Awareness

I recently sold my car. It was annoying and cathartic in ways that may be familiar to some of you. I originally bought that particular car for my (now ex) wife. When it came time for us to formally separate I offered to sign over the title to her and find a different car for myself as I had sold my Jeep a few months prior. She chose instead to purchase a brand new vehicle and tried to stick me with the payments. I invested in a lawyer at that point.

The car was reliable, dependable, safe, and not at all what I require in a vehicle. It was a Hyundai Sonata. A family sedan. I have no children with the exception of a 130 lb Rottweiler named Piper. When I left my marriage I set out on a journey both literal and figurative which would see me changing nearly every single aspect of my existence as a human being. That car was one of the final relics from a life which I was no longer living. Following the 3,000 mile trek from DeLand, Florida to my new permanent residence of Portland, Oregon, I began to contemplate a change. After my father died I inherited his red Ford F-150 NASCAR edition pickup truck. I clearly did not need a truck and a car. Living in Portland hardly necessitates one own a vehicle of any type aside from the requisite bicycle. My wheels are for carrying things I cannot carry on my own and for escaping the city when I feel the need. The truck would stay. The car would go.

I listed the car on Craigslist for just slightly below blue book value. It took a couple weeks and a lot of frustration, but I did eventually sell my car to someone who had the money and would appreciate it. I met all manner of people in the process. Some were looking for charity with sob stories about the price of tuition and books at Portland State. Others were just looking to try and get my car for next to nothing at all, inventing knocking noises in the engine and imagining leaking fluids which were invisible yet somehow meant I must drop the asking price. To be honest, people started to blend into one another and became indistinguishable when they would text with one final offer for me to take or leave. One individual did manage to stick out from the rest.

We had an appointment to meet so that he could see and test drive my car. He made it clear he was not buying the car for himself, but rather was doing the leg work for a friend in need who had recently broken up with her boyfriend and did not own her own car. He was roughly my age — early 30s — friendly, and completely unremarkable. While we were walking around the car the corner of his mouth curled into a smile. He half chuckled as he pointed to the license plate and asked, “Why does it have veteran’s plates?”

Many states offer a variety of military and veteran license plates. Some have an additional fee which usually goes to benefit some veteran organizations. Most that I have seen are gaudy as hell, usually featuring an American flag backdrop with maybe an eagle, or perhaps a yellow ribbon symbolizing the efforts many have made in order to cash in on the service of others by way of selling trinkets made to identify the owner as someone who “supports the troops,” whatever the hell that means. In the state of Oregon there is a plate which at first looks exactly like the generic and iconic state license plate featuring a backdrop of mountains with a Douglas fir tree bisecting the plate down the center. The disabled veteran version has no place for a renewal sticker. It is stamped “permanent” and does not require any recurring renewal after the one-time $15 registration fee is paid. It is a simple gesture which, in my opinion, communicates a dignified sentiment of appreciation without forcing any further political message on behalf of the driver or the state. As a disabled veteran, I display one on my own vehicle. This was to what the young man was referring.

“I am a veteran,” I replied.

This is not the first time I encountered a question like this. I told him I had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. An “oh” escaped his lips as if he was reminded of the correct answer to a test question. He then told me he was expecting “an old dude with a walker.” His voice became high and frail as he mimicked what he thought a combat veteran should sound like, using words like “sonny.” I stared quietly as he insisted on displaying the full breadth of his ignorance. When he finished I thanked him for coming by and walked back into the house. I wasn’t terribly offended by what he had said. It was simply a perfect embodiment of how disconnected American society has become from the wars fought in its name.

Cue the angered response summed up as some variation on the theme of how “not everyone” feels that way. If you are one of those people who feel offended by the previous statement I do genuinely hope you feel better after getting that out of your system and I hope you will continue forward with me as I briefly elaborate on my point.

June is PTSD Awareness Month. Congress has named June 27th PTSD Awareness Day. Studies show that upwards of 22 veterans commit suicide daily in the US and the rate is increasing rapidly. Men in my demographic are three times more likely to attempt suicide than our civilian counterparts. Female veterans who were raped or sexually assaulted during their service to our country are six times more likely to attempt suicide. On any given night in America there are an estimated 57,849 homeless veterans on the streets. These statistics fill volumes of congressional reports that go unread by the public that is satisfied with raising a flag at a barbecue and slapping a yellow ribbon magnet on their car.

