Chapter 91
A week at the motel turned into two, then three and four. Not because I couldn’t have moved on but because the place wound up being a triage setting where they moved those who could be called Wounded Warrior waited for their families. Or waited for VA-funded housing because they had no family, or no family able (willing) to take them in. I wasn’t there waiting; I had returned to my roots and was once again Queen of Crapwork. It was the only thing that helped me hang on to my sanity in the beginning.
You’d think with that many unemployed on the streets, finding maintenance and construction people would have been easy. It wasn’t. It didn’t matter than there was a hella lot of work that needed to be done. More cities than should have looked like the pictures in the history books of Germany after WW2. Most people couldn’t afford, or thought they couldn’t afford, to work for what the going rate for those gigs were. Wages were low but the cost of food and other things were climbing higher by the day. People made more taking federal and state unemployment assistance and living on similar types of programs than they could from regular employment. Those of us that started at the motel had the opposite problem. If we made too much we lost our assistance, or worse, our healthcare benefits.
I could have afforded to move out. I had spent very little of my military pay and it sat in a bank account waiting on me to figure out what to do with it all. I’d also gotten known as a bit of a gambler and on R-n-R I made a few bucks playing poker or pool rather than drinking at the bar. That life might have been over but I was still getting a regular check and the occasional hustle – small though they both were – for disability because of my work-related hearing deficit. I wasn’t deaf without my hearing aid but if you were talking to me on that side and wanted me to understand more than one word in three, you made sure I had it in. I could have jumped the line and gotten VA housing assistance if I wanted to. Separating as an officer afforded me some gravy other former-military members didn’t get. The damn medals I was dragging around like a ball and chain were a nuisance, but I learned to wear them to get done what I eventually wound up doing.
And what was that? Like I said, Queen of Crapwork. But I looked at the people around me, more challenged than I came out, and slowly an idea grew. I created work teams. Wasn’t much different than what I had done on the battlefield to be honest, just with fewer bombs and bullets going off. I’d seen action almost every day, we all had, but it was all part of what I was ordered to do. My primary field position had been building places like landing strips, clearing places for field hospitals to set up, making sure that bridges could be crossed by equipment and personnel or rigging up defenses so none of the above could be used by the enemy. I knew as many ways to create a pothole as I did to repair one, as many ways to take down an airplane as I did to get one down safely, as many ways to turn a bridge into a death trap as I did to make it safe for our people to use.
Not everyone in my first couple of crews could work regular hours so I left those shifts to others and bid on work that was easier for my people to deal with, and gave them time to learn the skills they would use. Most of them needed their space and couldn’t abide crowds so night work was perfect. Some of them couldn’t handle the dark so I purchased the best LED lanterns and lights I could afford. Those that were affected by loud noises I bought sound filtering headphones. Sure, it ate into the profits up front, but I wasn’t hurting, at least not financially.
Some of my people were just too damaged and I found them places to live and did my best to make it among people that understood their kind of damage and helped keep them off the street. That could mean rehab or therapy or just a group home with someone that took care of the minutiae so they could focus on not wanting to eat a bullet. I’m not God, I couldn’t save everyone. But, I did do what I could. Sometimes that’s all you can do to stop wanting to eat a bullet.
In twelve months I had twelve crews of Wounded Warriors. I tried to mix it up so that there was a balance of physical capabilities and made sure the foreman in charge of each crew shared the same experiences at the people underneath them … but I also made sure they took classes so that they wouldn’t wind up with caregiver burnout or quit because of some other stressor, their own or those created by their crew or the customers we served.
The main job I took on for myself that year was fronting the money, finding the work, and running interference with people that grew jealous because I managed to swing some extra perks, get some sweet contracts, that were out of reach of others in the same field. It meant using the skills I’d learned while on the battlefield. I learned to be whoever I needed to be to get a job done. If I had to be a hardass, you better believe I could do it. If I needed to speak technical jargon and supplies and logistics I could do that too. My least favorite in the beginning was being a “professional fem” that could walk into a boardroom, give a presentation, and walk out all the while smoothing the way with southern charm. I was sister, granny, mother, nun … the one thing I never did was play girlfriend or wife. I didn’t flirt. I didn’t play coy. When I dressed female it wasn’t to attract attention to any asset other than the ones inside my skull.
I always denied having a broken heart because I didn’t. Truthfully I sometimes wonder if I have one anymore. Oh I’m not so stupid as to see that what I’ve built, what I do day in and day out, hasn’t got some heart in it. It does. A lot of it. I just don’t think I have that kind of heart any longer. See my hearing wasn’t the only problem that I left the military with.
