The following stories contains descriptions of sexual assault, suicide, and other topics of similar nature.
“I was adopted, and I didn’t find that out until I was about 16, and that’s always been something in the back of my mind but I never paid that much attention to it. I grew up in an all Christian family. My dad is a minister and he got called to full time Evangelism so he’s been traveling the world. That’s been an adventure, just hearing about his stories and stuff like that. My mom is an administrator of the private school that I went to.”
“I have two sisters. One is a nurse in Savannah, and the other works at the Secretary of State offices that licenses nurses, so it’s kind of cool that my older sister watches over my other sister. And then there’s me.”
“Growing up we did what every normal family does. It was a little different for me because my dad is a minister so it kind of was a little rough because you had so many eyes on you, especially after we found our main church. You always have to be a certain way and it’s something that I always felt like I struggled with to live up to. Being the youngest, I watched my two older sisters and it seems like ‘How do I get to their level?’”
“Even if it was there, I never really paid attention to it or noticed it. To be honest my depression didn’t start-or I didn’t notice it, at least-until after the Air Force, and it really kicked in then.”
“I graduated in 2014, so I waited a year before I went in. I went into the air force because I felt like there was something more that I could do for my country. I also wanted to go into US Marshall, and that was a good way to get experience for that. I also wanted to get away from home, that was one of the biggest parts. ”
“Tech school is where my depression started kicking in. I noticed it more but I didn’t do anything about it. ”
“On a normal day with depression, it would start off the same way. About 3/4ths during the class time I had a tendency of just zoning out. After class, where most usual people would hang out, I would just stay in my room by myself. I had a roommate but we didn’t talk very much. He was older. He graduated before I did. My third week, he was there and then he went off to another camp, so I didn’t see him until he came back and that wasn’t until my fifth week. We talked every now and then but not much. With my depression, I would just stay to myself.”
“Most of them didn’t know until I went off to the hospital. We had switched dorms in between our weeks, so we were in a different dorm room and I was okay with my roommate there. We didn’t have any major riffs or anything, but he didn’t know until I had messed up some tests and he saw me really down. After I had my suicide attempt then he really started to worry.”
“Me and testing, I’ve always a problem with it, and I’ve seen that as a weakness for me. It’s been something I’ve had trouble with since I was growing up and in high school. We were in the classroom for a while and we had tests every certain quarter or period, and at that occasion I had previously been pushed back. In their system if you fail a test twice, they push you back a week, and so this was my second flight that I was in. With me, I hate to fail, so just being with this flight was a reminder of me failing. For that, people got shunned. ‘Oh, you got pushed back a week? What did you do? Were you a bad airman?’ and whatever, and so that was in the back of my mind. Fast forwarding, I had failed one test and so I was really down because I didn’t want to fail another one and possibly get kicked out of get pushed back another week, so that was really a trigger.”
“I went back to my room and my roommate had gone out. I sat on my bed for forever and a day trying to figure out what I’m gonna do and I couldn’t function. In Basic they gave us belts-military grade belts-so I made it into a noose and I tied it to the bathroom door and I closed the door and I just sat on the floor.”
“I sent a text to my roommate. I had recently purchased an Xbox 360 and a TV, and he always enjoyed playing it so I told him that he could have them, and he sent me back a text a few minutes layer saying ‘Are you sure about that?’ and I think that triggered for him that something was going on. So he sent another that said ‘Whatever you’re about to do, wait until I get back.’ and so I really didn’t want to but I did at the same time. It took him an hour or two to come back, but in the meantime I was just sitting on the floor thinking of any reason to not do this right now.”
“I was still in Texas. One of my triggers, and for a lot of Airmen, was being away from my family and being homesick. I just kept going back to ‘Why am I here?’, ‘I didn’t choose this job.’, ‘I don’t like this job.’, and I just kept thinking back to the people at home...I just imagined their expressions when they found out that I had committed suicide. That was something I didn’t want to put them through, so I eventually talked myself out of it. ”
“The next day I was at my re-test, and I failed that one. My sergeants were really nice people, and they were really great. They just wanted to make sure that we were taken care of and knew where we were going. They sent us to this lady who was over the testing. If you cheated or if you failed, you went to see her. She was extremely rude, and incredibly mean. I’d already been to her once, and I had to explain it to her...I didn’t want to go through that again. She went on to lunch so there was four of us who had failed, and so while we were waiting for her I went back to my dorm. I hadn’t even been there for three minutes and I get a knock on my door.”
