My first experience with mental health occurred when I was in junior high school. My art teacher noted that the compositions of my artwork were dark. She had me transfer a pencil drawing into a painting using her oil paint supplies. I didn’t think anything about it. But, soon after, my mother took me to a psychiatrist in the local children’s hospital. I interpreted ink blots, and told stories about photographs I was shown. I was seated on stage in an amphitheater, and shared my artwork with an audience of adults in white coats. I didn’t see them again, and never questioned the purpose of the experience.
A few years later, when I was fourteen, I was placed in a boys’ home in a nearby town. My mother said that she couldn’t afford to feed me any longer. My childhood was marked with domestic violence, being driven out of our home with my mom and my younger brother by my father. Being placed in the boys’ home made me feel totally abandoned. My mom did visit me from time to time. My grades had dropped. As a result, my mom arranged for me to be seen by a psychologist in his home. When my mom learned that I was sleeping on his couch, instead of being treated, she ended the sessions. There are occasions of sexual abuse and violations of my sexual boundaries at various points throughout my childhood and adolescence. But, I don’t want to get into that story here. I don’t doubt that it only served to compound the issues I was dealing with regarding the state of my mental health.
A crisis occurred one night in the boys’ home, and my maternal grandpa agreed to take me into his home until I graduated. It was the first time that I was treated with unconditional love. I was seventeen at the time. I worked part-time after school and on weekends. As for school, I continued to flunk my way through high school, making D’s and F’s for the most part. Usually, I slept or worked on art pieces in my classes. I use to think that I was too embarrassed to eat lunch with the other kids. Fact is, though, teenager boys scared me, so I hid out in the art room, usually drawing or painting.
I graduated in 1970. The Vietnam Conflict was still going strong, and the draft was in full swing. To avoid combat in some rice paddy, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Death was not new to me. I had witnessed the act of dying when my grandpa took me to visit one of his lady friends. I was at the side of his friend’s bedridden sister when she stopped suddenly, made an appeal for help, and fell back dead. It was one of those things that I just accepted as the way things in this world were. So, when I witnessed the death of a young airman basic on the physical conditioning field just a few feet from me, I just accepted it as the way things were. And, when I saw another airman drop less than an hour later while running laps around the field, I, again, didn’t think much of it. And even when a year or so later, while stationed at Clark airbase in the Philippines, an angry bar girl had a contract taken out on me to have me killed, I just sort of accepted that fact as the way things were.
So, here I am. Fact is, though, I came out of the Philippines shaken to my core. I just didn’t seen what there was that I could do about it. There were other adventures, if you want to call them that. I volunteered for everything, especially if it meant that I got to fly. I was not a pilot, but often crew chiefs were called upon to fly with their aircraft, particularly if they were going to be gone long. I traveled a lot, and saw a lot. I remember our transporting a refrigerated coffin. The war was ending. I read the label on the coffin that described the cause of death. He had been in a motorcycle accident. I couldn’t believe it. To go through the mess of war, as well as, the danger our allies sometimes posed for us, just to end up being killed just as if he were still stateside. It was crazy.
I saw so much by volunteering. I missed the point, though. This was no sightseeing tour, I was experiencing these things; finding a twelve inch crack in a landing gear, after it had already been approved for launch; volunteering each year for three years before I was accepted to cross train on to AC-130 gunships as an aircrew member, hanging out the back end of the plane, looking for things being shot at us and being prepared to talk the pilot through ways of evading them; being sent on a top secret mission to who knows where to do who knows what. It still isn’t in my military records, at least as far as I know. All of these things had an impact on me.
For a long time, as a child, I had been told that I was not good enough, capable enough. When I graduated from high school I was told that I wasn’t good enough to go to college; that I was going to end up dead in some rice paddy in Vietnam. Extra motivation to join the Air Force. But, none of that happened. While stationed in Washington, D.C., I decided that I wanted to put myself to the test. I took a couple of courses at a local community college. It wasn’t long before I signed up for a full time load of college courses, while working for the Air Force for forty hours a week. It wasn’t long before I had a breakdown.
As I drove to work on Andrews Air Force base, I literally reached a fork in the road. One branch led pass a large tree. I knew that if I went that way I was going accelerate and plow my car into the tree. The alternative branch led to the base hospital. I chose the hospital. At first, the hospital staff, an airman, was reluctant to see me. Sick call for enlisted personnel had passed for the day. But, after I shared some of my story, he thought better of it. I was soon being seen by a doctor. This led to my seeing a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with major depression, and entered into outpatient treatment.
They didn’t want to hospitalize me, because the could have an adverse effect on my military career. There were individual one-on-one sessions, and group sessions. I took the psych medication, as prescribed But, around that time Jimmy Carter was elected president. Soon cutbacks were being made in the military ranks. I was told that I needed to reenlist so that I could be transferred to a new duty station, or else I would be discharged. I chose being discharged, so that I could go to college and study to be a priest. I had only been treated for my mental health issues for about six months. The doctor I saw told me to go to my local VA hospital when I got out, so that treatment for my mental health issues could be continued. It didn’t work out that way.
The VA hospital made a judgement that awarded me ten percent disability for hemorrhoids, with no mention of my mental health issues. I just accepted it as the way things were. It never dawned on me that I could appeal the ruling. So, I went on my way. I attended a local Catholic seminary, and college. I ran into problems almost immediately. I left the seminary in favor of a relationship with a young lady I met at the college where I attended. We became engaged to be married, but there was a catch. She said that she had difficulty with my behavior. I tended to have intense relationships; I either loved you or hated you. On occasions I had sudden spontaneous eruptions of extreme anger. It was not directed at her, but I frequently dumped my emotional baggage at her feet. She insisted that I get psychiatric help.
