Leaving Cloud 9

by Ericka Andersen

  To rid oneself of those fears is a monumental task—one that Rick is still working on.

  CHAPTER 19

  LONELY

  Rick and Jenny grew up together, victims of the same horrific circumstances. Brother and sister—same childhood, different results. While Rick’s instinctive reaction was to run away from the chaos and neglect of home life, Jenny chose a different direction.

  Looking back on his early adulthood, Rick likes to describe himself as a tiger, roaming the plains alone without needing anyone or anything. But Jenny gravitated toward having a family, and ensuring they never had to endure the kind of life she did.

  Thankfully, Jenny was able to find that solace. She met the love of her life—Dean—and they married young. Dean was a military man who would provide her with the family and stability she had always longed for. He also turned out to be a good husband and an incredible father. They eventually had four children.

  Dean’s parents became the parents Jenny never had, and thankfully they accepted and loved Rick as a son as well. But in the end they weren’t his family, so he never stayed too long to hang out with them. His tiger instincts would kick in, and he would be off.

  As a young adult he hopped from state to state, looking for something he didn’t really understand. Fulfillment? Peace? Every new place was exciting, just as every new lover was exciting, but they all eventually led to depression and disappointment.

  Through it all, Jenny stayed the one rock in his life—always there for him, the one true family member he had. She was always “his person,” even when they didn’t get along.

  “I’m critical, she’s critical, so we kind of say hurtful things, and sometimes they are hard to reconcile or get over,” says Rick of this important relationship. “Pride and hurt are factors too. There’s a lot of damage done, and sometimes it’s hard to let go of that. But we’ve always been each other’s best friends.”

  Over the years, Jenny made a lot of friends at church and became more emotionally healthy, lessening her dependency on Rick. This caused him a certain amount of angst. For an extreme introvert dealing with social anxiety, phobias, and bipolar disorder (all issues he would come to understand later), loneliness can kick in pretty hard. While Jenny had her husband and kids, Rick would go from lonely time to lonely time, with women and drinking and army buddies thrown in here and there. He thinks he’s always had a loneliness built in. Even when he wants to be more social, the fear and anxiety prevent him from acting on the impulse.

  Something that thrilled him in the back of his mind was the prospect of having children. He always thought his own loneliness would probably lessen if he became a dad because he’d be more concerned with the well-being of his child than with his own feelings. But having kids wasn’t something he saw happening anytime soon—not when he was still a young man. As a teen on the edge of adulthood, he didn’t know what was next, aside from considering the army and possibly getting married someday.

  Had one thing gone differently during those years, his life could have completely spun out of control. When he was eighteen and stole a thousand dollars from the register at the video store, the owners could have called the cops. He might have gone to jail and never finished high school, never joined the army, never married or had a child, never gained the unquenchable thirst for knowledge that defines him today. The kid who mostly flunked his way through high school with a ninth-grade reading level would now tell you that if he won the lottery, he’d spend it on going back to college and getting degrees in a multitude of subjects—psychology, history, political science.

  And just like his mother, he can think it’s all okay one night—that he’s got it under control, that she doesn’t hurt him anymore—but it always comes back. It comes back when he’s alone on the couch in the house, feeling unloved. It happens even when the person who loves him with her whole heart and soul is there and he still feels unloved and alone because of what his mother did to him for so many years. It happens when his sister and he get into arguments and don’t speak for months at a time. Those temporary estrangements are rare but extremely painful for both of them. After all, Jenny suffered the same abuse as he did. She just dealt with it differently and remembered it in a slightly different way.

  Rick is over forty years old as this book is being written, but his childhood will never go away. He has come a long way and continues to heal, but the scars remain. He can keep trying to move on, but the memories will always burn. Memories of being verbally abused or essentially ignored. Of being expected to “parent” a younger sister while they were left at home alone, in a car in the bar parking lot, and in the living room while random men slept in their mother’s room. Of being picked up by social services, brought along on drug deals, forced to deal with his mother’s every drunken, drugged, abusive mood swing. Of watching his mother being hit by man after man or slitting her own wrists, attempting to be what she needed when he was just a little kid and her needs were incapable of being filled.

  Rick may feel chronically lonely, but he’s not alone in his woundedness. He’s one of many children—Jenny included—who grew up as he did. How many of them are struggling every day with rage, irrational anxiety, paranoia, and zero self-assurance—always trying to fill some void that seems unfillable?

  As a child, Rick had no one to protect him except a God he didn’t know was there. No wonder he struggles so with loneliness. No wonder he trusts so few people. No wonder friends aren’t his strong suit.

  It’s easy to ache for him, when no amount of love ever seems to be enough.

  CHAPTER 20

  IN THE ARMY NOW

  When age eighteen rolled around, Rick signed his life away to the army and prepared for the next chapter. The day he left for basic training brought him right back to the first day of kindergarten on the bus—only this time he was leaving his hometown on a plane for basic training. He was terrified. And worst of all, his mother waved him off like he was nothing.

