BOOTSTRAPS
So this is what hitting bottom feels like.
Take the Clonopin.
No. Stay the course. You’re almost through this.
My skin crawls and jumps. I lay sprawled on my bathroom floor, the buzzing of the interior fan my only company. How long have I been here? An hour? A day? Time has no substance anymore. I just endure.
A spasm wracks my body, and for a moment I curl fetal on my side as I suffer through it.
Take the Clonopin. I NEED it.
I threw all my Clonopin away, probably four days ago. My body has punished me ever since.
You gotta do this to get your life back. Jessica. Jump school. Achievements and family.
“My life? What is my life now?” I’m talking to myself out loud again.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door.
“What?”
“Jeremiah, are you okay?”
“Stay out of here!” There’s no way I’m going to let my wife see this.
“How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine.” I’m not fine. My body screams for its fix. I’m slathered with sweat even though I shiver uncontrollably from imagined cold. I’m lying right next to a heater vent, and even its hot air seems frigid on my skin.
“Just remember, jump school. You gotta do this to go to jump school.”
I’ve waited my entire Marine Corps career to parachute from an airplane. I just got a slot at Fort Benning. The school starts in a few weeks, but the flight surgeon who examined me won’t clear me to jump unless I’m totally med-free.
“I know. I know. Jesus, Jess, please. You gotta just leave me alone, okay?”
I hear her press against the door. Has she turned her back to lean on it? “I love you.”
“I don’t know why,” I say through chattering teeth.
“Why? The man you were. The man you still can be.”
Jump school. This is my stand, my chance to climb out of this miserable life and find my way again. If I can just get through this, I will become a man that Jess can be proud of again.
My body seizes up. Every muscle contracts. A colony of tearing, scratching insects scrabbles under my skin. The sensation borders on unbearable.
I barely make it to the toilet before I throw up. Again.
“Jump school,” Jess says through the door.
I’m doing this for you, too.
And our child. Boy or girl, I don’t care. I just want to be a good father to a healthy kid.
Face in the toilet, I hear Jess say something else, but the words are lost in a dry heave. A moment later, my stomach goes slack and I sag back onto the floor.
“I love you,” I manage, unsure if my voice will carry through the door.
“Call me if you need me,” she says. I hear her walk down the hall to the living room. A moment later, I hear the babble of the television.
Who is the man Jess thinks you can be?
For two years, I’ve just wanted to return to normal, be who I was before Fallujah. I’ve fought and lost that fight. My PTSD is like an immovable stone wall. I’ve pushed and flung myself against it with growing desperation, but it still bars my path back to who I once was. That struggle has earned me nothing but more scars.
The overhead fluorescents start to hurt my eyes. Weakly, I reach up and flip the switch off. A thin beam of light from the hallway shines in from under the bathroom door, but otherwise I will suffer in darkness now.
The heater blasts my skin, but I still feel as though I’m lying on ice.
Keep fighting, Workman.
I see First Sergeant Lewis, his face hard and determined. He knows what he’s talking about, but what’s the point of fighting if you don’t gain any ground? That just becomes as futile as the Somme, or Verdun.
Worse, what’s the point of fighting if you aren’t fighting to get anywhere? It simply becomes a battle in a vacuum, a struggle for life that’s filled only with the fight and nothing else. That’s a rootless, hope less existence that can only lead to oblivion.
And here you are.
And here I am.
There has to be something more than the fight.
Jess. Jump School. Fatherhood.
The man I need to be.
Another sudden flurry of shakes grips my body. I flop around on the bathroom floor like one of those fish Hebert and Raleigh Smith pulled out of our lake. When the seizure passes, I’m slick with a fresh sheen of sweat, every nerve exhausted.
I can’t go back to who I was. There’s no denying that. I’ve tried for two years and failed. I’ve denied the truth, bucked against it. That stone wall will never be shattered. But maybe there’s another way.
Evolve.
Yes. I have weapons left for this fight. Self-discipline. Determination. Strength.
Reason to try.
Withdrawal is my first test.
JUST TAKE THE CLONOPIN.
My body’s like a vicious, jilted lover. Now that I’ve denied it what it most needs, it strikes back with no restraint.
I start to doze. The television clicks off. The light coming from the hallway through the crack under the door suddenly disappears. I’m left in total darkness, just me and my conscience.
Evolve through this. That’s the only option. That’s what a Marine would do.
Yes. I can’t fight PTSD forever. But I can fight for a fresh start, a new life where I move forward and grow. That will give me meaning and substance.
A purpose.
For a fleeting moment, I see myself back in that group therapy session. I understand now what that Vietnam vet who was our counselor tried to tell us. We can’t be ashamed. We can’t try to deny our condition. We can only embrace it, absorb it into who we are and what the war has made us become.
Hello, my name is Jeremiah Workman, and I suffer from PTSD.
No shame. No guilt. Only resolve to be a man my child can respect and love.
Somewhere in the future, I see myself in front of a school. I’m holding a tiny hand and smiling. I look down and see a mop of hair—my son? My daughter? It doesn’t matter. I am this child’s father.
Suddenly, we’re in front of a classroom full of kids. The teacher stands in back, primly dressed and a warm and welcoming expression on her face.
This is my dad, Jeremiah. He’s a Marine. He served in Iraq against terrorists.
The pride in my child’s voice is fuel for the fight.
