My Mess Is My Message

Content Notice: This story contains references to Suicide and Sexual Assault.

I hit rock bottom when I retired from the Army much earlier than expected. I was first commissioned into the United States Army when I was 23-years-old. After giving 17 years and four months of my life to the only career I had ever known, I did not know who I was without the uniform, title or rank. I was lost. I felt like I had no identity. I spent all those years as the person that I was supposed to be. Who was I now?

Being raised by my mother in the 1980s, I was taught to never show emotion or speak about my feelings. Unless I was bleeding or had fractured a bone, I had to get up and drive on. I carried that mentality with me all throughout my teenage and adult years. Maybe it was my family’s Hispanic culture. Maybe it was the way my mother was raised. I was not quite sure, but this mentality is what framed me into who I thought I was supposed to be.

I carried childhood and adulthood trauma with me for over 30 years. At the age of ten, I was sexually assaulted by my best friend’s father. I was also sexually assaulted during my first year of being introduced into the military. I will never know why that happened because I have chosen not to go back and confront my assailants.

Because I was not taught to speak my truth, I hid my feelings. As a female senior leader, I did not speak up or get counseling because I did not want to be judged or be seen as weak by my male peers or leaders. Speaking up could have resulted in me being moved to another duty assignment or lose my security clearance and I was not willing to risk that. I did not want this to affect my career so I learned how to fight through it until I could fight no more. I was so good at suppressing all of my emotional and physical trauma that I did not know who I was behind all of the masks that became a part of my identity.

I survived several suicide attempts. I just wanted the pain to end from all the years of hiding. I suffered through angry rages, dark places, and emotional exhaustion. Because I did not know how to handle these emotions, I turned into someone else. I became the worst version of myself so I would not have to truly deal with what was wrong. I did not recognize the person I became because I was no longer the happy and bubbly person that I used to be. My family did not know how to deal with me when I became angry. Since none of us truly knew what was wrong, we just figured it was a phase that I was going through.

In May of 2015, I received the news that I did not make the promotion list to the next rank and I was devastated. All of those feelings that I had been holding in made me exasperated. I lost my composure and became angry. I took my anger out on anything and everything. I had little to no patience, so I isolated myself from everyone and everything, including my kids.

I wanted nothing to do with the outside world. I ignored phone calls from my leaders and the fact that they were just trying to help me. I gave so many years of my life to the military, only to let myself down by not being able to complete the mission that I set out to do. I thought I was going to retire after 20 years of service and felt like a failure, both personally and professionally. I felt so many mixed emotions. A part of me felt like I was going to explode. Another part of me knew that I needed help. I finally realized that I needed to do something before I lost myself completely to my inner demons and invisible wounds.

I turned to writing and speaking because it was the only way I knew how to let my feelings out. From age 11-13, I used to write in a diary because I felt some peace in writing down my feelings when I could not use my voice to speak them. As I became older, I stopped writing for fear someone might find my writing and see the deeper parts of me.

When I started writing again in 2016, I knew that this was helping me a lot more than I originally thought it would. I am now an author of an upcoming book and a freelance writer and absolutely love it. I know that this is the right path that I am meant to be on.

A year before I started to write again, I felt something was missing because I was not truly happy with the transition into truly becoming who I was supposed to be. I thought I was supposed to be a reflection of who I had been while in the military. I was mentally and physically tough, but no longer felt that way now. Writing has saved my life.

I didn’t realize my path until my daughter and I were in a traumatic car accident on August 19, 2018, that almost took our lives. I never truly appreciated my life until this day. I knew that my story was not over yet and I needed to find another way to share it. My voice needed to be heard in order to help not only myself but others who have experienced trauma.

It wasn’t until multiple surgeries and my continued recovery when I truly realized that we were kept here for a reason. No one could give an explanation of how we survived, due to the extent of my injuries and the fact that the car was completely totaled. I realized that I no longer needed to be ashamed or embarrassed of my mental health journey.

I was here for a reason and in order to continue to live, I needed to embrace all that I was. I learned to speak up and I also learned how to live with my mental health struggles instead of suffering from them. I decided I was going to help others do the same. I understood how difficult it was to suffer in silence and I did not want anyone else to be in the same dark place that I was in. I had lost too many people to suicide and did not want anyone else to feel that leaving this earth was the only way out. Helping others also helped me get through my own self-healing journey. This was the only way to begin the journey of ending the stigma and combatting suicide.

Since I have started helping others, I have received the most heartfelt feedback from complete strangers and even those that I did not think were listening. Sharing the most vulnerable sides of my story has helped others see their own vulnerable sides in ways they didn’t think were possible. Sometimes, it takes that one person to start the difficult conversation for others to realize that they are not alone. That is what has happened here. I never knew who was reading, watching, or listening to what I had to say. This is what has helped me to keep showing up. It has made my whole heart feel like I really had a purpose. I have shed tears of pure happiness that I have actually helped someone else see their true selves. It is a feeling that I am blessed to have.

I am now a writer, speaker, advocate, and podcaster on all things mental health. I have created safe spaces for those who are suffering in silence. I help find the strength and courage to use other’s voices and share their stories.