  “Good riddance,” she said. His heart broke into a million pieces. Even though he knew by now what to expect from her, the words still hurt. Thick skin wasn’t—and isn’t—his strong suit.

  The abusive mother who wasn’t there for him, who attempted suicide in front of him, who left him and his sister alone in seedy motel rooms and bar parking lots while she drank and prostituted herself, who gave him to his uncaring grandparents and never protested their cruel treatment, who let him ride around with drug dealers and brought home abusers—that mother was the only one he knew, and he loved her despite it all.

  Leaving for the army that January was the scariest day of his life. Would he ever come back? And would anyone really care—except maybe Jenny?

  He wasn’t the only one boarding the plane that day who felt like that. There were plenty of hope-starved kids joining the military for the same reasons he did. They didn’t know what to do with their lives. They had no money and no way forward. And they’d been told the army was the answer to their problems.

  Some people romanticize the military, assuming that every man or woman who signs up is doing so in fierce dedication to his or her country. But the truth is, many join the military because they don’t have many other options or because, like Rick, they are desperate to escape a painful situation at home.

  A 2014 study found that men who enlisted in the United States military during the last four decades are more than twice as likely as those in the general population to have been sexually abused as children and to have grown up around domestic violence and substance abuse. Essentially, they are more likely to possess a large number of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) discussed earlier.1

  Veterans generally experience higher rates of poor mental health and suicide risk. This has often been attributed to PTSD from wartime experiences—except half of veteran suicides happen among those who have never been deployed to a war zone. The study hypothesizes that it’s because many men who enter the military are suffering from the consequences of ACEs, but
traumatic military service ends up getting the blame for their PTSD.2

  Guys like Rick enter the military hoping to find training, education, community, and a way to make a difference in the world—as well as escaping from their problems at home. The idea is enticing and sensational when recruiters make their pitch. They glamorize the military and sell young men and women visions of heroism and transformation.

  Of course, Rick didn’t need to be convinced by a recruiter. This was the path he had known since he was a little boy. This is what you do when you are following in the footsteps of the military men in your family—father, stepfather, uncle, grandfather, and so many others. This is what you do when you barely graduated high school and narrowly escaped jail, when you have no money and not much else to hope for. You join the army for a million reasons, but underneath it all, you hope it will make your life matter just a little more than it does. For the rest of your life you will be a veteran, and that will demand respect.

  Rick didn’t know anyone on the bus to basic training, and his anxiety was sky high. The regimented schedule of boot camp would help keep some of his mood swings and depression at bay, but it would be only a temporary fix.

  The rest of life was a big question mark, and only the solace of knowing he was going where his father and grandfather before him had gone kept his head up. He swallowed the tears and did what he thought men do, though real manhood was still a foreign concept to him, one that would take decades to be revealed.

  Basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in mid-January was unforgettable—and uncomfortable. Rick distinctly remembers yelling, “Yes, drill sergeant!” and “No, drill sergeant!” multiple times an hour, every day. He eventually earned rank as Private Sylvester, fourth squad leader of the third platoon in Delta Company, 2-13. He’d never had a title quite so official.

  The days started early, while it was still pitch black outside, and it was bitterly cold during training. Coming from the heat of Arizona, the weather was one of the hardest things to get used to. Snow flurried in the early-morning darkness and the wind raged against his face, tearing into his training fatigues. Maybe Kentucky didn’t always get snow, but this year it sure did.

  Fun it was not. Visibility was poor, and muddy ice covered the grounds beneath their boot-laced running feet. Only the throaty scream of the drill instructor kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Mistakes were not an option here, and Rick’s primary motivation was to avoid any repercussions. Training was already hard enough without adding any consequences.

  One morning, they set out on a run with no idea when it would end. At mile six, his platoon reached Misery—not the emotion, the mountain. It wasn’t the end of the run, but the beginning of the climb. Rick says just knowing he had to get through it—and that he knew he could—gave him a sense of personal satisfaction he hadn’t experienced before. He kept putting one foot in front of the other and telling himself it wasn’t that bad.

  Finally, after a full eight-mile run, they reached their destination—a tiny brick building that looked more like a shack. He swallowed hard, knowing what was next. They were going to be exposed to gas as part of their training for situations that might arise in the future.

  He knew the training was important. Soon they’d be in the Middle East and facing what could be a fight for their lives. Nothing was off the table when you were deployed. And the better prepared you were, the better your chances of survival. But that didn’t mean Rick was eager to be gassed.

  They were told that six men would be chosen to go first. Rick exhaled in relief. Out of 120 men that day, what were the chances he’d get picked for the test? Then he heard it: “Private Sylvester, front and center!”

  Rick fell into despair at the sound of his name. His anxiety went into overdrive because he knew he couldn’t decline. He reassured himself it would be over soon, that it wouldn’t be that bad. But that self-comfort didn’t last long.