There are innumerable challenges facing the veterans of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as we attempt to reenter “normal” life. The denial of our very existence should not be one of them.

Standing Up

I used to be so much older than I am today.

War aged me prematurely. That is not uncommon. Turning 25 years old in Iraq marked what I knew would be the oldest I could ever be in my life no matter how many years passed afterwards. The aging that occurred once my time in the desert was over was just quite simply different, and far less romantic to the casual observer.

The transition out of active duty military service itself is as abrupt and shocking as the transition out of an actual combat zone. My ability to react and respond to changes seemed to slow and almost halt completely. Civilian life was strange, terrifying, and empty. A gunman killed five people and then himself during my first semester at Northern Illinois University in February, 2008. It took me a year to react. It took me nearly two years to leave my wife once I was aware she was cheating on me. By then she was onto her second affair. I was haunted by past experiences, but it was my everyday life that was the true nightmare.

For years I spend my every waking hour sitting in front of a computer screen upstairs in the back of my house. It would be easy to say I was not doing anything, but that is not entirely true. I was busy hiding. I was hiding from the world. I was hiding from my reflection in the mirror. I was hiding from my wife. I was hiding from anything I thought was going to hurt me. Likewise, I was hiding from anything that could offer me any joy. Any at all.

But I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t have excuses. Not only did I have them in great numbers, I had really good ones. My friends were dead. More were dying by the day. My wife was no longer in love with me. I was essentially an unremarkable, anonymous future corpse pumping blood with no destination nor discernible purpose. My physical health was deteriorating rapidly. At this point I weighed in at 299.5 lbs. Bear in mind that I am not quite 5 feet, 8 inches tall. I wheezed and crackled painfully when I breathed. Vacuuming the house caused me to sweat profusely and necessitated rest breaks throughout. Insomnia and nightmares tormented my nights and made my days hazy. I developed sleep apnea — a condition where I would periodically stop breathing in my sleep — due to my rapid weight gain. Every night I had to wear a mask connected via hose to a machine that would force air into my lungs in an attempt to provide me with more rest and lessen my chances of suddenly dying in my sleep. I was more than content to lay the entirety of the blame for these new developments in my life on the medications I was taking in an attempt to treat my PTSD and major depression. It was true, but that truth was not beneficial to me in any way whatsoever. It was my placeholder in lieu of taking any action on my own behalf in order to improve my quality of life.

I am not entirely sure what changed for me. I don’t know what made one day different from the day before. All I know is that I started making different choices. They were not always the easiest paths. In fact, they almost all seemed to be the most difficult options I had at the time. They were not even always the right decisions. But at some point I made up my mind that my life as I had chosen to live was no longer the life I wanted to live. So, one day I stood up. Instead of barricading myself behind a computer screen I stood up. I walked out my front door. I stepped through it. And then I kept walking.

It was fucking awful. There was no sense of accomplishment. There were no commendations or medals or plaques with my name on them. There wasn’t a commemorative moisture-wicking technical t-shirt. There was no celebratory lovemaking or even so much as a pat on the back. There was only me standing in exactly the same spot as I had started the day. I weighted exactly as much as I did when I woke up that morning. The only immediate difference was a few hundred yards I had wheezed my way through completely uncelebrated.

The next day I was sore. I was in actual pain. My doctors had been telling me for years that I would benefit greatly and instantly from some form of exercise. I knew the truth. I would reap no reward whatsoever. I would feel pain. I would ache throughout my body. I would be cruelly reminded of how far I had fallen from the shape I had once been in during my time in the military. I would have to face the fact that I was not who I used to be and if I wanted to proud of who I was once again I would have to make myself into something I was proud of and not simply reference a past version of myself who just no longer existed. I did not know who I was if I was not in Iraq. I did not know who I was if I wasn’t in the uniform. I didn’t know who I was if I was not married. The fact that those things had become destructive forces in my life didn’t seem to matter at all. Those things were killing me, but at least they let me know who I was. Or so I thought.

