I would have to say that, as all people, originally my Morals, Ethics and Values, hereafter referenced as MEV, were shaped by my family and my upbringing. I was raised in a military family, both parents eventually retired from the Navy, so they had a pretty good sense of what were good MEV’s instilled from their service. We went to church most every Sunday when I was younger, and even went to a private Christian school once we were stateside for a few years. The basic MEV’s we were taught, even prior to church, were similar to the 10 commandments. Obviously church and its school reinforced those MEV’s.
As life progressed and I became a bit more rebellious as a teenager, I did what most kids do and began to turn away from those MEV’s not wanting to be anything like my parents. I wanted to be my own person. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t kill anyone, or “covet my neighbor’s wife,” but I did start slacking on treating others with respect and the way I would want to be treated. But being a teenager and thinking you know it all never really seems to work out for anyone, including myself, and soon I found myself in constant trouble ranging from reckless driving to possession and paraphernalia charges.
I spent a bit of time in and out of jail from the time I was 18 to 21 until ultimately something just clicked. It wasn’t like a spiritual awakening, more like an epiphany. That if I didn’t change my life, and change it quickly, I was going to spend most of my life behind bars for immature and easily avoidable mistakes. So when I came out of jail for the last time, I had decided to join the military, because who else can change everything about a person? While going through the recruitment process I was forced to take responsibility and own all of my past mistakes, and to do so in writing. Really made me think about what kind of person I was, and it wasn’t someone I liked. 6 months later I was on a bus to Parris Island to try and become a Marine, and hopefully in the process, a better me.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was wholly different from what I was used to in life. Not in a good way and not in a bad way, just completely different. A lot changed for me in those 3 months. I changed a lot in those 3 months. I now had something worth being better for. And it wasn’t just me, or people I knew back home, or my parents. It was the Corps. A fraternity. A brotherhood. A kinship of people who all went through the same trials and tribulations as myself and someone for whom I would do anything to assist.
Soon after I found myself on Camp Pendleton, California. Land of the gold and honey. Beautiful beaches, beautiful women and beautiful weather. Here I was, a man amongst men (and women), someone who had been nothing and now was something. So what now were my MEV’s? Here I am, in Southern California, a single man with no responsibilities outside of the Corps. No family of my own for hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. I would have to say, honestly, that my MEV’s were in a pretty constant state of formulation at this point. I’m 23, and I am trying to figure out who and what I want to be 4 years from now. The decisions I make now will be the most important as they can shape the rest of my life. So I did what all new guys in the Marine Corps do who are single and living in the barracks, I got married to my high school sweetheart.
This was by far the toughest 8 months of my life. Here was a woman that I had loved since I was 15 years old, had lost when I was 17, and found again when I was 22. She had been married in that time, and had a son, and then had been divorced from a douchebag wife beating husband. So I went from single man, to married and step dad so quick I couldn’t even turn my head fast enough to see the oncoming train. I didn’t know what kind of husband or father I would be, just that I didn’t want to be like mine. (He wasn’t bad or abusive, just not really present as far as being involved goes.) But what do I know, I’ve never had the example to show me the way, and I’ve never had any experience in this situation. Needless to say, my way did not align with her way, and many arguments ensued.
So what do 20 somethings with marital problems do? They volunteer to go to combat. Yeah, because distance helps with all problems. What the hell did I know? So here I am, sitting in the desert of 29 Palms doing some pre-deployment training, with nothing but time to contemplate.
And it’s at this point in my life that my current and future MEV’s begin to take place. I decided at this point that I would no longer let anger control my actions or my words. That I would no longer also hide what my true thoughts are. That if someone didn’t accept or like me for me, then I don’t need or want them in my life. That above all else, respect for myself came before respect for others, but that respect for them was required if it were to be reciprocated. But that when it comes to family, and the ones you love, you are willing to sacrifice everything you think is important or that you need in order to keep them in your life and to be happy, because they are truly what is important and what you need.
