Author Information
MY SHORT LIFE STORY
MY SHORT LIFE STORY
It has taken many years to get to this point. Let me tell you a story about a young lady. She had a high IQ yet lived and acted like an average student in high school. She was a writer, singer, went to church on Sundays with her family. She worked summers to pay for her prom dress and to help out her family. At eighteen she entered the Kansas Army National Guard. She took pride in and loved serving God, her country, and her state. Instead of going to the beach or hanging out in Cancun on her spring break she chose to voluntarily spent it in a foreign country doing what she was trained to do. Helping build roads, work with water supplies and Army helicopters.
As the years passed she decided to make a bigger commitment to her country and chose to be an active duty soldier. She went from working with Army helicopters to working with laws and criminals. She was now a Military Police person and was sent to New York. Her eyes big with dreams of trying out for the ballet, going mountain climbing, seeing the statue of liberty, and Ellis island.
She found out that her MP unit had a mountain bike patrol and she set a goal to be apart of it for that summer. Her friends describe her as happy go lucky, always smiling and waving. A strong willed kindhearted southern young lady with values to match who just happened to be raised in Kansas.
That summer when she became a member of the bike patrol things changed. Rumor went around and she was told that if she ever messed up or if people thought she messed up it would be bad. She started being abused by her roommate and others in the unit. With no one to talk to and what seemed like no way to stop the abuse she requested to get out of the room.
For months she put in requests going up and down her chain of command. Things in her life becoming so bad during the abuse and having nothing done that one day while she was on patrol working a case she had a breakdown. As always she came back to the station to turn in her paperwork and the desk sergeant threw it back to her and told her to do it again. Suddenly everything came back to her the abuses, the not having anyone help the harassment. Suddenly she began shaking and crying. Immediately the desk sergeant apologized and called her supervisor/squad leader.
The conversation went like this: "Are you okay? Did you and your boyfriend break up or get into a fight? You're not pregnant are you?" The young lady now a soldier sat in the room tears running down her face and shaking while she told her squad leader about the abuse, assaults, and harassment. Her squad leader trying to help suggested that if she wanted something done about it to go to the Inspector General. A couple of days went by while the young female soldier pondered her decision. Others noticed her being stressed and depressed to the point where she would avoid her room at all costs. A fellow MP in her squad reiterated what the squad leader had said. "If you want to get out of the room you need to go to the IG."
Timid and nervous she walked into the IG office and met a young African American Master sergeant who listened attentively to what she had to say. She left the IG office, went back to the barracks, and called her family. Her voice sounding full of tears, frustration, disappointment even hopelessness. While on the phone in the dayroom one of the Operations sergeants gets her attention, throwing them at her he states." Here's your godamn keys to your new room." Thinking the abuse would finally be over she quickly packed her things and moved to the new room.
The room she moved to had a roommate, but she didn't mind. Her and her roommate Karen would talk for hours about what happened and the fact that she was now in the middle of an investigation because she went to the IG. Within a short while she was told that she had to take a polygraph. Before the test she was introduced to an African-American looking sergeant from the Headquarters company. She sat in the room and took the test. At the end of the test the investigator told her that she failed it, but if she just says that the assault happened willingly then he would make everything go away, but if she didn't he would ruin her for the rest of her life. Again she felt assault but this time by the investigator through the very laws she swore to protect and serve. She left the test area and within minutes was called to her unit office at which point she was informed she had been relieved of duty, told to surrender her weapons cards, and report to Range control the next morning. She then received a letter of admonition from her commander who like the investigator told her to just sign the paperwork or her life would be ruined. He also stated that this would never follow her again if she just did what they said.
From that day on until she was discharged she say words written on her door. Oftentimes the words were; nigger, bitch, slut, traitor, buddy fucker, and when she turned in complaints they just got ignored. She was honorably discharged from the Army and as she walked out of the barracks for the last time she heard." There goes a traitor and a troublemaker."
Being discharged from her beloved service to her country and not knowing what to do next she bounced from job to job working a few months getting overwhelmed then giving notice. With relationships the same happened going from here to there. She had nightmares, woke up kicking and screaming and her family would often come to her house and find her curled up in a ball crying. With no way to explain the walls coming in on her, not being able to breathe, days where she had migraines so powerful she would need a dark room and would pull the covers up over her head and cry for the pain to just stop. After certain incidents where a boyfriend tried to kill her by choking her a friend of hers stated that she needed to get help and that since she had been in the Army she should go to the local VA.
Within the next few days she got her DD214 together and went to the local VA. Once there they got her healthcare and told her to go to the Mental Health clinic and do something called an intake. Anxiety riddled her body at what to do next, but she did the intake anyone stating to the examiner that she would be moving to San Antonio at which point the examiner she could continue to get help there. She moved to San Antonio and checked in with her local VA like the examiner had told her to do. Upon checking in with the San Antonio VA they informed her that although she had served her country both on foreign and domestic soil that she was not eligible to get services in their eyes. She left here being more disappointed and confused than ever.
Two years went by during which time she moved back to Kansas. She received a letter from the Wichita VA stating that she had an appeal hearing in regards to her case. She went to her hearing with her DAV representative who informed the hearing representative that she had a case to the assaults she had been through. After the hearing her and her DAV representative talked about what happened to which her referred her to the local Vet Center.