  The shack was dimly lit with no windows and only one doorway, which was guarded by the biggest of all the drill instructors. Once they were all inside, the drill instructor explained the results of breathing in the gas fumes as they fitted masks on their faces. They needed a good seal on the protective mask to keep the harmful fumes out.

  At this point Rick just wanted out, but it was too late. The instructor lit a little chalk pellet about the size of a pea and tossed it in an empty coffee can, creating a smoking cloud of poison gas.

  The fumes gradually increased until they filled the small room, slithering and wrapping around the recruits like a snake. The whole thing was frightening, but the protective mask helped.

  Then the drill instructor yelled, “Stop breathing and take off your protective mask!” Reluctantly they obeyed. Some of the trainees were already gagging, and others made the mistake of taking a deep breath immediately. Rick managed to hold his breath and avoid choking, but within seconds a searing pain struck his eyes, followed by a copious flow of tears that blocked his vision. Terror gripped him as he began to choke uncontrollably, feeling as if he was drowning on dry land. A burning sensation shot through his chest as panic set in. Mucus poured from his nose. But somehow he managed to yell his social security number when prompted by the instructor.

  Finally they let him out of the shack, and he choked and gasped for air. He revived quickly, thankful the exercise was over. But he knew the next challenge awaited him—another eight miles back to camp.

  That day of training became symbolic for Rick. To him it represents much of what the army taught him about will and perseverance. That day remains with him always, reminding him that he needed sweat, fear, and determination to succeed. Such would be the case for plenty of other obstacles he would encounter. In a sense, he figured that if he could do this, the army, then he could do anything, and he hung on to the pride he felt at completing basic training and serving his country later overseas.

  Like anyone who volunteers to serve, Rick is a hero in the eyes of the nation—as he should be. Perhaps his motives for volunteering weren’t completely noble, but he does feel like serving in the military was an honorable endeavor. Without people like him, after all, we wouldn’t be living in this country.

  Rick was never in any imminent danger when he went overseas as a soldier, but foreign policy is never completely predictable. War could have broken out at any moment in the places where he served. Let’s be honest—someone who spends any amount of time in the Middle East is never exactly safe. The prospect of what could happen as a member of the military is scary enough that most people aren’t brave enough to take it on.

  Yet Rick doesn’t fancy himself special for having been a soldier. He’s reluctant about standing up to be recognized at church on Veteran’s Day. He prefers to just enjoy the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he did his part.

  For some of Rick’s fellow recruits, boot camp was awful. They barely got through (and some didn’t). But Rick didn’t mind the discipline and the exercise or even the rules and regulations. The army was the most structured environment he’d ever known. It was the first place in his life where he knew consistency, stability, and solidarity—where he didn’t feel that everything might crumble around him at any minute. All of that soothed a craving in his soul he hadn’t even known existed—for a while.

  Rick had some grand notions about what it meant to be a soldier. But the sensitive part of him never left. He thought deeply and analytically about things, and he took his duties seriously. So he was surprised to find that many of the men in his unit acted like children—and looked like them too. He couldn’t believe some of them were eighteen years old—they looked more like thirteen. And the flippant way many of his fellow soldiers viewed their positions bothered him a lot.

  In fact, he deeply related to parts of the infamous story of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who joined the army after 9/11 and was eventually killed in action. Author John Krakauer, in his book about Tillman, describes the man’s disillusionment after joining up, saying he was surprised at
the immaturity and lack of seriousness with which his platoon members took their duties.3 It felt like a glorified camp where he didn’t fit in.

  Rick felt that way, too, at times—like a grown-up training with a bunch of kids. Though he does have a goofy side, he has always been a more serious person, finding it difficult to relate to those with superficial problems and complaints. He would often get irrationally irritated with some of the guys and found himself constantly trying to rein in his mood swings. He learned to keep many of his thoughts to himself, but the emotional turmoil of holding it in created stress, headaches, insomnia, and even more anxiety.

  He had no outlet for expressing himself. And on top of that, the mental disease he didn’t yet know he had was beginning to take a real toll on his mind. He learned to live with it, not realizing it was abnormal, not knowing that his brain chemicals were off and that one day he’d be able to balance them with medication. In those days, it never crossed his mind that psychiatric meds could help.

  The military months stretched on and on. Rick had signed on for the least amount of time possible—three years—not knowing how he would handle everything. But even before he finished basic training, his three-year stint had started to feel like thirty.

  He had thought the training would toughen him up, and to a certain extent it had. But the yelling and the orders also did a good job of making him feel disrespected and small—and that made his emotional issues worse. Years later he would say he didn’t understand why so many people were into adventure races like Tough Mudder and boot-camp type exercise like CrossFit. To him, the drills and the basic mentality of those popular challenges seemed just like basic training, something he didn’t want to relive.

  The one positive in his life during this time were the guys in his unit. His friendship with José and Arturo, John and David grew as they trained together. And then, within months, they were all deployed to Kuwait. They spent hours in the desert manning tanks and sweating it out beneath the glaring sun and suffocating heat.