I had gotten so caught up in horrors of combat and the shootings at NIU and my wife cheating on me that I had completely lost track of the fact that I had survived those things. Nothing in the world will change the events of my past. Nothing will alter the experiences that I have been through. They happened. That’s it. My point of view, however, is what changes my status from victim to survivor. And this, for me, changes everything.

This is a never-ending process. The first and most formative step is a matter of deciding on what I will choose to focus. I choose not to focus on the pain in my left ankle and both knees. Instead I choose to focus on the high that only comes from logging multiple miles. Every single time I start a run my body tells me to stop. Every. Single. Time. Every time I step in front of a mirror my mind points out everything I don’t like about myself. Every. Single. Time. As I type this my knees and ankles hurt. I ignore them. I make a deliberate effort to celebrate what I am instead of mourning what I am not. There is another thought that comes to me when the miles are making my legs scream: one day I will no longer be able to do this. There will be a day when I have permanently run my last and final mile. I press further and smile because I know that day is not today.

To date I have lost over 100 pounds. I no longer have sleep apnea. I have taken up hiking, kayaking, cycling, and rock climbing. Last month I ran my first half marathon. In October I will run my first full marathon. I still have PTSD and major depression. In all likelihood I always will, but I am stronger today than I was yesterday because of the choices and the efforts I am making. I will choose to be stronger yet tomorrow.

Before I publish this post that voice inside me will tell me not to bother. It will tell me that this is meaningless drivel. It will tell me I am full of shit. It will tell me that nothing I write is of any benefit to anyone. It will tell me to delete this draft.

Tell me; did I listen?

(All but) Speechless…

During the three years I lived in the UK as a child, my family took a trip to Blarney Castle. I do mean one trip; one time and one time only. It just so happened that I was on crutches that entire summer with a broken leg. At ten years old, I stood (leaned) alone at the bottom of the tower which housed the Blarney Stone while my parents and sister climbed to the top to kiss the stone and receive the legendary “gift of gab.” Perhaps the (probably) non-existent karma in the universe cancelled out the superstition of my Celtic ancestors that particular day. While the individuals in my family struggle to put together a sentence without placing a foot in their own mouths, I consider myself a fairly solid communicator. That said, there is a phrase which is damn near guaranteed to leave me searching for an appropriate response. I received it several times in response to my post directly previous to this one.

“Thank you for your service.”

Most of the time I have absolutely no clue what to say when someone says this to me. The digital realm leaves me with a much-needed buffer as there is no one standing directly in front of me, looking me in the eye as I search for the words. I mostly panic inside during real life encounters, wishing for the other individual to steer the conversation to more comfortable waters. I hope the other person doesn’t see the tears welling up. Sometimes they are in sadness. Other times they are relief. Occasionally, it is anger. I know the vast majority of the time these words of thanks are coming from a compassionate place within the person to whom I am speaking. They just don’t know what else to say, so that is what comes out. I have to ask; am I the only one who has difficulty with this phrase? What the hell do you say back to that? These genuine moments are the ones which make the words catch in my throat. “You’re welcome,” is a customary response to an expression of thanks. Somehow it seems completely inappropriate to me. It implies that what I did was for the sole benefit of the other person in the exchange, and that is simply not true.

There are times, however, when it is not coming from a genuine place. I don’t appreciate these words when they are accompanied with offers for zero percent financing on living room sets or one dollar long neck beers. I don’t appreciate them when they are used to belittle anyone else for any reason. I don’t appreciate them when they come from the mouths of any politicians for any reason at any time. And I don’t appreciate them when they come with gods attached who were not there when my friends were dying in the so-called holy land.

I don’t necessarily broadcast my military record to the extent that others sometimes do. For instance, I don’t wear a hat or vest announcing my status as is popular with the Vietnam generation and before. I don’t see anything wrong with showing pride in one’s service and sacrifice. I understand why they do this and support them. I just personally don’t choose to do that. That being said, my license plate on my car does say I am an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran. I’m conflicted about this display and sometimes uncomfortable about what message I may inadvertently be sending to others.