A few days later she went into the local Vet Center, sitting in her car for twenty minutes feeling scared, wondering what would happen next. Finally she mustered up enough strength to walk through the doors. Nervously she looked at the receptionist. " My DAV rep and social worker from the VA referred me here". The receptionist was nice and took her information asking her to wait and someone would meet with her. The Social worker at the Vet Center asked her about her assaults and what happened. Other than her intake no one had asked her what happened or taken the time to hear her. The social worker made an appointment for her and told her about a group of women who that had been through what she had and if she rearranged her schedule she could go to it.
She began going to counseling at the Vet Center with the social worker. The social worker promised her that she would help her with her case and her problems, and the reasons why she had the nightmares, cried, and shook at times. The young lady started feeling better about herself, began dating and soon married another veteran that went to the Vet Center for services. The once kind social worker was now mean, demeaning, and even cruel. The social worker was on a trip to Washington D C when the female veteran had a breakdown. She went to her local VA for help and they put her on medication to help her. She told the social worker when she got back from her trip what happened to which the social worker's response was " About damn time, you're crazy."
The young veteran lost her job due to her problems with the walls coming in and through other incidents became very suicidal. Her spouse made her call the social worker. The social worker told her to take her spouse's medication, told the veteran that she needed to get rest, and that she had to see the social worker the next morning. When she saw the social worker she made fun of her and told her she was crazy, but that the new medication would help her rest.
Since the veteran was now apart of her local VA again her primary doctor set up a time for her to do another intake in the mental health clinic. The morning of the intake her spouse was tired so she drove herself. She had barely sat down when the examiner called her in. the examiner spoke with her about her nightmares, the kicking and screaming, the crying, the things that happened when she was in New York. The lady looked sad as she listened to the veteran. At the end of the examination the nice lady looked at her and told her. 'You have PTSD due to MST (military sexual trauma) and chronic depression. You will have it for the rest of your life It is not your fault. There was nothing you could've done about it, but we will work on ways to deal with it."
The veteran was floored, but she finally knew what was wrong with her even though she felt like she has just been given a diagnosis of a terminal disease. She didn't know what to do next, where did she go from there?
Many months went by and she still went to counseling at the Vet Center with the Social Worker and the group even the times that she didn't want to go. Her spouse would tell her that if she didn't go then she and the social worker would get together and have the police come get her and force her to go to the Vet Center. More time went by the veteran put in to change providers. That very night her spouse yelled at her about how she was such a terrible person. Earlier in the week she had told the social worker at the Vet Center how she felt, her being depressed, suicidal, and the social worker used that time to yell at her about not spending anytime with her spouse. The veteran became so depressed that she attempted suicide by overdosing on her migraine medication. Her spouse nowhere to be found she called a friend of the family to drive her to the hospital. She wanted to die but not there. She was admitted to the hospital that night and the whole, time she was in the hospital her spouse told her that things were fine between them. Exactly two weeks to the day that the veteran was discharged from the hospital her spouse divorced her, and right after she had given all her money to her spouse her spouse kicked her out and left her homeless.
Homeless, penniless and with limited resources she turned to a friend who told her she could stay with them until she got back on her feet. One of the veteran's friends told her that since she was homeless they could expedite her claim quickly so she put in her request. Things still seemed to move slower and slower. The veteran busied herself by updating her complaint she had sent through her senator's office and was meticulous over every detail. More months passed and her medical provider changed her medications, although the medications helped she was still very depressed and suicidal. It didn't help that her now ex-spouse would call her cell phone and say things like bitch or fucking bitch and hang up. The veteran soon made a new friend who understood what she had gone through. She now had someone who encouraged her. Someone she could talk to and they didn't blame her. Her new friend understood that there were times she would cry for what seemed like no reason. Why in the middle of the night she'd wake up kicking and screaming, yet that person chose to accept her as she was and didn't want to change her.
After staying at the home of the other veteran things began to go back to where they were before and she became extremely depressed and suicidal again. The daughter of the other veteran literally told her that if she asked to go to the hospital or went to the hospital she would be considered weak, a coward, and a liar. So even when she took low sick and was hospitalized it was as if she was alone. Even to the point of her being told to find a new place to live while she was in the hospital. It was the information she received from the hospital staff because her new friend’s mother had called up to the Veterans hospital she was being treated at and blamed everything that was going wrong with their family at that time on her. Including saying it was the veteran’s fault that her friend got pulled over in her truck while she was in the hospital due to some light malfunction.
This story is a familiar one. Almost everyone falls on their hard luck at least one time in their life. Most people read this story and think about the different things in it and blame the young lady/soldier/veteran that if she would've been right then those things wouldn't of happened. While others no doubt are disgruntled and dismayed over the incidents themselves and the fact that such things happen in the military.
What if I told you that this story is not just simple words on a page, that the incidents mentioned really happened and that there are military members and veterans out there caught in the middle of what some would call an intense investigations or being called everything but a child of god by the Government, the very country they defended. Many making the ultimate sacrifice, not just Emotionally, but on no longer here because reading the very letter of denying to a service member what happened and they are the ones trying to live through it causes many to terminate their own life functions. I know because I live in the situation where it seems as though there are investigations into nothing, or it appears like nothing because no one is doing anything about it. What if I told you that the female young lady/soldier/veteran in the story is m and this is my short life's story. Would your opinion of the assaults change? Would you see into my current private life and leave me to die or would you realize that I'm a person with feelings, someone who bleeds red blood, defends the very freedoms you hold dearly and would do it again because at the end of the day I took an oath to God and county. Would you look at my African American, native -American looking body and say so what, or would you see the real person, the soldier, the neighbor, the friend?
In Service of My Country Always.