“I opened the door and there was two sergeants there. They asked me ‘Airman, are you okay?’. I said yes, and they said that they wanted to check on me because they knew that I had failed the test. ‘We heard you had a suicide attempt.’ At that point I thought ‘Okay, I know where this is going now.’. They asked me to come with them, and they took me to our squadron headquarters. We sat there, talking, and they said they could either send me to the Chaplin or a mental. They had a Chaplin for several different religions: they had the Protestants, the Catholics, the Buddhists...whatever your religion they had it-when I heard about that, it felt kind of like a commercial to me…‘Whatever you believe in, we have a Chaplin for you!’-but I didn’t want to talk to a Chaplin. They said everything that I told them was confidential, so I thought that a hospital didn’t sound too bad. ”
“We went to the hospital, and I thought it was going to be a routine check up, only to come to find out that I had to stay overnight. After I found out that it was a mental hospital, that aggravated my depression even more. I didn’t go as far as suicide, but I just went off the wall. It was interesting, because I got to meet people who were going through what I was going through. There was one guy, his name was Casey, and we got along super well because we were the same age. He left before I did and that triggered my depression again...I was there for a whole week so I would be doing so good, good, good, and then I would relapse. For me, that’s really quick to change. ”
“When I went back to my squadron they said ‘You know you should probably call your family and tell them where you’re at.’ I didn’t want to do that. Again, I was failing and I didn’t want to tell them that I wasn’t doing well.”
“I was in the hospital for about a week, and then they sent me back and then, come to find out, at the end of it I find out that I’m not going back to my squadron. I’m going home. There’s another trigger for my depression. That...it was frustrating. We went back and I ended up signing the papers, getting discharged from the hospital, going back to the squadron, and getting sent to the holdover for airmen. ”
“It’s an in-between place for different types of airmen for different cases. The sergeants there were awesome. They were super nice, and that was really helpful. I get there, and they tell me ‘If you have any problems with your depression, let us know.’. I was there for three months. I met with the master sergeant-Master Sergeant Curry, at the time. I loved that guy-he was really nice.”
“While I was in-between and working, one of the sergeants told me that they could either discharge me or fight my case. I originally decided to fight it, which was probably the reason why I was there as long as I was. I was doing really well, until I had another depression attack. That killed a lot of things. When I first got there, I was under a wing-man-watch was a wingman had to stay with me for 24 hours and a day. Honestly it was annoying. I had gotten off of that, but I didn’t want to tell Sergeant Curry that I was having another depression attack. I ended up fighting through that one, but alongside that every week they would send me to this BAS. I called it BULL because it’s crap. ”
“I went there before I went to the hospital. They were all captains. There was a woman who wasn’t in the military but she was a doctor. She was trying to figure out ‘Why are you having these depression attacks?’ and she made it sound like it was everyone else’s problem, which it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t everyone else’s problem. I knew that I had triggers, I knew there were several types of things that triggered me, but she made it out to be ‘Oh, you had family problems, back then.’. I had told her about failing the test, and she associated with that...but I really did not like her. ”
“I come back, and at BAS, they have this classroom setting, and it’s airmen who have graduated and airmen who are still in basic who are in med-hold. Med hold is if you’re in basic training and you have an issue-like my depression, or you get injured-they’ll send you there and you’ll stay there until you get discharged or go back to your flight. It’s a classroom setting, and it’s practically a ‘How do you feel?’ session. How do you feel about this? How do you feel about that? It was just another annoying thing that I couldn’t deal with. It was every week, and it was mandatory, but I went through it just nonchalantly.”
“Back at the hold, I had a relapse. I didn’t tell Sargent Curry, but I fought through it. One of my former basic buddies, who graduated in my flight, was going for a Parajumper. They have special flights for each of the airmen. Typical airmen going though normal jobs, they have their own flights. P.Js and all the other special ops, they have their own flight. He got injured and got washed back about eight weeks. He was the only PJ in our sqaudron, and he went off to PJ school and we went off to our own fields. Come to find out, he didn’t make it through. He was someone that everyone looked up to because he was this super buff guy and he was a genuinely good person. He got sent to hold because he was getting a discharge too, and so we ended up rooming together for the rest of the term. That was really cool to get to hang out with someone who was in my flight that I knew. He knew that I had depression, but he didn’t know my triggers. With him in the room, I wouldn’t have my depression attacks.”
“It was supposed to be a medical discharge, which was different than an honorable or dishonorable discharge. It wasn’t supposed to be held against me. It was just an unnamed mention for leaving. What I was told was I could come back and get checked out outside of the air force and then come back as an airman again as long after I waited for six months. That was something I was planning on doing, I just couldn’t wait to get out.”