Combat veteran status is a nice hammer to have in your toolbox for the occasional armchair patriot. On the Fourth of July I noticed a slew of messages on Twitter complaining about atheist or secular humanist floats appearing in Independence Day parades. My opening retort would be a comment on how equality is apparently a thorn in the side of these individuals. The floats take nothing away from any other message and in fact adds another voice to the chorus of freedom which is allegedly the point of the holiday in the first place. One particularly irate Christian decided to share the following; “My grandfather fought for your freedom. You’re welcome, you faggot.” I told her that I thank her grandfather for his service and that his sacrifices belonged to him, and not to her. I informed her of my personal combat record. Patriotic holidays are an excuse for many individuals to fraudulently claim the accomplishments of others as their own. They are also laden with emotional triggers for those of us who have more of our story intertwined with the alleged spirit of these days of remembrance.

Triggers are mechanisms which might seem otherwise innocuous but can cause a person to experience emotional distress ranging from mere sadness to anger to full flashbacks. These triggers can manifest themselves in unexpected ways. There are the more obvious ones like sudden loud noises similar to fireworks, or gunfire. Occasionally it is enough to simply see people in uniform to cause me to have a breakdown. On a recent flight to the Pacific Northwest I was watching movies on my iPad. Star Trek passed a couple of enjoyable hours rather nicely. It was while watching Cloverfield, a “found footage” film centering around a monster the size of a skyscraper rampaging through New York City, when a scene where the main characters find themselves in the middle of a firefight struck just the right chord with me. Instant tears streaming down my face on a crowded plane. I hid my reaction well with the lid of my ball cap and no one seemed to notice. I have seen Cloverfield perhaps four or five times without incident. There was just some magic combination of events and setting which set me off that time. I have watched it yet again since and did not have the same reaction. There is no way to tell beforehand what is going to elicit what type of response.

Some memories from the desert make me smile or even legitimately laugh out loud. We had been in Iraq for a few hours when the first mortars started impacting near our temporary housing area. These were trailers separated from one another by walls of sandbags approximately four feet high. To this day I have never heard a noise quite like the sound of mortars impacting on concrete. It is sharp and thunderous at the same time. The explosions were falling closer and closer; an indication that there was an engineer working with the mortar crew to direct the fire towards us. A blast knocked in the door to my trailer and in the momentary quiet immediately following I heard boots kicking up earth as a body ran from right to left across my field of vision. I stuck my head out of my doorway and saw that the owner of the boots was Staff Sergeant C. Aside from his footwear, all he was wearing was a pair of sunglasses. “Where the fuck are you going?” I shouted at him. A frantic voice from the naked man reached me as he disappeared around the corner,

“I don’t know!”

I turned twenty-five in Iraq. To commemorate my birthday, the two youngest members of my crew surprised me with a chocolate cupcake decorated with twenty-five toothpicks. Where they found it is a mystery to me to this day. The younger of the two had a talent for locating desserts in the desert. It was not uncommon for him to mount our vehicle after a rescue and immediately start snacking. When I would ask him what he was eating he would tell me “cheesecake” without missing a beat as if this was a completely normal. The cupcake incident is one of the few times I can recall becoming genuinely emotional in Iraq. I was deeply moved by the gesture. War has a way of aging a person in a manner irrespective of the passage of time. I knew no matter if I lived a hundred more years I could never be as old as I was at that moment. It was the last birthday I can remember caring about. All the others after have seemed hollow.

Music has been the one great and true love of my life. During childhood I would make up songs during the long road trips which came with being a military brat. I was born in New Mexico, and by the time I started junior high school I had also lived in Germany, Nebraska twice, England, and Illinois. In the years I spent in Europe I fell in love with The Clash, Michael Jackson, and Queen. These formed the foundation for my taste in passionate, dark, and diverse sounds. I picked up instruments through my adolescence and eventually starting performing in bands as an instrumentalist and vocalist. This is the one part of my life that is always there. It never disappoints me. It never lies to me. It never falls out of love with me.

