Well here it is…June 12, 2014. I’m coming out of the closet again. But this time on a more serious nature. You see I’m ….. wait let me start from the beginning.
As a child … no i’m kidding…fast forward.
In the summer of 2001, I decided that I couldn’t bare the thought of my then on-again/off-again girlfriend dating someone else. I mean, we weren’t together so why should it have mattered right? I was sort of seeing someone … by sort of i mean internet dating. So it really wasn’t serious. Besides she was all the way around the world (which to me was pretty damn far) in Germany of all places. So what did I do…like the “lust-struck puppy” i was, and the “determined to get over my ex and my feelings for her” type of gal…i went to the nearest recruiter and said sign me up for active duty. I want to go to Germany. Now I had never been a plane that damn long. Sure a few trips to Cali…no biggie..5 hours..i could sleep that. But now we’re talking like 10-15 hours on a plane. How the hell would i survive? would there be kids on the plane…what would i do???
But i packed some of my favorite pain pills, popped a few and slept as much as i could. I was nervous. Here i was barely 22 years old and i was a mess. I’m on a plane thousands of feet in the air and i’m leaving behind everything that i had known to go to a country that in my mind was war stricken (even though the war had been over for almost 50 years). I just kept picturing bombed out buildings from the documentaries I had watched. But alas, I landed and some NCO came to get me and drive me the hour south to my post. I was processed into my unit, given a room and told to be at formation the next day at 0500.
That night I sat in my room and cried, there was no turning around now. I had to give up my cat I had brought with me (no one told me i couldn’t have him), and live the lonely life in the barracks. You see it was this night that i began to wonder if i was okay. Up until that point, I had my cat to keep me company, to talk to when i got bored. Now I was an ocean away from the world I knew, i had no friends (except the chick i was sort of seeing, but she was on the other side of the country…3 hours away at 120 miles per hour) and i was now alone. The fear of being alone was starting to settle in, but i refused to let it. I pushed back the thoughts and fears that were rushing into my head and forced myself to sleep.
The next day i awoke with the determination that i was going to be a career soldier. I would retire serving my country the good ole’ U S of A. I went to my unit all bright eyed and bushy tailed….then I met Top. he was a no-nonsense man. He didn’t really want female mechanics, so some papers got shuffled around and I found myself being shipped off to another unit. Within my first week, I had two units, two total opposites Sr NCO’s and now a host of soldiers whose names i would have to eventually learn (for those off-duty hours when we weren’t wearing uniforms with them on the chest). I was a bag of rocks in the middle of the ocean. I was drowning in my mind, scared I might do something dumb. The thoughts of suicide slowly crept into my brain. I pushed them aside, bottled them up. I became paranoid about everything. But i had one saving grace….I met my first real male best friend. WGJII. I met him the second day I was in country. He was a short fella like me, chubby cheeks and a thin mustache that I loved to run my finger along. And he was easy on the eyes, but I knew it wouldn’t amount to anything…i loved women. He understood that and respected me. We spent many a days in the country looking at women, judging if one was gay or straight. he was my friend, so i had someone to turn to.
But then came September 11. My world flipped upside down, inside out, you name it. I now had thoughts in my head…holy shit we are going to war. Wait i can’t go to war, i’m too young to die, what if i get shot, what if i get blown up, what if what if what if what motherfucking if!!!
WGJII was a driver, an 88M, so needless to say he was out on the road alot!! we spent each moment together when he was there, but when he was gone…my mind and thoughts just started to wander. he knew what was going on in my head, but advised me to keep quiet before i get discharged. so i did what i had done since that first night in basic….bottled that shit up and kept on trucking. work was steady, it wasn’t a dull moment in the motor pool…flinging GAA (grease for you civi’s), tossing bearings at one another, trying to put a wheel bearing back together after we broke them. Driving the yard-dogs out in the lot, trying to race them knowing they were old as dirt. hell having them break down on us constantly, which meant trying to pull the tractor trailers with a forklift (note…this was NOT easy to do). nerves were rattled all over. everyone was on high alert. there was lockdown hours, gate guards, roving patrols around our 10 mile post gate. Life was just grand **insert sarcasm**
WGJ was gone more often than not now. and me….well the sort of gf…she left me, but i had met some other people, started to go hang out at the clubs on the weekends when i could get a pass to head to the city. So i thought i was good right…my mind was occupied most days. but the nights were a real struggle….
you see, i began to find myself with too much time on my hands. my new “friends” lived on a different post, so i was alone most nights in my room. thankfully the only thing i shared with my roommate was the hall between our rooms and the bathroom. so i’d be locked up in my room with my then laptop that cost me 2 G’s (but looking back on it now…its a wonder how i survived with only 10GB of hard drive space….i was soooo robbed) if it wasn’t for the internet and meeting people back home on there (thank goodness for blackplanet) i would have probably lost it more so than i did.
when i was alone in my room with no one online (due to the time difference) and the only thing i could watch was AFN … i would sit and stare at the wall. then at my bookcase…then at the shelf with the drugs on it. i was so jacked up from the running, my body was in constant pain, but i pushed through. i kept thinking…i could take XX number of those…and XX number of that and wash it all down with **insert cool drink/liquor at the time** and they wouldn’t notice me being gone until after morning formation. i could just die here peacefully in my sleep and no one would ever know.
