I’ve been wanting to write about this for sometime now. I actually saw the question about an hour ago, decided not to respond, but I’ve kept thinking about the question. I am writing this because maybe my story will help someone through the dark times.
It started in April 2013. I’m in the military and got reassigned to a base in New Mexico. At my previous base overseas I was in a great job. I had tons of really close friends. We were so close that they wouldn’t even ask what we were doing. They’d just show up to my house on the weekends. I had a great job as an instructor that allowed me to use my talents to the fullest of my abilities. My wife and I travelled all over Europe, skiing in Germany and going to the beaches in the Mediterranean. It was all very wonderful and I was happy.
But when I got reassigned to New Mexico all of that changed. All those friends I had went on to their own bases and my job drastically changed. I don’t want to talk in detail about my job, but I’ll just say that I saw the worst parts of humanity on display where I worked. The kind of sadistic thinking backed up by brutal actions. I realize I’m in the military and we get paid to kill people and blow stuff up, but I still think there’s a level of humanity we need to give to our enemies.
The part that made it the worst, though, was the terrible hours I was working. I was pulling a twelve hour shift from seven at night till seven in the morning. Anyone who has ever worked a shift like this knows how it wrecks your life. I would be exhausted when I got off work, but I could only sleep for a 3-4 hours a night because I’ve always had trouble sleeping during the day. And on my days off I would switch back over to a normal dayshift schedule, but this would make it all the worse when I had to go back to working the mid-shift.
I didn't have all that much to do besides watch as other people went about doing the dirty business that comes to keeping a country safe. In these long hours I would have time to reflect on my life. And here I was a person at 28 years old, in the prime of my life, and I was wasting it here.
I’ve been prone to depressive episodes before, there being a long history of depression in my family, but it never got as bad as this. I started smoking again, and I remember coming back from the smoke pit and I’d start thinking about ways to kill myself. I’d get so scared at entertaining these ideas that I’d immediately stop myself and force myself to think of other things. But those suicidal ideations were always beneath the surface, out of view but still pulling me underneath the water in a figurative sense.
And no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t shake these feelings. What kept me going through these times was my wonderful wife, the person who has been there with me through thick and thin. She’d prepare me two meals to eat throughout the night and one snack. It sounds crazy, but those little meals always gave me something to look forward to and helped pull me through the night. I never told her how I was feeling until much later on, but I’m sure that having someone to come home and talk to helped very much.
The depression and suicidal ideations still didn’t go away, and I remember it got really bad over one weekend. I was just lying there in bed on a Sunday morning after having slept a bunch of hours the night before, and I knew I had a choice to make. I could just lie in bed all day or I could get up and try to do something. So I did. My wife and I drove to Amarillo, Texas and ate at a Famous Dave’s. On the way back home, when the sun was going down the horizon, we pulled off onto a little deserted road off the highway and watched the sun set. The sunsets in west Texas are always a gorgeous sight to see. My wife went outside and took pictures, and I remember I took my shoes and socks off and put my feet out the window at felt happy with life. I knew I’d be able to pull through.
I’d read a biography on Abraham Lincoln, and learned that he grew very depressed after he didn’t get reelected to Congress after his first term. But he went back to Illinois and worked on improving himself. I decided to use the same tactic he did and I worked on myself.
I started reading books for pleasure—Cormac McCarthy being my favorite author, but probably not the best person to read when you were seeing the things I was seeing at work. I kept going to college classes and started writing for a local newspaper in town. I made a few good friends around the base and we started going on hikes in Palo Duro Canyon over the weekend or watching football at my house on Sunday’s. A few of my friends from overseas came out to visit me throughout the year, and it always seemed like they came out at just the right time. I gave my wife my post 9/11 G.I. Bill and was able to live vicariously through her while she pursued her passion as a graphic designer. She even won a local photography contest and a $75 gift certificate.
My job and the schedule I worked and the things I was seeing didn’t get any better, but I managed to keep the dark, suicidal thoughts mostly at bay while I was doing all this. It’s strange. I thought about killing myself everyday, much like I how described before, but I just kept pushing on and trying to get through with life. I knew if I went to a doctor that I would probably just get medication, and I was determined to fight this on my own. But I’d like to think if I ever got to the point where I’d actually purchased the means to complete my suicide that I’d have gotten help. I hope I would have.
I have a pretty solid record in the military, and I ended up applying for a special duty position to work at an Embassy overseas. I got selected for the position and knew I had my way out of the job I was in.
My depression felt like I was trapped in a cold, dark railroad tunnel. And there never seemed like any escape. I was often tempted to just lie down on the tracks and let the train run over me. But I just kept picturing myself walking through that tunnel no matter how bad things got. I knew there had to be an exit. And when I knew I’d be leaving the job, it was like there was just the faintest bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
I learned a tough lesson while I was stationed in New Mexico. Life is really hard at times, and there’s nobody that is going to get you out of a bad situation you find yourself in, at least not on your timeline. And if you want to improve your life it’s really all up to you and the people you’ve surrounded yourself with. As terrible as I was feeling, there was nobody else in the world that could have applied for that special duty assignment besides me. I could have waited for the military to give me orders again, but instead I made the choice myself. It was kind of scary knowing that my actions alone were the determining factor in the course of my life, but it was also invigorating to know that I had control and that I could change things to my will.
I’m now doing very well. I had a training course to attend for a few months after I left New Mexico, and I started to feel better while I was there. Now I’m living overseas again and life is good. I’m a five minute walk from my home, and I get to come home on lunch and see my wife and our three dogs. My work fulfills me, and I spend my free time working on the things I want to work on. And the best part of all is all those depressive and suicidal thought are long gone and I’m very happy.
So why do I keep living? I guess I keep living because I hold out the hope that there are going to be better days like the ones I’ve been living as of late. I hold out hope that maybe one day my wife and I will have children and they’ll have better lives than I did. I hold out hope that I’m going to stay in this world for as long as I can and make a positive impact on my community and the world around me. Like Red says at the end of Shawshank Redemption, “I hope, I hope…”