Music became my coping mechanism on deployments. Riding into action, I would routinely plug my mp3 player into whatever sound system was available. Sometimes I arrived on scene to The Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack. Other times I felt the melodic death metal of In Flames or At The Gates were more apropos. More than once I made my presence known as I sang along to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. After returning from Iraq, the music which had carried me through so many horrendous experiences became triggers for emotional pain. I would heard a song that I had loved deeply and be brought to tears. This emotional outpouring would be in no way cathartic. It was pure pain. I began to avoid music altogether.

My life became very quiet and my world became very small.

Silence echoes…

I wake as though I have been sleeping underwater; struggling for breath and soaked in sweat. My heart pounds and my lungs burn. My vision is cloudy, as are my thoughts. Slowly I begin to realize where I am. I reach out with a shaking hand searching for my glasses on the table next to me. I am lying on my back in a queen-sized bed in a house in central Florida. In the moment just before waking I was in the back of an overturned dump truck next to a canal in Iraq trying to keep a soon-to-be-dead woman alive as she is bleeding from her mouth, nose, eyes, and ears as we take direct fire. At least this particular morning I did not require anyone to violently shake me from my sleep nor did my screams wake anyone else. I sit up, put on my glasses, and ask my dog Piper if he is ready to go for a walk.

Anyone who has followed me on Twitter for more than a day has more than likely seen me retweet the Suicide Prevention Lifeline account as well as Real Warriors and other mental health resources. I try to remember to do this at least once a day. It is usually nighttime in my corner of the globe when I do this. The nights seem to be far worse for me. I assume they are for many others as well. Sometimes people ask me if I am okay after I post something related to mental health. I usually tell them I am fine and that I do this regularly. On a certain level this is the truth. In a different light this could be seen as dishonest.

When someone asks me if I am okay there is a series of translations and qualifications which take place in my brain before I respond. The vast majority of the time the thought process has me taking inventory. So far no one has tried to kill me today. I will go to sleep in my own bed tonight. As far as I know none of my friends have died recently. With these thoughts in mind I do not hesitate to respond;

“Yes, thank you. I am peachy. How are you?”

I do my level best to present myself as openly and honestly as I can at all times. There are, however, parts of me that I do not share with anyone. My main motivation for this is a desire to not contaminate anyone else. I feel like my nightmares and flashbacks can be spread and infect others by a verbal transfer of ideas. I understand on a conscious level that this is irrational and to carry on like this does me and others a disservice. I know this. I acknowledge this. Yet I continue to fall into the same patterns of denial and evasion over and over again. If I play the role well enough I can pass for a normally-functioning human being for limited periods of time. String enough of these episodes together and I begin to fall for the illusion myself.

I know that in sharing this part of me I run the risk of losing every single person who is listening to me. I also know I may have the opportunity to chase the demons out of the shadows inside the minds of so many of us and expose them to the light. If there is any chance whatsoever in being successful in this endeavor I simply must try.

I am in eastern Afghanistan seeing my first rocket-propelled grenades fired in my direction under the cover of night. I see them again every time someone fires bottle rockets. The Sergeant First Class behind me yells a word I’ve heard my entire life but can never be innocuous again;

“Incoming.”

The single greatest failure of my military career is something no one but me knew about at the time. Airman Leadership School (ALS) is a training program for junior enlisted members of the Air Force who have been promoted to Staff Sergeant. It is intended to bridge the transition into the ranks of non-commissioned officers and fine tune the leadership skills of the new NCOs. During the course of the training I never held back on any subject except when it came to a discussion on mental health. I had no problem standing before my flight and representing my side in a series of debates on topics ranging from capital punishment to abortion, gays in the military, and women in combat. It was around a table during some down time that the words caught in my throat. The instructor in charge of my flight was talking about dealing with personnel under her in command who were struggling with depression and expressed suicidal ideation. The consensus of the flight and the instructor was that anyone sharing these thoughts and feelings should shut up and kill themselves. I sat amongst my friends and people for whom I held great respect as they unknowingly told me I would be better off dead than to tell them the truth about who I was and what I was carrying alone. I kept the secret that I was severely depressed and suicidal throughout the entire course. I was also a cutter at this time. I made sure to inflict the wounds on places that would not be noticeable while in uniform. My deception was successful, as was my time in ALS. I excelled and graduated as a distinguished graduate and received the William Pitsenbarger Leadership Award.

