I spent seven years in the military and whenever I meet other veterans it comes up like, did
you go to combat zone, did you go to the desert, and I say, no, there's just a look they give
me that kind of signifies that they've been somewhere seeing something more than I've
ever seen and that I just want to understand.
What I'd like to say to them is I feel the same way.
I have been through something.
I loved it.
I loved boot camp.
Our drill sergeants were exceptional.
They really helped us succeed.
After boot camp I went for a professional training.
There were at least 300 trainees in my battalion and only 13 of us were women.
This group would be my new family for the next 16 weeks.
On the second week, around 12.30 that night, I woke up with a start.
I could feel the heat of a person's skin inches away from my face.
All I could see were a pair of eyes and a drill sergeant's hat.
Then he said, while you're here in training, I can make it easier for you.
He started stroking my hair and telling me that I had lovely eyes.
As he was saying this, his hand went from my hair down to my shoulders.
You don't have to be super bright to understand what that means.
Then he said, do you want the easy way or do you want the hard way?
The thing was, it wasn't just with one of them.
Whoever was on duty is who they wanted you to do something sexual with.
So I chose the harder way.
Come on, let's go.
Get up.
They would wake me up and they'd have me do squares, which meant I took my toothbrush
and I had to clean up the lint of every crack on all four sides of every square and every
hallway.
It's an impossible task.
They're turning on the futility of the task that they give you to also be part of the
weapon that helps beat you down.
Then their other favorite thing was called drill and ceremonies, where I had to go up
and down every floor and collect all the garbage cans, scrub them out, dry them out, polish
them, have them be dressed right to dress, which was tallest to smallest.
Holy Jesus, what is that?
They'd give me about an hour and a half of sleep every night.
After like two, three weeks of that, I couldn't even stay awake during the day, so they kept
trying to get me out on failure to adapt to a military lifestyle slash narcolepsy.
So then at that point, I had to be top of my class.
I just, I couldn't let them win.
Even when I did give in, it didn't stop because at that point they were angry and it was exactly
like being in a box with a lion.
You're trapped, they control your phone, your privacy, your mail.
All I could do was go corner to corner, and I'd like to say that once I did graduate that
it stopped, but it was the beginning of a long series of harassment.
It was nonstop.
If you look at me one way, it doesn't look like I have anything missing, but if you put
on the sexual harassment night vision goggles, you would see hacked off pieces.
The length of time that it went on, they just took huge chunks out of my body.
I know how it feels to be so pieced out and like you'll never get any of that back.
So I guess when they say things like, oh you haven't been combat, I just wish we could
understand each other because I really feel like I was.