I’ve learned to live with the cold sweats that come in the middle of the night after waking up from a dream I feel blessed to not remember. I’ve learned to not automatically grab the ghost of a rifle that was once so much a part of who I became. I’ve learned to speak without every other word being an acronym though I still fall back into that habit on occasion. I’ve learned a lot of ways to cope with and hide the leftovers from the life I led during the years I grew up. But it doesn’t change the fact that I have memories I wish I didn’t. It doesn’t change the dreams those memories create. And it doesn’t change that I can no longer get close to people. To do so makes me have the sweats so bad I start shaking and generally wind up with a migraine from hell for a couple of days.
Oh I know what the cause is. Watching too many of my buddies get blown up, men under my command die because I had to give them shit orders from higher up the chain, has left a mark. Seeing the decaying corpses of things that used to be people, knowing that some that were still on this earth would be leaving it sooner no matter what I did, has left a mark. Seeing the bloated bellies of starving kids, knowing that I could feed them one meal from my own personal rations and they’d still die of something before the war was over, left a mark. Looking into the hollow and near soulless eyes of women that had suffered painfully just because they were female and handy had left a mark. Seeing the burns, amputations, radiation sickness, pock marks of disease, and all the other horrors the war created, has left a mark on me.
I know, trust me I know even without the blasted therapy, that what I’m doing is just a form of self-defense. That it is nearly at the level of being self-medicating. I can’t seem to take the risk of getting close to someone only to have something bad happen to them and not be able to do a damn thing to stop it. I know I’m not the Empress of the Universe. Some of this stuff just isn’t my job to handle. But God help me, there is still a solid wall of Carbon Fiber around my heart … or where my heart used to be. My last therapist asked me what I was so afraid of. I told him I was afraid that if I did manage to tear down the wall, I’d find there wasn’t anything left to defend and even my fear was nothing but an illusion.
I left his office and haven’t been back to see another one since. I had a few suggest medication. No. It would interfere with the one thing that brought me pleasure. Work. Work not just for myself, to give myself value. Work so that the men and women in my crews could feel of value. We weren’t just thrown to the side, it’s not like for the men and women of wars past. It’s been two years since the final Peace Treaty was signed and there are still people that go out of their way to come up and say, “Thank you for your service.” There’s also the ones that burst into tears and have to tell the story of the last time they got a letter from their son or daughter or husband or wife … sister, brother. They want to give us a hug as a way to honor and remember the warrior they lost. This war has touched everyone. There isn’t a single country that didn’t have to fight battles on their own soil. As awful as that sounds it might be a good thing. Now everyone understands what it means to have skin in the game. Some of us just have less skin than others now the game was over.
A week at the motel turned into two, then three and four. Not because I couldn’t have moved on but because the place wound up being a triage setting where they moved those who could be called Wounded Warrior waited for their families. Or waited for VA-funded housing because they had no family, or no family able (willing) to take them in. I wasn’t there waiting; I had returned to my roots and was once again Queen of Crapwork. It was the only thing that helped me hang on to my sanity in the beginning.
You’d think with that many unemployed on the streets, finding maintenance and construction people would have been easy. It wasn’t. It didn’t matter than there was a hella lot of work that needed to be done. More cities than should have looked like the pictures in the history books of Germany after WW2. Most people couldn’t afford, or thought they couldn’t afford, to work for what the going rate for those gigs were. Wages were low but the cost of food and other things were climbing higher by the day. People made more taking federal and state unemployment assistance and living on similar types of programs than they could from regular employment. Those of us that started at the motel had the opposite problem. If we made too much we lost our assistance, or worse, our healthcare benefits.
I could have afforded to move out. I had spent very little of my military pay and it sat in a bank account waiting on me to figure out what to do with it all. I’d also gotten known as a bit of a gambler and on R-n-R I made a few bucks playing poker or pool rather than drinking at the bar. That life might have been over but I was still getting a regular check and the occasional hustle – small though they both were – for disability because of my work-related hearing deficit. I wasn’t deaf without my hearing aid but if you were talking to me on that side and wanted me to understand more than one word in three, you made sure I had it in. I could have jumped the line and gotten VA housing assistance if I wanted to. Separating as an officer afforded me some gravy other former-military members didn’t get. The damn medals I was dragging around like a ball and chain were a nuisance, but I learned to wear them to get done what I eventually wound up doing.
And what was that? Like I said, Queen of Crapwork. But I looked at the people around me, more challenged than I came out, and slowly an idea grew. I created work teams. Wasn’t much different than what I had done on the battlefield to be honest, just with fewer bombs and bullets going off. I’d seen action almost every day, we all had, but it was all part of what I was ordered to do. My primary field position had been building places like landing strips, clearing places for field hospitals to set up, making sure that bridges could be crossed by equipment and personnel or rigging up defenses so none of the above could be used by the enemy. I knew as many ways to create a pothole as I did to repair one, as many ways to take down an airplane as I did to get one down safely, as many ways to turn a bridge into a death trap as I did to make it safe for our people to use.