On March 15, 2007, after months of continuous thought, preparation, and rehearsal conducted in secret and in deep denial even to myself, I made the decision that this would be my last day alive. I ended my shift that morning and made a trip home with the idea to proceed with my plan after one last time seeing my wife, our two dogs, and our cat. I walked in the door and was greeted by the dogs. I climbed the stairs feeling hollow in my core and somewhat lightheaded. I found my wife still asleep in our bed with a few random rays from the morning sun touching her face through spaces between the closed blinds. This is when I realized that she would wake this day as a widow. It was our fifth wedding anniversary. I got back in my car and drove myself to the hospital. For a long time I credited my (now ex-) wife for saving my life that day. The truth is that I decided to live. I took the steps to save my own life and I need to credit myself for doing so.

At first there wasn’t much of a change in any aspect of my life. The psychologist I began to see regularly was comfortable keeping my problems between us so long as I kept up my side of the bargain and participated in a therapy regimen. The peaceful coexistence of the two sides of my personality lasted only a short while until my station captain caught me dressing an obviously self-inflicted wound. It was time to start telling the truth.

Admitting to others that I was suicidal felt like opening a window to try to breathe while standing knee-deep in gasoline. As the fresh air mingled with the combustible fumes the only thing that was certain was that something needed to be done. This was no safe place to be. Things had to change. I was going to die. Once I admitted that I needed help I might as well have been standing in actual gasoline for real. No one aside from my doctors wanted anything to do with me. Overnight I went from being a leader of men to a phantom wearing a uniform. My weapons and clearances were taken away. Eventually my freedom to make my own choices was taken from me altogether . My First Sergeant came to my house and confiscated what he thought to be all the blades I owned. This included my USAF survival knife which survived my tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I will never see it again. To this day I wish I could have that memento back. Even after this I did not stop cutting. I felt like I needed to cut in order to release the pain I was carrying, but I also felt like it was the only control I had in my life at all. No matter what anyone did to me I could still hurt myself.

I am on the floor of my bathroom with my father gripping my wrist. Tears fall from my lips behind the words hanging in the air;

“I can’t stop the bleeding.”

The thoughts come uninvited throughout the day. Sometimes there is a noticeable cause; some catalyst to initiate the downward spiral or sheer drop into a miasma of uninvited thoughts. Other times I simply find myself in another place. People who know me will struggle to focus my attention. It is not unusual for them to ask where I am. I am clearly no longer there.

Most of the veterans with whom I speak have adjusted to life outside combat in similar ways to one another. For many, guns are the friends who never judge and never fail. It is not uncommon for a loaded firearm to be the sleeping companion for a combat veteran. It took a long time for me to get used to being unarmed when out in public. I would feel a momentary wave of panic as my hands searched my chest, hip, and leg for weapons and felt nothing. A conscious decision was made on my part following the end of my military career to never again raise a weapon in anger. This was a small promise I made to myself in an attempt to close that chapter of my life in as positive a manner as possible. In coming to terms with the realities and limitations of living with severe major depression and PTSD I realize that this is has saved my life countless times. This is a large part of why I have a Rottweiler. Piper is my companion, my friend, my protector, and my security blanket. A dog never needs reloading and a gun will never love you back. All it would take for me would be one bad night and having a loaded gun in the house would put an end to all the nightmares.