That’s where I want to be, that’s where I have to get.
From our bedroom, I hear soft music playing. Jess has turned the radio on as she gets ready for bed. The song swirls around me even as another bout of the shakes sweeps through my body.
I’m alone
Yeah, I don’t know if I can face the night
I’m in tears and the cryin’ that I do is for you
I want your love—let’s break the walls between us
Don’t make it tough—I’ll put away my pride
Enough’s enough, I’ve suffered and I’ve seen the light
This is our song. We danced to this in high school. I told Jess I loved her for the first time while these words washed over us.
And in Iraq, to win her back when things went so far astray, I copied down the lyrics and mailed them from Fallujah. It was my last-ditch attempt to save us.
Aerosmith. “Angel.” Our first wedding dance.
The darkness melts into my past. I see Jess and me walking hand in hand. I’m in an off-the-rack rented tux, Jessica looks stunning in a dark green and black dress that falls to her calves. Prom night, 2001, my senior year. We’re in the last months of normal small town life, before the towers fell and the bodies of our generation’s warriors returned to Dover, Delaware, en route to their final resting points.
We lived life in a bubble, unsullied by the realities of what loomed on the horizon. Prom night was the biggest thing in our lives.
At first, we couldn’t even recognize the gym. The place was covered with trees and vines. A rock wall dominated one corner, and a waterfall spilled into a pool set beneath it. It looked like we’d just stepped into the Amazon rainforest. Our folks had even paid the Columbus zoo to bring down some exotic animals. As we moved to join our friends out on the dance floor, monkeys and lemurs capered around us. There were even a few penguins waddling about.
I asked the disk jockey to play “Angel” for Jess. We held each other and swayed to the music, just two young American high school sweethearts with our entire lives before us.
The insects race around under my skin. I quake and twitch, the bathroom floor feeling like a glacier beneath me.
Get through this for yourself. Get through this for Jess. If you really still love her, you’ve got to make it.
I can almost taste a Clonopin tablet on the back of my tongue. My body aches for it. I find myself sliding on my back toward the door.
What are you doing?
I’ve got to have some.
No. You’ve got to rebuild this mess of a life.
This is too hard. My body’s joined my brain and gone to war with my resolve.
My hand reaches up to the doorknob. Somewhere, there’s got to be a hospital or a dispensary that will refill my Clonopin prescription. I’ll drive until I find one.
Raleigh and Eric appear before me. James Phillips stands behind them. Three Marines, denied this gift, this torment.
Other guys’ll give up. They’ll eat a bullet or take some pills. That’s the easy way out. You know what? It disgraces the men we left over there.
My hand falls off the knob. First Sergeant Lewis is right. I can’t disgrace myself to these men any longer.
My body punishes me with a brutal wave of the shakes. Minutes later, I’m weak and dry heaving again.
I will not give up. This is my stand. From here on out, I grow out of this hole. I will achieve. I will be the winner I always was and need to be again.
That’s right, Jeremiah. Jump school is only the first step. You know what you have to do next, right?
I know. And it will be far harder than anything I’ve yet gone through.
Maybe, but you do it, and you’ll set the foundation for your future.
I’m back on the floor, but now it is broiling hot. Even in boxers and a T-shirt, I feel like I’m lying on a grill.
I have to forgive myself.
Yes.
It is the only way to exorcise the guilt.
Yes.
I will never be able to forget, but maybe I can absorb, forgive, and move forward.
Did you risk your life that day? And don’t bullshit me. It’s just the two of us in here.
“Yes. I did.” My voice is hoarse and frail.
In the background, I hear our song still playing.
Without your love—I’m nothing but a beggar
Without your love—a dog without a bone
What can I do? I’m sleeping in this bed alone
Jess. I have to forgive her, too. And I’m not sure I can.
If you can’t, you’ve got to stop savaging her for what she did. Can you do that?
There’s so much bitterness in me. It is poison to the soul.
You have to let it go.
I’ve tried to reject all the things Fallujah did to me and deny the damage it has done. Now I know that if I don’t integrate that experience into who I am, I will always be a fractured and malfunctioning human being. That is the only way around the stone wall PTSD has thrown across my future.
Okay then.
If I’m going to go forward, I have to first go back and walk through it one more time to examine everything I did that day. Could I have done more? Could I have saved those men?
Part of me recoils at what I might find, but if I don’t go back this night will be for nothing. Jump school will forever be out of reach, and I will trail in circles until I share Ira Hayes’s ditch.
Are you man enough for this? Can you survive the answers you seek?
A tiny hand in mine, a toothy grin, and a child’s embrace. We stand in front of a classroom of kids, whose dads are insurance salesmen, tax attorneys, and accountants. There’s nothing wrong with that. But my kid’s dad is a Marine, proud, strong, a breed apart. Different. I realize as I look into those innocent eyes that I am my child’s hero.
That’s where I want to be someday.
Okay, then you’ve got to do this.
I know.
You’ve got to go back.
The floor suddenly goes glacial again. I shiver and shake and sweat. My skin crawls with angry, biting bugs. I’m weak and drained, but still up for this fight. But I know the biggest one lies ahead inside my own mind.
I am ready.
The darkness evaporates. The bathroom vanishes. Colors and light play around me. I close my eyes. For two years, I’ve been at the mercy of these memories. Tonight, I’ll take control of them once and for all.