Jessica Goodell & John Hearn

by Shade It Black: Death

  I was slipping further away from the person I once was and the woman I thought I’d become, and I did not know what to do about it. I enrolled at the nearby community college, in part because it meant I could live in the vacant apartment over my father’s down-town office, where I would have my own couch to live on, free from the judgments of my parents. As an added benefit, I’d get to run up and down the stairs four or five times whenever I left the apartment. My shortterm memory loss, which helped me psychologically at Camp TQ, aided me aerobically now as I’d realize only when getting to my car that I forgot the keys, and then, once in the car, that I forgot my phone, and then a book I had planned to return to the library, and so on.

  Living alone I began to really focus on what my brain had been trying to figure out since at least St. Louis. Why were we fighting this war? Why had I volunteered? What is the allure of the Marines? Is there anyone who understands anything about the widespread suffering that is going on? Forget about the flag draped coffins themselves, is there anyone who knows what’s in them and what those remains tell us about the nature of that war or, for that matter, the nature of life and death?

  My depression flourished and sleeping became almost impossible. I would come home after school and just sit on my couch or lay on my bed staring at the walls or the ceiling, wrestling with these questions. Night after night was the same. I started drinking again to help me sleep, but after a short time I was drinking too much. So I’d sit there, drunk, listening to Tom Waits on repeat singing or talking or doing whatever it is he does through a voice box containing the sand-encrusted gears of an MEP 803 generator instead of the usual cartilage, membrane, and tissue, to let us know that a character is wasted and wounded, on his knees, begging to be stabbed in the chest. I’d consciously wish I were the guy in that song, and more than anything else, I wanted the dagger to be buried. I’d call up YouTube on my laptop and play again and again and again Drowning Pool’s Let the Bodies Hit the Floor—the United States Marine Corps’ version. Flashbacks would start up and I’d suddenly find myself in Iraq, processing an endless line of bodies that were no longer recognizable as such. I’d get wasted and eventually throw up. Often I passed out on the bathroom floor, or I’d make it only as far as the kitchen, and pass out there. On a good night I’d make it to the bedroom, if not into the bed itself. I would wake up not knowing where I was. Too scared to move, I would only very slowly and carefully open my eyes, just a crack, to see if I could recognize something in the environment that would give a hint as to where I was. Even with my eyes wide open I wasn’t always sure where I was or how I got there.

  I fought to focus on my coursework and spent hours every day studying, which left less and less time for drinking and ruminating. I wanted to excel academically, to get an A in every course I took, but I also wanted to figure out what had happened to me. The latter did not come easily and I still do not understand it all fully. Often, the most enlightening and helpful pieces of knowledge I acquired were also the most painful to grapple with. Each time I made a bit of progress intellectually, and then psychologically and physically, I would soon after slip up. I’d learn something about the nature of war that increased my awareness of what I had experienced, but that awareness itself would become an added burden, and so I would drink. I would grasp an insight into the structure of our society or the content of our culture that would clarify what I had not before seen clearly, but the light would be too harsh, and I would retreat into my apartment and not leave for days. I learned about resilience and selflessness, but the hope that knowledge offered highlighted the gap between where I could one day be and where I was, and that chasm, in the bright light, was so wide that it became even more difficult for me to eat; so I—at 5’ 9” and not much more than 100 pounds—would read about the power of human resilience while sipping the dietary supplement Ensure. Although I was withering away, I fought to understand and to believe in the capacity of the mind and body to return to its original state after being twisted beyond recognition. After a night of studying, when I would integrate my new knowledge into my old experiences, I’d feel stronger. Until I fell to sleep.

  It is mid-day in a dense Jungle. The bright light filters through the leaves and is dim by the time it reaches the ground. I can sense the approaching threat of enemies who are pursuing us. My platoon and I attempt to escape. We spot some vines hanging from the tops of the massive towering trees and form a desperate plan to evade our pursuers. We rush to the vines and immediately begin climbing upwards. The vines, which are thick and knotted, are overhanging a wide, green, deep river. The river is so deep and dark that we can’t even see into the water. In the background I am surrounded only by a blur of various shades of black and green. Soon we realize with terror that the enemy is approaching us in canoes on the river. As they open fire on us with various weapons such as AK’s and harpoons, we struggle to climb but are afforded little cover, as we are hanging in mid-air over the river. Some members of the platoon are able to climb more easily, but others like me struggle to overcome the weight of our equipment. I become more frustrated as my gear becomes tangled in the vines.

