to live life in a haze. I tried to force myself to be optimistic about a future with kids and a husband or wife. Turns out, no one wants you when you’re mentally ill.
Or at least that’s what I thought then.
I had no hope.
Anger controlled every action.
I had given in to self-hatred.
I don’t remember that night clearly; it's more like snippets of a dream that my friends and family clarified. This is my perception of reality, twisted and tormented through the beer goggles of the disassociation that comes with Major Depression. Clinical depression. Life with depression isn't easy. Life, in general, is hard, but any mental illness makes it harder, and in this moment, the one where I realized I was in desperate need of help beyond what some 'self-help' depression hotline designed only to prevent the loss of life in one pivotal moment could ever offer me. I needed someone who knew I wasn't crazy, at least not the way I felt the world thought I was. This was not the first time nor would it be the last.
It was late on a Sunday in April and I had gone to the store on base to buy my favorite foods: nachos and Kazoozles (basically a pixie stick-filled twizzler, now called “Sweetarts Ropes”). This was when the haze started subsiding. Sometimes I can smell those stale nacho chips, laced with the thick, creamy delight, which movie theatres and stadiums offered up as 'cheese' in sacrifice to hungry fans and movie-goers, assaulting my nostrils. It looms in the air like this horrid reminder of what could have been and sometimes feels so strongly like it should have been. The usually scratchy, pinkish-green vomit-colored '80s bedspread that should’ve belonged in a Motel 6 felt silken on my skin. The black hole swirling in my heart that night, knowing how worthless my existence had become, staring me down, pleading with its hollow eyes for me to give in and let it absorb every fiber of my being.
I remember my sister calling me so I could Facetime my nephew who was eighteen months old at the time, and ignoring it. I overdrafted my account for my last meal. Then I walked back to my barracks and purchased a movie on Amazon Video, further overdrafting an account that would no longer be my problem in a few short hours. I scrubbed the barracks spotless and packed up all my belongings, separating them by donations and things that should be kept (this is how things were when clarity set in). Then I wrote down my passwords, account numbers, and all manner of vital information for getting my affairs in order then stuck it in an envelope with my letter.
Near the end of my last movie, my phone rang again. I was using it to watch the movie and I’d already ignored my nephew, Stetson, once today. I always answered for him and I yearned to prevent suspicions from my family which would lead to failure in ending the torture my life had become. People without mental illness don’t understand this thought; any ‘normal’ person could see that my fear of being unsuccessful meant people cared about me and that should stop me.
I know this because I used to be one of the ‘normal’ people. That was how I’d talked myself out of it in the past.
But depression doesn’t work that way.
I felt I was being used for what little money I had and was a burden and loved ones would be exonerated from this should I succeed, which is largely why I needed to do this: to absolve them of my sins. They needed to be pardoned from me, not the other way around. My coworkers bullied me because that was how they handled my being in their way of success and my stupidity. I wouldn’t be a waste of precious space or resources anymore if only I could have one final success.
Obviously, that was not my fate.
“Hello?” I finally answered, and I’m not sure why.
“Your nephew wanted to talk to you,” my little sister said.
A Facetime call changed my life.
More accurately, the end of a Facetime call changed my life. The beautifully malformed, but still clear as most Texas days, “I love you” from my little toe-headed, blue-eyed nephew, telling me I wasn't worthless (even if those weren't the words, that is what I heard in my heart), were what I needed as we said our goodbyes. The about-face of my life happened at this moment and the next day I went to get professional help.
Anger changed my job, which changed my location, which changed my life, and that of those around me. I can think of about 35 Sailors, serving their country, and only here because I saw their frustration and encouraged them to seek help for their mental health.
But, I’m one person, and I can’t catch them all.
Three months after I started getting professional help, the monster of depression tried to take a friend. I was working at Medical because my injuries and mental health had become excessively bad, so much so, that I could no longer be part of the Nuclear Program and the Navy was in the process of determining if I was still fit for duty. I remember filing hospital paperwork, my friend’s included, and thinking how glad I was that he got professional help.
“Did you hear?” one of my co-workers asked between the shelves of thousands of medical records as I filed my friend’s record away.
“What?”
“They found a Seaman hanging in the trees.”
“Did he–”
“What do you think?” she replied, brusquely.
We had learned to deal with death in a less emotional manner, but my heart broke right then for all the sailors who were unlike my friend and I. Today, I continue to advocate for mental health with friends and family, even on the days when I’m not ok, and I’ve found it has a cascade effect. I help people by encouraging them to get professional aid and lending an ear. By helping them, they have helped the world in the ways they see fit, from serving their country to shepherding youth. For once, good came from slamming the door and walking away and for the first time, good came from the tempers that plague my family.
For the first time, I was on the right side of angry.
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