So I’m wide awake at 2:30am here in Maine. Now is the time to share my story…
I joined the Navy at 18… I thought I was so street smart and worldly but it turns out I was just another youngster filled with hope for a good future and optimistic about love and life. I really didn’t know squat about the dark side of life beyond the heartache of unrequited teenage love. Well the recruiters basically all tried to get in your pants. They assessed a females “ body language” to ascertain if she was “ willing”. I couldn’t believe it. It was evidently a game to them.
Moving right along, I got stationed in Puerto Rico. One night after being there, about a year there, was a Military exercise happening off the Coast of PR. There was an aircraft carrier off shore and support ships for the exercise. An aircraft carrier total population numbers in the thousands. So, that particular night there were a few thousand sailors on the prowl at Roosy Rds on liberty. Several sailors including myself were holed up in the room adjacent to mine. We were all playing cards, drinking alcohol, and trying to drown out the literal begging we heard coming from the other side of the door in the lounge area….
“C’mon girls, we hard up, we’ve been out to sea for a week “… their begging and imploring went on for hours… well into the early morning hours and well past the 11pm curfew. Shore patrol never came into the common lounge area and cleared them out. Finally, after a fifth of Jack Daniels in me, I made it the 3 feet distance back to my own barracks room. I made the mistake of leaving the light on. My roommate did not return. The barracks rooms had no air conditioning. All I covered up in was a sheet due to the heat. Thank God something made me wake up. When I did wake up… from a deep alcohol induced slumber… there was a sailor off one of the ships on his knees between my legs with what looked to be a foot long erection looking me in the face. He had managed to get my panties down around my ankles before I awoke. I immediately snatched up the sheet up around my chest. Meanwhile he started bragging… I can still hear his voice, his tone, his words 43 years later. He said in a long drawl… ”You mean to tell me you don’t want a six foot five, 250 pound man to make LOVE to you?” At the time I was 5’6”, 150. He had almost a foot and 100 pounds on me… I bitched him off me… looking back I think the fact that I was still inebriated actually was in my favor. I decided in a nano second he was going to have to kill me rather than give in to a rapist.
It’s quite one thing to “give it away” mutually and consensually rather than someone think they have the right to force themselves on you… I told people… a Navy counselor said… ”You need to stop looking at the world through rose colored glasses…..in other words, shit happens, accept it…..what a bullshit diagnosis of my full fledged trauma. The “ enemy” isn’t supposed to be wearing the same uniform. The “ enemy” isn’t suppose to be a “ teamate “… that happened around April/May 1980.
Fast forward to 1998. I now have been living in Maine since 1981 when I transferred from Puerto Rico here. I fell in love with and married a combat Vietnam Veteran. I felt safe and loved. I felt NOBODY could get through him to hurt me or our eventual 8 children, his 3 from a former marriage and our 5 we had together. The first years were quite happy but you know, you can’t change the spots on a dog… things began to unravel over the years.
He refused to get help through the government from his own military trauma. Money was extremely tight. We built our own home in 21 days with nothing but a chainsaw, level, and square. We lived with no running water for seven years and no electricity for three. My property is remote and not many neighbors. Just the way a physiologically wounded Vietnam veteran lined it. My nearest relative was 300 miles away. I had reached a rather high enlisted rank over the years because by the grace of GOD I had managed to keep my foot in the door by remaining in the Naval Reserves. The Reserve Center got with us around 95’ and said… we have extra funding available if any of you can get gainfully employed at a base for six months we will pay your wage… so, despite being terrified to attempt to go back and fill the shoes of a Navy Chief as a part timer standing tall amongst very professional full time Navy, I knew what I had to do. I went back to the base and asked them if they needed a “free” Chief for six months… well that was the beginning of the end of our marriage. He refused to seek help… refused… as a matter of fact he never had listened to me our entire 18 years together… he began to get very very jealous as I was reconnecting with Navy friends and Civilians I had known 15 years prior.
At the time I did not KNOW that I had PTSD from the attempted rape in Roosy. Things were not good here at home… my two stepdaughters had lost their children to the State of Maine DHHS… it was expected of me to take on all these additional lives… on $12,000 a year… 4 more kids…
I reluctantly signed to take them on at least temporarily DESPITE knowing how hard and bad things were getting… so one day, my very jealous husband decided to tell the 9 children to stay upstairs… he proceeded to reposition his recliner in the living room trapping me in there with him. He blocked the door… and accused me of an affair… which had not happened but it was his own guilty conscience because he had had affairs… anyway he wasn’t letting me out of the room until I “told him what was going on at the base”… I said. “I have feelings for someone“….he said, How far has it gone! I said…..nothing… he hugged me when my Dad died…(truth).
I knew in that instance my heavily one-sided marriage was over. I had to save the kids somehow from his detrimental actions and thought process… we also had three relatives die in ’98, my Dad and his Mother and Uncle… we divorced… he proceeded to brainwash my oldest, Celeste who was just 12 at the time… he separated her off from her four bio siblings and continued to WITHHOLD her from me for THREE YEARS against the court order. He wanted to punish me for divorcing him… and after all that he finally was diagnosed with his own PTSD… he could have received the help years before but he refused.
Anyway all this happened 23 years or more ago now. The local domestic violence people said it was one of the worst cases of mental abuse they had ever heard of. The corrupt local court system at the time was run by a documented misogynistic District Attorney… hated women… the Judge awarded me a whopping sum of $45/week total for 4 kids, and awarded him $160/week for 1… honestly I don’t know how we made it through to this point. I’ve had four nervous breakdowns and been hospitalized for them. I’ve been suicidal. I wanted to check out… was sitting in the shower stall at the VA hospital wrapping my pocket book strap around my neck and twisting it as tight as I could, my lips turned blue… but ultimately I could not do that to my beautiful and precious children… they took my shoelaces… and I’m still here to tell my story.
I’ve learned a lot along the way… My ex is dead now… bad bike crash, lost a lower leg, lived in a hospital bed for seven years. Karma got him. I looked deep, very very deep into why he was the way he was… and for the most part was able to forgive him and understand he was a very unwell individual. As for the sailors, (I forgot to mention that bastard had a second guy standing guard by the door to my barracks room), I don’t know what happened to them but suspect they were just given a slap on the wrist because you know, “boys will be boys”. Today I attend church regularly and have spent many years now in group counseling and multi modal therapies to address my complex PTSD. I found forgiveness somehow… for them but more importantly for myself. Despite everything I am here to tell the tale. I hope my story helps someone out there heal.
