Where do I begin?

I’ve honestly been thinking about this since early this past summer. When it is time, I wondered, where will I begin?

Do I begin the first time I had the choice to crumble or rise, during the 4 hour long car ride to Las Vegas with two of my childhood best friends, that came to keep me company and have some good quality girl time during the deployment? Halfway into the desert I got the call; “I’m fine. If they call you, don’t worry, I’m fine.” They never called and he was not fine. And we drove on, because what was I going to do but wait until the phone rang again. There would be two more incidents that I should have received a phone call about, should have, thanks for the heads up, not that it would matter except maybe I would’ve realized how much he was hiding from me a lot sooner.

Maybe I should start with the paper towels and how there being one left on the roll set him off in such a way that it made me fear for his mental health. It was a little over a year after homecoming, I had been working full time, odd retail hours, until our daughter was born. I didn’t notice before. We were like ships passing in the night and he was a good secret keeper. But not that evening. I was officially worried but didn’t let it all show. We had a newborn. I was up all hours and so was he, but not because of her, the temper was shorter every day, and the last paper towel on the roll and the kitchen counter bore the brunt that day. In the weeks that followed, I would learn about all kinds of “incidents,” moments that were punctuated with blinding migraines, blacking out and fainting during PT, and memory loss that he was no longer able to hide from his peers.  I sat in a conference room at an outpatient Traumatic Brain Injury Program listening to the mile long list of symptoms, holding my composure, vacillating inside between anger and fear, but only showing resolve. What else was I to do? Someone had to keep it together, to be the cheerleader, to hold the hope.

If I could tell you when the drinking became a problem I might start there, but I can’t so I won’t even try.

It was a storm of things, a shit soup for lack of any more accurate or appropriate terms. A career Marine, recovering from 3 separate Grade III concussions, a severe PTSD diagnosis, still widely considered a kiss of death back then, and turns out, a penchant for alcohol abuse, an addict. His career was done the minute treatment began and he had to let people in to see what was happening. He would never deploy again, he would never return to the fleet, but he would return to the desert thousands of times over the course of the next decade, until he lost himself for good.

Maybe there isn’t one starting point to this story and maybe I need to just give up that neat and tidy idea that to every work there is a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe sometimes when it feels like a lot of heavy, mucky middle ground, its because it is.

What I do know is that what happened here over the last decade had been the slowest form of death I think I can imagine. It was the kind that holds the capacity to take out every one around it, like a plague. It attempted to dismantle us all piece by piece, it was relentless, and I often felt like I would drown in the chaos of it, or worse. Sometimes I look back and wonder how any of us managed to make it out alive and then I am reminded of a passage from Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.” It’s a memoir, a recollection of his time in Nazi death camps and what he, as a Psychiatrist observed and learned from his fellow prisoners. In it he says this:

“…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way….

Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp…that last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom- which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

Can I be as frank as Frankl here? You have the choice. Always. No ifs, ands, or buts.

I can pretty much guarantee none of us have lived through as horrific conditions as he and the few thousand other surviving prisoners did. Even so, many of us are running around frantic and flailing, rueing all of our days and acting as if we have it the worst of anyone ever. And all along, we each have the choice to see our circumstances for what they really are and retain our freedom or to give it away.

Here’s what I did. I kept my freedom. There were days and periods that I could’ve lost it all, literally. It was so bad at some points that people actually  feared for my life and I am so sorry that I kept myself in a position that caused my loved ones to worry to that degree. I missed it at the time; sure I was afraid sometimes, and I certainly had cause to be a frantic, fearful mess, but for me, there was no way I was going out like that and so I didn’t. I never purposely tried to minimize when things were at their worst, though I am sure it seemed that way to some, rather I was simply maintaining my ability to write MY story and to see the events unfold MY way, rather than be swept permanently into the vortex as it slowly spiraled down the drain.

I chose freedom, despite the circumstances beyond my control.

I chose freedom, even when I felt like a prisoner in my own life.

I chose freedom, so that my kids would survive with the least scars possible.

I chose freedom, because it is the only way any of us makes it out of this thing called life alive.

I chose freedom and it was sometimes hard, because the world told me I should have been acting more like a victim, I should have crumbled under the weight, but I chose different, and now the dividends are paying off in a huge way.