My Mental Health Experience as a Veteran

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I had kind of a rough childhood. That’s pretty much the story for a lot of veterans, male or female. My family situation just isn’t that great. I had been on my own pretty much since I was 16. I had been in a really bad relationship for a couple years. When I was 20, I broke that off and was just kind of making it. I was living in Arizona and [barely] paying rent, couldn’t afford a car, didn’t even have a license. I was working at the front desk of a hotel, and I just wanted more out of life. I wanted more than just paying my bills. I wanted to travel, go shopping, have a car, have a college education. So I decided that the military was the right route for me. I signed up for the Army, but my dad convinced me to join the Navy.

I was a machinist’s mate. Our base job was to work in the boiler room and fix the ship. For a while I worked on auxiliary equipment, which was hot water heaters, laundry equipment, and hydraulics for the rudders.

The first shop I worked in was on an aircraft carrier — hydraulics for elevators on the sides of the ship. The guy who led the shop was racist. I was young and didn’t know a lot about how to advocate for myself. A lot did happen to me that was traumatizing, but I didn’t realize back then that this would affect me for the rest of my life.

One attitude was that women shouldn’t be in the military because we’re lazy and we don’t work hard. One guy would throw tampons at me, or corner me in the smoke deck and intimidate me. He would smack me on the butt when I was going up the stairs. It’s something I haven’t really processed even now, 15 years later.

I started to feel like I didn’t have any way out. I started feeling suicidal. I thought about running away from the military, but where would I run to? My family wouldn’t help me. I couldn’t run to Canada; I don’t know anybody there or how to get there. I didn’t know how to go AWOL.

I did report it to the chaplain, when I realized that I was getting pretty close to making a suicide plan. He sent me to medical, and the nurses there were great. They recommended support groups and talk therapy at the psych unit, and talked to my command. But the only choice command gave was that if I was fit for duty, then I would go back to where I [had been]. If I didn’t choose that, they said, I would have to get out of the military, so I left.

I went to community college for a while, worked a part-time job for a call center, met my daughter’s father in Texas. When that fell apart, I came to Minnesota, where my family had gone. But I had very little support from them. I was on a housing program with Section 8 vouchers through the VA, working part time taking care of my daughter, getting used to being a new mom. I was proud to finish my college degree.

I got laid off because of the pandemic, and then things went downhill. I broke my ankle. I realized my mom had a drinking problem, and it became too toxic. I left in a hurry, went to a hotel, and had no idea what I was going to do. The promise I made when my daughter was born was that she would not grow up in a chaotic household. But Jazelle was nine, helping my mother after she slipped in the shower because she was drunk, and that was just not something my daughter needed to see.

At the VA, I felt that they were looking for a way to minimize the problems. With that resistance, I don’t trust the government anymore. I don’t want to sound that way. I love my country. My ancestors built it. I want to love the place where I live, but it’s hard when you know the way you’re getting treated isn’t right. I’m not asking for anything unreasonable. I am just asking to be healthy, to be able to take care of my kid in a healthy way, to not have to struggle.

It makes me feel better that I’m getting help from something outside the government. I think the VA is there to help the government absolve themselves of any damage they’ve done to innocent kids who wanted to get their life on track, who wanted something better.

We served our country expecting to have a stepping stone when we left the military, and then you have to fight for that to happen.

A therapist told me to contact MACV to help me with services. They paid for my hotel room while I waited on a housing voucher. I would talk to Angela there and explain to her what was going on — it was a load off of my shoulders. It moved my thinking to: “Now I don’t feel so suicidal. Now I feel like I can get through this.”