Documenting my journey through the mental health system

My time in the military was simultaneously awesome and grueling. I excelled in basic training, earning squad leader for a time and exceeding standards on marksmanship, hand to hand combat, and attention to detail. This continued in AIT (advanced individual training) where I learned my job – signal corps. I was manning radios and using comsec technology at a time we weren’t all online yet – I joined in 2005, shortly after I graduated high school.

I received orders to report to Fort Hood just before Christmas. I was received to a signal company for an artillery brigade. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a bad sign. I was surrounded by front line combat troops.

They can talk about us, but they can’t talk without us.

We were moved eventually, all the way across base. Fort Hood is the largest military base in the United States. The new barracks were a significant downgrade from the private rooms we had before.

I spent a lot of time on the shooting ranges. Grenades, M4s, M19s, and of course the M16. There is little to do outside shooting shit when not deployed as a signal corpsman for an artillery brigade, which is a few thousand soldiers within the 1st Cav division. (1st cavalry). 1st Cav is the largest military division in the US. I became quite adept at the grenade launcher, which secured to my M16 rifle. I was invited to qualify for expert on the grenade launch course and did so. A series of stationary targets, moving targets, and targets in which I had to be moving. I passed as an expert and a pin was affixed to my Class As, or formal uniform.

One day, exciting news. At the time, American Idol was a huge show. The Army decided to put on their own version, and I was invited to sing as I had before for different events, mainly the Star-Spangled Banner. I sang a HIM song, Funeral of Hearts, a Capella, and was promptly invited into the next round. I had to cajole my company to attend and pass votes, just like in the American Idol show. There was another from my unit who was also singing, he was a talented country singer, and I don’t even like country music. But he was genuinely good. This made it easier to get our company to attend, and others besides. We practiced feverishly…. after the first round, we only had to be voted in for one more round before competing for 1st place in Fort Hood.

Back then, just finding an accompaniment was difficult. You had to go to the CD stores in the mall, to their karaoke section, and look for tracks on karaoke CDs you might be able to sing. The army would stream the main show after all Fort winners were announced but these were definitely the early days of streaming. I found a song I could sing with ease as a male soprano even though I don’t like her much as an artist – Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment Like This.

I was voted into the next round. I couldn’t believe it. This meant finals. The judges insisted they could hear much more potential out of me.

I won the Fort Hood round, qualifying me for nationals. A male soprano who can sing opera is unusual. Then my first sergeant denied my request to go sing in Washington DC, citing our impending deployment to Iraq. In the back of my mind, I knew this was a real possibility. Fort Hood is also called deployment central, after all. And we were neck deep in Iraq bullshit. So, I couldn’t go attempt to win nationals as the mission always comes first.

Then my father died.

He was quite an alcoholic when I was a child, but never a mean drunk. Just a drunk. He was a dry alcoholic for 20 years, and then one day, while my mom was out of town with my brother, he got drunk for the first time at his boss’s daughter’s wedding. He drove home and wrecked the BMW he built on my 21st birthday, August 19th, 2006. He didn’t die on impact, he was taken to the hospital in bad shape, but alive. He remained alive for 4 days, largely neglected by medical staff. This seemed to be because of his status as a drunk driver. He died for no reason four days later, August 24th, 2006. I remember the phone call from my mother like it was just a minute ago.

“I don’t know how else to say this. Dad died.”

And I screamed. I had been quite close to my father. Closer than I was to my mother. She and I always had friction, but my father called me his smartest child and he was so proud of me. While my brothers had difficulty living a responsible life, I never even had to be told to do my homework. And he could listen to my singing all day, even if he was partial to screaming guitars and throbbing bass.

My mother would later win a settlement against the hospital for blatant negligence in my father’s death. I would manifest bipolar symptoms for the first time, largely triggered by my father’s death and subsequent rape by a peer.

Everyone was raping each other back then. My story was typical of the time. I was at a barracks party with a friend I had met early on, in basic training. I had a few drinks, but at 20, not that many as I was still not of drinking age. I was making out with another guy in a locked barracks room. All barracks rooms locked automatically from the outside when closed. He started to rip my clothes and while I said no, I don’t want to go that far, he yanked off my boots. I can still hear the crack of my broken soles. He took down my pants and fucked me, and I fought like hell to get us both on the floor. I rolled over and started punching him in the face. He got up and locked himself in the bathroom. I could hear my friend and her boyfriend pounding on the door. I got up and opened it, my pants still around my knees. Her boyfriend broke into the bathroom and started beating him. My friend took me outside while she called military police.

I was mostly in shock. I didn’t cry or react. I was taken to the hospital where they did a rape kit and later, I was taken to the MP station for a statement. They asked if I’d been drinking, and I admitted I had. They asked all kinds of questions, like how I knew the assailant, what I was doing in barracks that weren’t my company’s, etc. I don’t even remember them all.

This report would eventually go nowhere. I followed up after a month, wondering if my rapist would be arrested or something. But nothing ever happened. I decompensated hard.

First the mania. Pressured speech, running around at night, sleepwalking, hearing voices, buzzing, crackling. Getting drug tested, cleared as sober, sent to an army psychiatric unit. Later decompensating in the reverse, so depressed I felt like taking my own life and made plans to do so. I swallowed a bottle of Seroquel on a Friday, increasing my chances of not being found till the following Monday. But all it did was make me sedated for the whole weekend. I had to crawl to the toilet to avoid pissing myself in bed.

I was eventually medically and honorably discharged, after my rape report went nowhere, after they tried to keep me from burying my father back home, after they doped me up on several different medications. My sergeant was a good friend. He advised me to file my disability claim as I was being discharged and I did. At first, I was only 10% service connected. As my PTSD and bipolar worsened over time, I was increased to 30% and in 2019, increased to 70%. I am now going for my 100% as my condition requires so much more management and my hospitalizations increase in frequency. I am waiting to hear back after my packet was sent off. I hired consultants and I don’t pay unless I win.

The army and my catastrophic failure therein was the first sign of what was to come. I miss the army to this day. I enjoyed how it tapped into talents I already have, like my attention to detail, ability to shoot, and anaylitical skills. Now I can’t even buy a gun. There’s a weird shame in that. I am certainly not the only veteran who has lost his gun rights, but it doesn’t take away the sting and the shame. The Army was supposed to be a career. It grew me up when I was going down a delinquent path. It is the first instance in what feels like a long life of shame, failure, and regret.

I am an employee as well as a patient at the local VA hospital here in Spokane. I had supported employment assistance in getting the job and staying employed and will see my case manager next week. It is one of my few accomplishments in life – I have been at this job for nearly 10 years now. What am I going to do next? I have tried to figure that out. With supported employment, I can at least keep the job, but I don’t think I’ll achieve what I had hoped to achieve in life. I just barely hang on.