  When the drinking became too much work, I started smoking weed, which suppressed the pain better than the booze had. And so I smoked all the time. I smoked to get out of bed and to eat and to leave the apartment and to sleep and to get up again the next morning. An eighth of an ounce a week became a quarter of an ounce and soon a quarter ounce lasted only a couple of days. I was numbed enough to … to persist … to continue … breathing, but the drug would wear off and I would ruminate and then, with restless sleep, the nightmares returned.

  This is me standing in front of the clock tower in Chautauqua Institution in NY. It stands on the edge of the lake where I grew up. (Author collection)

  29

  Chautauqua

  Only the educated are free.

  —Epictetus

  On the northwest shore of Chautauqua Lake sits the Chautauqua Institution, an adult education center founded in the late 1800s. Originally a destination where men and women could engage in self-directed studies that would lead to intellectual and moral improvement, it became a national venue where political leaders and ordinary citizens could discuss issues of domestic and international importance. Perhaps it was its emphasis on self-improvement or life-long learning or its promotion of open political discussion that prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to proclaim that Chautauqua was the most American thing in America. It seemed fitting, then, that it was here, on Chautauqua Lake, where I had grown up, that I found myself seeking knowledge and moral grounding in and outside of the college classroom.

  I read about war. It wasn’t easy to do, especially when authors didn’t know what they were talking about. It was also difficult when they did. One excellent book that helped me to understand all that I had been through is Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. I hadn’t a clue that all wars are based upon lies and myths; nor had I understood that because the warrior knows the lies, first hand, a tension develops between him or her and the power elite that fabricates them. The warrior also experiences tension with the ordinary citizens who spread the lies and who, by the way, would rather not know the truth. Until reading this book, I thought that I alone carried the burden of a terrible secret, one that, once shared—if it dared be—would change the course of the war and the fortunes of our leaders. I also didn’t know that far from an isolated aberration, it is the virtually unwavering tendency of the press to perpetuate those myths by glorifying the savagery of war.

  I read about the nature of society in general. An essay by Peter Berger helped me to see that all ongoing social arrangements, not just war, are based upon a lie, an element of deception that allows so many of us, at the same time and place, to pattern our interactions and to form the social groupings that are essential to orderliness and meaning. Marriages hold us together, for example, in part only to the extent that we believe they are not just the best but the only way to exp
erience sustained love. Wars are fought, in part, because we believe that they are the only way to resolve extraordinary international political problems. Without myths, the patterned relationships that allow us to share a life will break down, and each of us, as individuals, may spin off into a state of destructive isolation.

  I read C. Wright Mills, including several essays suggesting that truth is not necessarily the enemy of society, or at least not the enemy of the good society. It is deception and fabrication that are the adversaries of robust communities within democratic societies. Courageous acts required by war need not be based upon lies. Honest, committed, relationships need not be fostered by myths. Democratic decision-making need not be distorted by the false-hoods of the powerful. Hard work and the dignity it bestows need not be degraded into a form of mindless servitude and then falsely called a “career” as if it were capable of building character or nations. Hope that motivates our behavior and gives us a reason to go on need not be cheapened into fantasy by being rooted in a corporation’s marketing strategy. Illusions and lies need not replace reality.

  I concluded that there are good myths and bad myths. Myths can be benign. They can emerge organically from shared lives, embody and preserve the ideals of that life, provide a yardstick with which to measure the shortcomings of reality, and, finally, help to bring reality more into line with the shared ideals. Or myths can be malignant. They can be imposed by the powerful to further their interests at the expense of everybody else’s. They can supplant reality. They can undermine the true bases of a shared life, leaving each of us on our own, frightened, compliant, craving entertainment, dying to consume. The absence of benign myths may result in an atomization of society. The presence of malignant ones do the same.

  I concluded that too many of the myths surrounding war are malignant.

  C. Wright Mills also helped me to appreciate the value of linking my biography to the structure and history of society. I could see that only under particular social and historical circumstances are females encouraged to excel academically and physically; or are allowed to enlist in the military, carry weapons, and be deployed to war zones. Only within a definite type of social environment are females subject to incessant harassment without any meaningful recourse. Only in certain times and places will a nation engage in a preemptive war or be able to transport a huge war machine across the globe. This perspective helped me to understand more clearly that when tens of thousands of veterans return home suffering from the same set of symptoms, the issues I am struggling with are not simply an individual problem of mine, with only individual causes and solutions; they are at the same time social in cause and resolution.

  I read and majored in psychology and learned that one of its most consistent findings is that, contrary to our common-sensical under standings, selfishness is correlated with unhappiness. When one considers the interests and feelings of others, and insists upon giving at least as much as she takes, she benefits. The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell helped me realize that self-discipline and self-control are undervalued virtues today and that unearned self-esteem and narcissism on the other hand leave their victims anxious and depressed. This is the dark side of unwarranted self-esteem. My reading consistently underscored the benefits of good counseling. From psychology I also became aware of the healing power of resilience as well as the necessity of good friendships, families, and communities to provide sustenance to resilience.