I didn’t have the money, so I went to an agency that used a sliding scale for billing services. After a year of seeing one of their counselors, with no apparent improvement, I asked when I was going to be cured. I was total that I would never be “cured”. I would, as I got older, experience fewer occasional eruptions of emotions, but that they would never disappear completely. I responded that I wouldn’t wish that off on a dog, and quit seeing them. My fiancee` and I broke up.
My life continued on it rocky path. Years went by. I lived in hell. I got married, and fathered a son, whom I loved deeply. But, his mother and I broke up after eight years of marriage. He moved back to her home state, taking our very young son with her. I took it hard. I remember being on a three lane highway, with three semi’s behind me. I had an overwhelming urge to spin the steering wheel, thereby flipping my car in front of them. I yelled “NO! NO! NO!” all of the way to the local VA medical center. They prescribed some pills, and told me to contact the city’s Vet Center. I saw them for a few months, and then moved to my ex-wife’s hometown in order to be near my young son. I was not going to abandon him the way my dad had abandoned me. I made the move.
I had a very hard time getting a job. I held a masters degree in elementary education, but that didn’t seem to help. After a couple of years of very low paying jobs, I got a teaching position on the condition that I obtain a teaching certificate from my new state. Their first teacher had quit, and I was not accepted by my new class. It weighed heavily on me. I saw myself as a failure. I could feel myself slipping into a dark black cold abyss. I waited too long to get help. The first medication I took didn’t have any effect on what I was experiencing. I slipped beyond the point of no return.
I resigned my teaching position. I bought a CD player that held five CDs at a time. I organized my apartment, and prepared a place for my death ritual. I got my affairs in order. I was totally irrational now. I deduced that God made me for hell, so that issue was no deterent. I called my ex-wife, and said that, if something happened to me, she was to tell our son that I had been killed in a car accident. She later told me that she realized that I was not myself, and something bad was about to happen. She got me to agree to see my pastor. In the meantime, she contacted my brother who lived out-of-state. While I was seeing my pastor, someone called 911. When I got home the police were waiting for me.
For the next few months, I was in and out of the hospital. I was obsessing about ways I could end my life, always with a plan and accompanying urge to follow through. Eventually, I went from suicidal to homicidal. I reached a point that my therapist became concerned, and directed me back into the hospital. While there, a man was yelling at a nurse about his son. Evidently, he did not care for the way his son was being treated. The man’s behavior triggered me, and I slammed my fist into the coffee table in front of me. Nurses flocked to me, ushering me into a quiet room, five point restraining me, and injecting only God knows what into me. I remember an unlit room; a tiny door opening in a closed door, and part of a face peering at me. The little door closed, and I slipped back into oblivion.
When I finally woke up, I was in a room of the psychiatric intensive care unit of the local VA medical center. I have been taken off all medication, in an effort to establish a baseline for my treatment. I asked a nurse who looked in on me for a pencil and writing pad. When I got it, I wrote down everything I was experiencing, especially my obsessive thoughts.
A doctor arrived with a group of other doctors following him. I pleaded my case to the doctor, showing him the tablet of my writings, and yelling that I didn’t care if he did a labotomy, or electro-shock, or what… just make the obsessions that plagued me stop. I noted that at that moment I was have thoughts of bending over, running the length of the hall, and plowing my head into the brick wall. One of the doctors that were with him came back into the room. He explained that, once I was more stable, he would be meeting with me as an outpatient.
Things were going to get better. It was about ten days before I was able to leave the hospital and began my outpatient treatment plan. It was explained to me that I had major depression, complicated by obsessive-compulsive disorder, and borderline personality disorder. I was allowed to use the VA medical center’s library to research my diagnoses. People seemed to come out of the woodwork to help me. I was accepted into a supportive living facility near the VA medical center. The VA medical center’s pharmacy supplied me with my medications for free. I was directed to meet with a VA psychiatrist, concerning the possibility of there being a service connected issue.
The psychiatrist noted that the presence of a mental health condition had been documented in my military medical records before I was discharged. It was evident to him that I should have received VA help a long time ago, and he could not understand why I didn’t. He said that he could not back date my benefits to when I was first discharge from the service, but he could see to it that, from this incident forward, I qualified for assistance.
It has been twenty-one years since that day, and what I now see as the beginning of my recovery journey. All sorts of people started stepping forward to guide me along this path, handing me the next individual who then guided me further along this path of healing. I had a safe place to stay; three meals a day to eat; medications that really helped; schooling for a new career (one that better matched my strengths); after my schooling was done, I had a job coach to help me obtain a job that supported my needs for the time being; the job coach didn’t just drop me when I got a job. He continued to look for career options that suited my strengths. Eventually, I was introduced to peer support, and soon had a career as a peer support specialist.
For once in my life I felt that I had found my nitch. Everything that I had experienced in my life seemed to be a preparation for this service. Twenty years had passed since I was first divorced. My son and I had wonderful experiences together, including a trip to visit the Black Hills of South Dakota. An old high school flame had sought me out. It was as though we had never parted. We prayed morning prayer over the phone, as well as evening prayer, followed by a couple of hours just getting to know each other again. This went on for the next three years, I visited her in my hometown, and she visited me here. The old flames rekindled, and gave birth to even stronger new flames of love. I proposed marriage and she accepted. I moved her a thousand miles, with four cats, one dog, and an elderly uncle. They all adopted me. We were married in December. We bought a house. My time as a peer support specialist continues to be just as awesome as when I first began. Without a doubt, I am truly the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. Thanks be to God. Amen.