I came home from that training exercise, ready and willing to make things work, to tell my wife of my inner thoughts and what I had come to realize. I came home to nothing. I was too late, she was already gone. I was upset, hurt, broken hearted. But I understood. 3 weeks later I was on an airplane headed for the glorious waterless beaches of Iraq.
I have said before, and will say again for all time, that deployment was the best thing that could have happened at my time. It forced me to move past my pain and emotions, because I had other people who needed me at that time. There would be a time and place to reflect on relationships, but war was not it. We were on a constant rotation, day in, day out, sometimes days at a time with little to no sleep, but always at 100% because your brother and sister next to you demanded it, and you demanded it of them.
I found time each night and day to read the bible, and over those 7 months I must have read it twice from cover to cover. I was searching, praying, hoping, to find answers for the questions and situations I was confronting daily.
I never found them in that book.
I never found them through prayer or through some voice speaking to me.
We all returned in September of 2008, but all of us left something there. Some of us left blood, some of us left hope, some of us left a piece of our security, some of us left our religion. But for everything that was left behind, something else was brought back. For some it was honor, some it was anxiety, some it was sleeplessness, and some it was an aching desire to hide.
Soon after returning I was back to being single, had no idea where my wife was as we hadn’t spoken in 9 months. I wasn’t looking for her either. I didn’t want to dig back into that hole. She had moved on, and so should I. It was at this point in my life that I found sleep eluded me, and alcohol helped dull the mind and put me to sleep. That panic attacks would strike at random in public and crowded places, and alcohol would helped dull the mind and put me to ease. That the only people I felt safe with were the people I had just spent 8 months living with, and that they too found alcohol to help dull the mind and make their problems bearable. So I moved in with 2 of them for a year.
In November of 2008, a friend of mine invited me to Vegas for the weekend, and I figured why not. I have family there that I can spend some time with as well. That friend introduced me to my current love. It was a textbook whirlwind romance from the start. For me, it was a breath of fresh air. She didn’t care about my past, what I had done, or who I had been. Just who I was in the here and now. 80 days after meeting, we started dating. 6 months later she moved in with me. Another 8 months and my whole life, and what I thought was important, changed again. She was pregnant.
Problem is, I was still technically married. Even though I fell under the abandonment statutes, I couldn’t get married again until my first one was dissolved. Took a few months, and some money, but finally I was able to marry the real love of my life. But it was also at this point that I first acknowledged I had a problem with alcohol.
But I had convinced myself it wasn’t really the alcohol, just liquor. So on February 4th, 2010, I stopped drinking liquor and soda (because you can’t have a cola without rum) and I picked up beer. I can say that the person I am when drinking liquor is a different person than the person I am when drinking beer. Not sure I will ever understand why that is, but it is, and I did know that the liquor Me was not good for a family.
Two months later and I found myself going TAD to school, to train for a new job in the Corps. One that had piqued my interests and I found fascinating and enjoyable. The school had left me to my own devices, in a barracks full of Army MP’s who, for some reason or another, partied harder than any group of people I had ever met. Every night there was a cookout in the quad and the alcohol and drinking games flowed from what seemed like a never ending case of beer. I fit right in. I was able to drink to my fill with no real responsibilities because they were 3,000 miles away. All I had to do was get up each morning and go to class. Easy.
2 months into the school and I was notified that I was going to deploy again, this time to Afghanistan, at the completion of my school. I was excited, nervous and unsure all at the same time. What would I do about my soon to be family? How would I be able to take care of them if I’m on the other side of the world? Would I even be there to see my first child be born? Stress. More than I had ever really encountered head on.
Stress in combat was easy to handle compared to this, I thought. You knew what you had to do, the mission laid it out for you. The objective was clear. This stress was unknown territory. It required me to set the mission, to set the objective, to know what to do. The stress weighed down on me every day, but every night it was removed with the answer in a bottle, and that answer was readily available. Ultimately, that answer led to some other personal problems at that school that took me years to get figured out, but for the time being I had gone with the easy answer.
