“I wanted to fix myself and I wanted to fix everybody else but I needed the answers.”

There was a medic there, and he was the one who evaluated you. So he had me undress and told me at that point that he was going to do a physical and see what was going on. I started feeling a little uncomfortable. He asked my battle buddy to leave. As she left, he closed and locked all the doors and he checked all the exits and entrances.

I remember this thinking, God, I should probably get up and leave. But at the same time being so afraid and so scared of everything I didn’t know. And at the time thinking too, well, he’s a doctor. He’s just making sure that my privacy is being taken care of. But it was then that, you know, he came over by me and full on sexually assaulted me.

It was just completely out of my control. I had never felt like that before. Eventually, I was able to get away. I made marks on him, but he had already made marks on me too, on my skin. I was able to run out of the building, run out of the room. I didn’t have on shoes, I didn’t have on, like, half of my garments because they were on the floor. I got back to the barracks and I went into the bathroom, and I hid and I cried for quite a while. Another battle buddy came to the bathroom and she found me. It got reported to a drill sergeant that I was hiding in the bathroom. You know, so they were coming in to yell at me. My drill sergeant looked at me and then said, — where were you? I was like, I was a sick call.

I have never seen him run that fast. I ran after him. And I don’t know why, but I felt the need to follow and see what was going to happen. I guess I still thought that, as a victim, that I was going to be in trouble, that somehow it was going to come back on me that I did something wrong. But he went to the sick call bay and he started beating the crap out of this sick call medic. I was kind of, I don’t know, validating at the time. Even though something so bad happened, I still had people who had my back and who were there protecting me. This was an older infantry drill sergeant who had never even smiled at me before. He hated me. And he was protecting me and really caring about what had just happened.

Part of the reason why I wanted to be a therapist is that I wanted answers. I wanted to fix myself and I wanted to fix everyone else, but I needed the answers. I wanted the quick fix why of how to do it. I just thought maybe if I read enough books I could find the answers. And that’s– That’s not true at all.
[laughing]

During my deployment there were a few incidents that happened, and I tried becoming the voice for them. But there was an incident in which there was another sexual assault in my unit. The girl came and told me. I asked chain of command what was next, what do we need to do, and I wanted it reported. And because he was a school teacher, they didn’t want it reported, because they didn’t want it ruining his career. So they didn’t do anything about it. That was, I guess, the last straw that I had, in which I knew I couldn’t make a difference from the inside. I knew there were too many things that I needed to change and that I needed to do, but there was no way I had a voice from the inside. Because even at my highest rank I was never going to have the power, the control, to start making the changes that need to happen within the military. That’s when I kind of officially decided I needed to get out.

I always thought it was probably the best side of me. I really, really enjoyed wearing the uniform. It’s a feeling that you can’t describe. It just makes you feel like somehow you’re making a difference. It was important for me. Even after getting out I knew I wanted to continue working with veterans the rest of my life. There’s a way that I want to serve, and what better to serve than people who have served beside me.

In the military you’re taught to do as you’re told. You listen to everything you’re told, what to do, how to do and when to do it. This is me telling you what to do. Right now if you are in need of help you need to reach out. You need to contact any resource you have. We’ve already lost too many people to these wars, and I don’t want to lose another person. I don’t want to lose another individual that I served beside. I want you all to be safe and I want you to take care of yourself and one another. I want you to reach out and find a resource to help you get through this. It’s not going to be easy, but getting through the military was not easy. So if you can make it through that, you can make it through this. Reach out and get some help.