  I read philosophy and benefited so much from doing so that I minored in it. I sought answers to questions about morality and God and justice and happiness and forgiveness; I wanted to know what it is that makes a person or a society “good,” and what, if anything, comes after death. My journey took me to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, and St. Thomas Aquinas. When I stopped to rest and reflect, I could discern the commonalties among the best of the social scientists and philosophers, and was able to piece together a worldview of sorts, of which the following is a part.

  The close bonds and deep meaning that characterize a Marine platoon can be created in the wider social world, even if not so easily in our own. And, importantly, the conditions that foster closeness and meaning in the Marines needn’t be forced upon us. We can choose to be good based upon knowledge and truth, and upon freedom and choice. The traits that make a person “good”— knowledge and wisdom and courage and justice and honesty and humility and an ability to focus on what is important outside of oneself, among others—can be cultivated and used to make relationships and communities “good.” A good community in turn will encourage virtues and will promote sacrifice, and sacrifice will generate meaning and love, both of which will be all the sweeter because they are freely chosen. This is what I believe. This is my hope.

  This was taken inside the female tent in tent city at Camp TQ. Some of us were active duty Marines, some were Marine reservists, two of us were corpsmen, and one of us was an Army reservist. (Author collection)

  30

  Hope

  What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.

  —Emil Brunner

  After graduating I took some time off from school and briefly stayed with Miguel in Tucson. I soon returned home and enrolled in a four-year institution thirty miles from the community college to continue my education and rehabilitation. I majored in Psychology and minored in Philosophy, started running again and joined the college’s concert band. And I continued to encounter setbacks. If, despite my best efforts, a fellow student discovered I had been a Marine and in the war, they would ask what it was I did in Iraq. I could not answer. When they’d ask if I had killed anyone over there, I would not answer. The question was often accompanied by a hint of hopeful expectation that I had indeed taken a life, information they could later share with buddies over beer pong. “Dudes, listen to this: I know a chick who has killed someone!” One day in class a professor mentioned that American Marines are taught to “slaughter” other human beings, not bothering to explain himself and leaving implicit the notion that his assertion was fact, and that the victims were always total innocents, and that those who fought for other nations or groups were taught something different and more humane, and that there is no linguistic or moral distinction between killing and slaughtering, even though every dictionary lists as slaughter’s synonyms butcher, murder, and torture.

  I struggled to claw my way back to … back to what? Happiness? No. Normalcy? I didn’t think that was any longer possible. Sanity? Maybe. Functionality? Yes, I wanted to be able to function, to sleep and eat and work and, maybe, to one day laugh and love. When I founded a war vets discussion group on campus I sensed I was gaining a small degree of control over my life. When other vets opened up to me I felt the way I did two years earlier, in the waiting room of the VA hospital in Tucson when war-damaged men almost spontaneously disclosed their worst memories and deepest fears to me. In doing so, they made me feel a needed and useful part of a wider community.

  When my father and his new wife treated me to dinner the night before graduation, he asked about my future plans.

  “Graduate school,” I said. “Psychology. I’d like to become a counselor.”

  “Psychology? How will you make a living with psychology?”

  “I want to try to help out people if I can.”

  “Become a lawyer. You’ll get to help even more people.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s ninety percent of what a lawyer does—we counsel people, give them advice, help them out of jams. You can join my firm. In fact, I’ve already come up with a name for it. Goodell and …” He paused and glanced upward, as though he were retrieving the remainder of the firm’s name from his memory. “Goodell and … Goodell.”

  My progress is unsteady and slow but I experience glimmers of my life, as it was and as I would like it to be. I choose healthy relationships with good people. I try to give to others in a number of ways, including working with children d
uring the summer months, and volunteering at a local food bank and the VA hospital where I am treated. I am also a member of a group of veterans who work to help Iraqi refugees establish new lives in the Boston area, where I now live. In the hospital, with my fellow broken Marines, I revel in a surge of the camaraderie I knew in Iraq. In the apartment of a dislocated Iraqi family, as I sit at their kitchen table eating rice and chicken, I am overwhelmed by a sense of shame.

  To the best of my ability I practice the Marine code of honor in my daily life by being honest and hard-working and willing to sacrifice for those who share these fundamental truths. And on the good days, I feel a stirring inside, as the meaning and purpose and closeness and love I once thought dead show signs of life, after all. It is on these days that I am able to lighten the hue of so much I had shaded black. It is then that I am able to hope.