Fortunately the stress I put on myself turned out to be far less than warranted. My wife was going to live with our family in Vegas. Between my dad and her parents, she had a place to live. A way to get to the doctors if needed. And after talking to my deploying command’s Sergeant’s Major, I was able to delay my departure for a week so I could be home to see my first son born. I was elated. 7 days later, I was on a plane headed to giant kitty litter box of Afghanistan.
Soon after arriving, the problems of the previous deployment crept into bed with me. Without alcohol there was no dulling of the mind. Without the dulling, there was no sleep for days on end. I finally hit a wall and collapsed from exhaustion. I slept for 16 straight hours and was unable to be woken. I was sent to mental health for evaluation and treatment. They gave me lunesta, which I still take to this day. While it works, it doesn’t work well enough. Even after taking it, I won’t fall asleep for 7 or 8 hours, long after the pill has worn off.
But I survived this deployment much the same as the first. And this time I had something to look forward to in returning home. I will never be able to fully explain the feeling of coming home to someone who has never experienced it, but in a sense it’s simply overwhelming and rarely meets your own unrealistic expectations. We, who have just spent 8 months thinking about coming home, have built up ideas in our minds of how things will be and how our loved ones are, and none of them realistic. How can they be? We aren’t there to see the developments of their 8 months without us, only in photo’s, letters and emails. None of which do it justice.
Don’t think that my previous words say that I wasn’t happy to be home and with the ones I loved, because I was. There probably wasn’t anyone on the planet happier than myself in those days. Just that even though I was happy, there were the undertones of self-disappointment that I think all returning veterans have felt. But we carried on with our lives, and I loved being a dad, more than anything I had ever loved before. Nothing in this world, I thought, will ever come between me and my family. Every decision, financially and professionally, I made from that point must be to better my ability to provide for my family.
We bought a house far away from the base. In a good neighborhood, with good schools and good people. I sacrificed time with them, time I spent driving to and from work, to provide a safe home far away from the troubles that plague neighborhoods surrounding all military installations. Life was good. Fast forward 6 months and another surprise smacked us in the face, we were going to have another child. We had never planned on having one, and we certainly never planned on having two, but when you do nothing to prevent it I suppose it’s bound to happen. Once again, I was elated, overjoyed and suddenly scared shitless. Who wouldn’t be?
But life was good. Our second son was born and life carried on. Now I get to be that proud father times two. And now more than ever, every decision I make affects them. Everything I do in life has to be for them.
Fast forward to now and I am still making all of my decisions based on how it will affect them. So how did my MEV’s come to be? Through experience, pain, love, heartache, joy and ultimately, being a father. My family is my only reason for being.
The Marine Corps can replace me in a day.
The world doesn’t know I exist.
But to my family, I am someone that can never be replaced. And to me, they can never be replaced. They are my all and my everything. And as long as I have them there to support me, how can I truly fail?
So what are my morals? It’s simple now, if I wouldn’t want it to happen to my family, don’t do it to anyone else.
So what are my ethics? It’s simple now, if it doesn’t affect me personally, professionally or financially, it’s not my business. And if it does affect one of those, if it’s not to make any of them better without sacrificing another, then it’s not for me, nor would I do it to anyone else.
So what are my values? I have 3. Clara, Zach and Daniel. Those I will never sacrifice for anyone or for any cause.
To the second topic of this essay, how will I use them for recovery? That has been the easiest answer since I realized I needed recovery. As soon as I realized that alcohol, and my inability to control my limits, affected me personally, professionally and financially, it became a moot subject. I no longer wish nor want to drink. Sure, there are urges or cravings when I see it. But all I do is think about my family, my core, and they all go away. Nothing will ever get in the way of my ability to properly care for my family again.
Alcohol does not have power over me, and I am far from powerless. With my family at my side, there is no adversity that my mind and body can not overcome.
My Higher Power is my Love for my family, and the knowledge that they love me as well.