Not everyone in my first couple of crews could work regular hours so I left those shifts to others and bid on work that was easier for my people to deal with, and gave them time to learn the skills they would use. Most of them needed their space and couldn’t abide crowds so night work was perfect. Some of them couldn’t handle the dark so I purchased the best LED lanterns and lights I could afford. Those that were affected by loud noises I bought sound filtering headphones. Sure, it ate into the profits up front, but I wasn’t hurting, at least not financially.
Some of my people were just too damaged and I found them places to live and did my best to make it among people that understood their kind of damage and helped keep them off the street. That could mean rehab or therapy or just a group home with someone that took care of the minutiae so they could focus on not wanting to eat a bullet. I’m not God, I couldn’t save everyone. But, I did do what I could. Sometimes that’s all you can do to stop wanting to eat a bullet.
In twelve months I had twelve crews of Wounded Warriors. I tried to mix it up so that there was a balance of physical capabilities and made sure the foreman in charge of each crew shared the same experiences at the people underneath them … but I also made sure they took classes so that they wouldn’t wind up with caregiver burnout or quit because of some other stressor, their own or those created by their crew or the customers we served.
The main job I took on for myself that year was fronting the money, finding the work, and running interference with people that grew jealous because I managed to swing some extra perks, get some sweet contracts, that were out of reach of others in the same field. It meant using the skills I’d learned while on the battlefield. I learned to be whoever I needed to be to get a job done. If I had to be a hardass, you better believe I could do it. If I needed to speak technical jargon and supplies and logistics I could do that too. My least favorite in the beginning was being a “professional fem” that could walk into a boardroom, give a presentation, and walk out all the while smoothing the way with southern charm. I was sister, granny, mother, nun … the one thing I never did was play girlfriend or wife. I didn’t flirt. I didn’t play coy. When I dressed female it wasn’t to attract attention to any asset other than the ones inside my skull.
I always denied having a broken heart because I didn’t. Truthfully I sometimes wonder if I have one anymore. Oh I’m not so stupid as to see that what I’ve built, what I do day in and day out, hasn’t got some heart in it. It does. A lot of it. I just don’t think I have that kind of heart any longer. See my hearing wasn’t the only problem that I left the military with.
I’ve learned to live with the cold sweats that come in the middle of the night after waking up from a dream I feel blessed to not remember. I’ve learned to not automatically grab the ghost of a rifle that was once so much a part of who I became. I’ve learned to speak without every other word being an acronym though I still fall back into that habit on occasion. I’ve learned a lot of ways to cope with and hide the leftovers from the life I led during the years I grew up. But it doesn’t change the fact that I have memories I wish I didn’t. It doesn’t change the dreams those memories create. And it doesn’t change that I can no longer get close to people. To do so makes me have the sweats so bad I start shaking and generally wind up with a migraine from hell for a couple of days.
Oh I know what the cause is. Watching too many of my buddies get blown up, men under my command die because I had to give them shit orders from higher up the chain, has left a mark. Seeing the decaying corpses of things that used to be people, knowing that some that were still on this earth would be leaving it sooner no matter what I did, has left a mark. Seeing the bloated bellies of starving kids, knowing that I could feed them one meal from my own personal rations and they’d still die of something before the war was over, left a mark. Looking into the hollow and near soulless eyes of women that had suffered painfully just because they were female and handy had left a mark. Seeing the burns, amputations, radiation sickness, pock marks of disease, and all the other horrors the war created, has left a mark on me.
I know, trust me I know even without the blasted therapy, that what I’m doing is just a form of self-defense. That it is nearly at the level of being self-medicating. I can’t seem to take the risk of getting close to someone only to have something bad happen to them and not be able to do a damn thing to stop it. I know I’m not the Empress of the Universe. Some of this stuff just isn’t my job to handle. But God help me, there is still a solid wall of Carbon Fiber around my heart … or where my heart used to be. My last therapist asked me what I was so afraid of. I told him I was afraid that if I did manage to tear down the wall, I’d find there wasn’t anything left to defend and even my fear was nothing but an illusion.
I left his office and haven’t been back to see another one since. I had a few suggest medication. No. It would interfere with the one thing that brought me pleasure. Work. Work not just for myself, to give myself value. Work so that the men and women in my crews could feel of value. We weren’t just thrown to the side, it’s not like for the men and women of wars past. It’s been two years since the final Peace Treaty was signed and there are still people that go out of their way to come up and say, “Thank you for your service.” There’s also the ones that burst into tears and have to tell the story of the last time they got a letter from their son or daughter or husband or wife … sister, brother. They want to give us a hug as a way to honor and remember the warrior they lost. This war has touched everyone. There isn’t a single country that didn’t have to fight battles on their own soil. As awful as that sounds it might be a good thing. Now everyone understands what it means to have skin in the game. Some of us just have less skin than others now the game was over.
. 
thank you.