This is a lesson I learned in a hard and cruel way following my retirement from the military. The dying did not stop when I no longer wore the uniform of the United States Armed Forces.  I made an attempt at pretending to be just another civilian returning to college a few years later in adulthood than the average undergrad. School was to be my safe place to relearn how to live in a world where tragedy was not the norm like it was in the Middle East. I enrolled full-time at Northern Illinois University. A few weeks into my first semester on February 14, 2008 a gunman entered Cole Hall with a shotgun and several handguns. He shot twenty-five people, killing five before killing himself. I was there. When it was over I called my (then) wife as I navigated my way through screaming students and onrushing first responders. I told her I would be a little late getting home because some guy was shooting up my school. By all measures I was calm and collected. I felt absolutely nothing. I was not surprised in the least. I knew exactly what was happening seemingly before anyone else did. But my reaction was complete indifference. Looking back I realize that this was my mind protecting itself from the very real trauma I had experienced. I had simply reached the point where nothing else would be able to shock me. I was no longer trying to make sense of anything. Nothing was good. Nothing was bad. Everything simply was.

Around this time I joined the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Following the war my friends and I were scattered to the wind. Many wanted to disappear and forget anything had ever happened. Through this community I was able to connect with other veterans and met new people with similar stories to mine. There was a sense of belonging. There was a sense of accountability. I was expected. People wondered where I was if I disappeared and seemed to genuinely care about what I was thinking and feeling. I was able to say the things that were running in my head like a broken record and they knew what I was talking about in ways no one else ever will. I felt sane when I had been treated as a lunatic by people who just could not put their minds into the places mine could seemingly never leave. I felt like it was we veterans together as an island in an unforgiving and uncaring sea of red, white, and blue. That is when the dying started again. There would be a message in my inbox or a voicemail on my phone telling me that a friend I had been speaking to the night before had committed suicide. Over a period of twenty months this happened six times. My mind came to what felt like a rational conclusion. The only way for me to stop losing friends was to stop having friends. So I did.

I am in Iraq when a call comes over my radio. Another gunshot. I am on scene with a member of the 3^rd Forward Support Battalion at my feet lying parallel to his M-4 which had been in his mouth just minutes before. I never knew what caused this person to take his own life having survived an extended tour of duty in Bush’s pre-surge Iraq. His death was no more or less meaningless than the three friends over whose boots I read eulogies earlier in the tour. His suicide was no more or less senseless than the six friends I would lose in similar fashion shortly thereafter. It was just the cruel period marking the end of the fragment of a sentence with no opportunity for revision.

I think about suicide at some point every day. Some days it is simply a cloud passing just long enough to give me a noticeable chill until the warmth returns on its own. Other times I must fight to stop the repetition of thoughts. Still other days I don’t just think about the end. I want it. I rehearse it in my mind, futilely attempting to imagine what it will feel like when everything goes black.

Recently, legislators have begun discussions over a proposed amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act which would allow secular humanists to serve in the chaplain corps of the United States military. The way some theists imagine atheists to view mortality is laid bare in the bigoted and nearly incoherent words of congressmen opposed to the measure, namely Mike Conaway of Texas and John Fleming of Louisiana. Both are members of the Republican Party. Said Congressman Conaway, “They (atheists and secular humanists) don’t believe anything,” and “I can’t imagine an atheist accompanying a notification team as they go into some family’s home to let them have the worst news of their life and this guy says, ‘You know, that’s it — your son’s just worms, I mean, worm food.’” Congressman Fleming voiced his concern stating that in addition to atheists making a “mockery of the chaplaincy” he also thought that, “The last thing in the world we would want to see was a young soldier who may be dying and they’re at a field hospital and the chaplain is standing over that person saying to them, ‘If you die here, there is no hope for you in the future.’” As unintentionally humorous as these statements may be, these direct quotes serve to illuminate the blatant ignorance and bigotry on display and entered into public record and legislation by members of Congress who know nothing of their own constituents and are moreover proud of this fact.

My atheism actually plays a large part in my persistence in the face of sorrow. I have found hope where others see hopelessness. I know death is the default position to which we all return. It is waiting just beyond a misfire in my nervous system. I don’t fear it. I don’t spend the majority of my time looking forward to it, either. If I die in my 90s like the majority of family I will be just as dead for just as long as anyone who has ever died in all time. This much is as certain as anything can be in life; someday I will die and I will be dead forever. This is where the beauty of reality outshines the broken promises of professional liars simply retelling the dreams of Bronze Age shepherds. The matter and energy which makes up the only physical representation of who I am will return to the universe. Married to my love for astronomy I carry an ache with the knowledge that I will never get to travel to see with my own eyes the wonders that captivate my thoughts. Where I find inspiration is in knowing that I am as much a part of all those visions dotting the endless night as I am part of myself. I close each day with an image from a time and place that will be be forever divorced from my presence, yet is within me and I within it. After I am gone the parts of the universe that came together to express themselves as me for only a breath of time will be reclaimed. With the continued passage of time comes renewed possibilities for the crude matter which carries my name and appearance. I need no shallow promises born of vanity to comfort me in oblivion. Reality holds wonders beyond comprehension.