“It was before Christmas when they told me I was going home. I got processed out and I was on my way home. That’s when the everyday depression attacks started happening. When I came home, my parents had painted my room because they didn’t think I was coming back-and it was bright yellow. They made it known that my being their was an inconvenience for them. My dad was going on his mission trips a lot and so he made it out to be that he couldn’t go on as many as he could have been because he had to watch out for me. I was 19. I had already been over the hump and could look out for myself.”
“As of now, I’m in their den. I’ve told them that I don’t want to be there. I made it known to them that I wanted to get a decent job and move out on my own. Fast forward to a year later, and I get a job on the base. It was a decent paying contracting job and the plan was for me to save up enough money to move out. In the midst of all this happening, I find out that I have bipolar depression.”
“There are times that I’m fine, but in a second I can just zone out. With a lot of people who are depressed, they don’t like to be around people. That’s something that I’ve been trying to embrace more, just trying to be around people, especially my friends.”
“When I have my depression attacks I like to be alone. With my family they don’t understand. ‘You’re not socializing with us’ and part of me wants to say that I’m just scared to. Usually if I had a sit-down talk with them to try and tell them what’s going on, but they find something that’s negative and focus on that, and it just leads to an argument. Then four months down the road it’ll come back in another topic. They just take a 360 and turn it back against me. They know that it’s not that I don’t want to be around them, I just don’t want to be around anyone.”
“With my sisters...it’s really interesting. They don’t know that I don’t have depression. Even my sister being a nurse, she could probably help, but we don’t talk a lot. It’s been a while since we’ve even had a regular conversation. It’s something that I haven’t been able to talk to them about.”
“A few friends know that I have depression. I have one really good friend who is a reservist in the air force right now. If I text him and say ‘Hey we need to hang out’ he’ll know that I’m having a depression attack and he’ll be there for me. There are a few people who know that I have them and will try to help me.”
“I don’t trust psychiatrists because of BAS-they were all psychiatrists, so I don’t trust them because of that. I was put on an anti-depressants and they made me sick as a dog. I’ve been off and on of those. I go back and forth. Last week I was, today I’m not. There are days when I say ‘I’m not gonna take it today. I’m gonna fight it myself.’”
“They’re encouraging me to go back to school. I’ve been going to Central Georgia Tech because it’s more of a hands on type of school, because I can’t do testing. I’m better at hands on than I am books. That’s what they want me to do. They’ve told me ‘Go for it.’.”
“We’ve tried to look it up but I don’t think I can go back to active duty. I’m not sure about reserves, but if I do I probably will probably go back to the Navy or Army, but even then it’s a last resort type of thing. As of now I’m just trying to get back on my feet and get a decent paying job. Most likely military will be the last resort for me.”
“It’s always a deep depression. There are always times where I’ve contemplated suicide, but the one good thing that came out of BAS was they gave me things to counteract that. One thing was people: get around people to get your mind off of it. I have a love for music. So I’m always listening to music. They told me to find the genre that I love, plug in my ear buds and zone out. ”
“I have two really good friends. Both are from the military. One is a reservist, so he’s had the same lectures of ‘Watch out for your wing man.’, and he knows about my depression and he knows some of my triggers. Through a mutual friend, I befriended a younger guy who was going off to the marines but had a heart problem and couldn’t go. They both look out for me.”
“With depression, for a lot of people, it’s staying away from people and being by yourself. A way to counteract that is to surround yourself with people. Just find people that you trust, and who you can tell. It doesn’t have to be a Chaplin, it can be a wing man or just friends that you feel comfortable with. Let them know your triggers and your clickers so they can watch out for you. Even with that just stay around people. Find something that gets you through it. Find something that you love and that you can focus on. For me it’s music, whether it’s the words or something in that song.”
“If I do move away, I want to travel. I don’t want to be stuck in Warner Robins, or in Georgia. I worry that if I do leave, I won’t have my support system. I do have my music, and sometimes that doesn’t always help, but it’s always there for me. That’s one of my biggest fears.”
“When I tell somebody that I have depression, they usually feel sorry for me. Sometimes they say ‘If there’s anything I can do, let me know!’, but sometimes they’re just saying that to be nice. Then there are people who are genuine. You have to be willing to tell somebody, and you have to be willing to get help for it. Those go hand-in-hand. If you’re quiet, then there’s no way to get help.”
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