so it began…i wouldn’t take an extravagant amount of pills…just double the dosage, with a little bit of liquor. when i’d wake up the next day..i’d think…fuck it didn’t work..oh well tonight is another night…no well maybe i’ll try again next week. and it went on like that for about two months. only the pills mostly increased to triple my dosage…but the liquor would increase more and more. but every morning i kept waking up. in someway…someone wanted me to live. i didn’t understand it or why. i wanted that out of body experience. i wanted to know how people would react to my death. would my vanishing family even care? i mean my younger sister just had a baby girl that i had never met. my nephew i hadn’t seen since he was 6 months old. naw they wouldn’t care..hell they didn’t care that i was overseas about to be sent to war.
so one morning, i was feeling rather depressed. WGJ had been gone for a week, my “friends” refused to come over to my base to hang out…so i was left in my room, alone…with nothing but time and my brain. my thoughts began to race like always. i kept trying to quiet them down by reading books. but that only heightened the need for more thoughts. my nights kept getting longer and longer…i would get less and less sleep. i’d be thinking about all the possibilities of war, all the ways i could die…who would get my flag, would my money go to my ex from my early college days as it said in my will since i didn’t want any parts of it going to my family. shit they had run my bank accounts dry, i wanted them to have nothing!!! i climbed ever so slowly into darkness until one day i couldn’t take it anymore. the thoughts became voices, telling me to do it and get it over with. that no one liked me, no one really wanted to be my friend. i tried to quiet them down, but they only became louder and louder. so i did what i do best…turned up the bottle and eventually passed out.
the next day was a saturday…luckily i didn’t have to work. but one of the soldiers was knocked up (she did it on purpose) and was having a baby shower. i figured it couldn’t hurt none to go…after all i would be out of my room, away from the voices and around people. i could be happy….or so i thought.
it was at this point in my life that i came to a realization….i hated kids. they were every fucking where…running, screaming, kicking, biting, you name it. every noise they made, the voices got louder to drown them out. i couldn’t hear myself think the voices were so loud. so i did the only thing i could. i sat my ass in a corner, hummed a tune and got the voices to quiet down to a low murmur and tuned out the kids in the background. i guess i was so caught up in trying to shut the world out, when i was tapped i lashed out a bit. when i realized where i was…i came back out of my trance and quickly rushed out and back to my room. the solitude was what i needed. i hopped on my ps2 (they had just come out) and started playing a game. i heard a knock on the door .. i waited for my roommate to get up…knock knock knock. i knew it wasn’t WGJ, cause he would have knocked on my window then climbed in it. so i had to get up. it was my squad leader. she had noticed my attention span had been off the whole day, then i ran out like a bat out of hell. we talked and eventually i broke down and told her what had been going on. she looked at the massive stash of pills i had (i really had a small pharmacy in my room), then saw the liquor on the opposite side of the room. I broke down and cried for all the attempted suicides that failed, for the voices that kept telling me what to do and for my sad yet pitiful life i lived that garnered me with no friends outside of WGJ and the ones i had back home before i joined the service. well she found WGJ who had just gotten back from the road, and made him sleep in my room for the rest of the weekend to watch me.
monday morning, she took me to Top”s office and explained what happened over the weekend. he asked….soldier did you attempt suicide. with tears in my eyes i had to say yes. he asked if i still wanted to be in the military, i said yes because i had nothing else going for me in my life. he asked if i wanted help. i said yes. so began my year long journey. therapy groups, therapist, psychologist, meds you name it…it was in on it. in the mean time…i had two surgeries that gave me access to more drugs…stronger drugs. it wasn’t looking good for me.
i tried to be normal, tried to be the super soldier i had been when i first arrived, but my spirit had been broken by the new top that had just arrived. he was becoming that unbearable hemorrhoid you get that won’t go away. he made everyone’s life a living hell and mine even more so once he found out what was going on with me. he began to push all my buttons until i couldn’t take it anymore. we had just come down with our orders…we were to deploy in the spring of 2003. it was now christmas 2002. i had no friends, WGJ had already been deployed and i was missing him something serious. i was all alone. my nco’s tried to get me to come out, but like a turtle i went into my shell. locked myself in my room…alone…with the pills…with the liquor…with my thoughts…with the voices…it was all just bad.
the new Top was bullshitting around, pissing people off, me particularly. so i did what anyone would do that was in my mental capacity…told his ass if i go downrange with them, i was going to shoot his ass and blame it on the enemy. that was all he needed to process my discharge. i had already been diagnosed as bi-polar. nothing was working…
so here am i … coming out
something i have only told a few people….i’m a manic-depressive bi-polar veteran of middle age. i’ve attempted suicide countless amount of times, always with pills and liquor (one day i’ll get the combo right i guess). while i have been fortunate to never been hospitalized, i know it will probably happen one day. but in the meantime this is my way to ease the racing thoughts before bedtime and quiet the voices down.
so look for more of my story. as this will be my blog to combat the evils that attempt to get me to do things to harm myself.
I hope that this blog brings about some understanding for those of us who live in this crazy mixed up world.