I am in my car late at night. Nearing panic, I have pulled into a parking lot. I am on the phone with a woman who wants to care about me but will never get an opportunity to understand me as I rant about my dead friends and the countless other lives I have seen erased. I am trying to rationalize why they are gone and I am still here when the scream escapes my lungs;

“I can’t waste this.”

Silence perpetuates, proliferates and punctuates the stigma of mental health disorders the world over. Silence also serves as a reminder of those we have already lost and their potential which was never achieved. Theirs may have been the kind words to get another person through a difficult day. The songs they never sang will never comfort another wounded human being. Their discoveries and contributions to our understanding of reality were forever erased. They are now as permanent as anything in all of existence. Suicide is not the only means by which silence has an echoing reverberation throughout society. The self-doubt that shackles countless potential contributors to our human experience makes it as though many of us are living our lives as nothing more than breathing corpses. We are silent when we should speak. We sit when we should be taking a stand. The loss is incalculable. It amounts to the creative miscarriage of the next generation of innovation and enlightenment still germinating in the womb of our minds.

I am on the couch with my wife. She tells me she is having an affair. In a similar talk not long before she told me she no longer loved me. She lied to me when I asked if there was anyone else. Now she is clearing her conscience. She is laughing. Words in my voice form a lie to everyone with ears to hear this exchange;

“It’s okay.”

I have a full sleeve of tattoos covering my right arm from wrist to shoulder. I am roughly two-thirds the way through completing a full sleeve on my left arm. There is no doubt that I like the look of quality artwork beneath the skin. I feel more and more myself after each section heals and becomes a permanent part of me. I had a fair amount of (shitty) ink before my divorce, but things worked out nicely as I stumbled upon the right artist at the right time and I now have ink therapy with him every three weeks. The process of healing a tattoo is an art form in its own right which has taught me about processing pain and discomfort, thinking outside of instant gratification, and being patient. There are no tricks. There are no shortcuts. Nothing will speed up the process, but there is a lot a person can do to slow it down. It hurts and it is going to hurt no matter what you negotiate in wishful thinking. It is the same with the less visible wounds we all carry. Initially I had the idea of covering up poorly done ink which included the name of my ex wife. It struck me that the time was not right. I was too eager to undo damage which had been done previously rather than focusing on what I wanted and needed. I made a decision that this was the time to reclaim my life. This was the time for me to set my priorities. This was the time to be who I wanted to be and not concern myself with what anyone else thought. I then commissioned my artist to do a portrait which I had wanted since I first started being interested in tattoos. It was Boris Karloff as The Monster in Frankenstein. The lower half of my sleeve is now the best Bride of Frankenstein scene I have ever seen applied to skin. The symbolism of this particular story should by now be rather obvious.

Hidden in the woods in the middle of a very small town a few miles from my house is a natural spring feeding a leg of what is eventually the St. Johns River. It’s become a ritual for me to visit every single day at some point and dive into the waters just above the boil. It is a shock to my system no matter the temperature outside. Sound disappears. Darkness surrounds me. I cannot breathe. For only a brief moment each day I die. My back arches. My face turns upwards. I chase the rays of sunlight dancing above. I break the surface of the water and I awake again on my own terms.

Finishing this post I really have no clue what I want anyone to take away from it. I suppose I needed to get this out and this is the result. The best I can hope for is that someone may read this and realize they are not as alone as they might feel. If this is you know that you are not crazy. Know that that you are not broken. Know that your story is not yet written. You are not in need of saviors or shepherds. You are your own hero.

And you are mine.