The Final Chapter

It now seems like a lifetime ago, a different life really because so much has happened since then. In looking back at myself in the army band, I feel like I was still a kid in high school and now I’m grown up. This causes a strange reaction when I see someone who’s still in the band because suddenly I feel much older and they seem like teenage kids, arrested in their development. In fact, it’s been a year and a half since I left and so much has happened in that time in my new life, my real/unreal life. This will be my last documentation of that weird time in my past when everything was upside down because there is one more incident of almost unfathomable cruelty that needs to see the light of day.

My last post was about an incident in July of 2017 and I didn’t retire until January of 2019, so you math wizzes will realize that I had another year and a half to go until I hit 20 years of service and could receive retirement pay. This meant another year of counseling sessions where I’d be lectured and threatened and the next one that came up was a doozy.

Evaluation Day, October 26, 2017

I knew it was coming, I just didn't know what "it" was. Maybe it will be chill because we all know we're just biding our time until I can get the hell out of here. We all go way back and there's no need to cause any more harm. It, however, becomes immediately clear that it will not be chill as there is a senior, female E-9 in the room in addition to my rater and senior rater. This means they need a witness, someone to back them up. Not good. Senior rater has his disapproving dad look on while rater, as usual, is emotionless, unreadable. They start to enumerate my crimes, all the old hits that we have gone over plenty of times in the past year.* Fine, as expected, but then senior rater starts going into a legal disclosure. He cannot tell me to put my papers in as soon as possible, but if I don't, my evaluation will possibly come before a review board that can remove me from the army before I reach the 20-year mark and leave me without a pension. The three of them are united in their agreement that I am "unfit" for service in the army, and they check that box on my rating form, a box I had never even noticed before but one that turns out is very important as it is what is required to remove someone from the service. Rater makes it clear that no one told her what to write, she wrote it all herself. I try to make sense of the previous engagements I'd had with her where she seemed to be hearing me out and open to giving me a path forward. I guess she really had thought about it hard and concluded that I was indeed a piece of shit.

These people who I had known for my entire career did this, put me in a position where I had invested the best years of my life in a place that was now hostile to me. I was staying only to see a return on that investment in the form of a pension and now they were telling me that I might not even get that. And why was this necessary? Did they think that I wouldn’t apply to retire as soon as I could? Was that such a dire possibility that they had to inflict this further deep trauma? I find it unbelievable and yet I can hold that piece of paper in my hand, that piece of paper that I HAD to sign lest it be used as further proof of my incorrigible nature.

And so I went on my way and about my day with thoughts of going AWOL running through my head. My husband comes to get me as he is the only one who can keep me safe now and he starts his investigations into their claims that my retirement pay can be taken away. After some consultations, we find out how lucky I am: when one has served over 18 years, the retirement pay cannot be withheld even if one is separated from the service. I had served 18 years and 10 months. The emptiness of the threat makes it somehow more cruel as they did it either because they were not competent in their understanding of policy (while telling me I am unfit for service), or they wanted me to suffer and possibly get hurt trying to get home.

I had been assigned to play a concert that night but they very thoughtfully subbed someone else in, someone who I’m sure really loved being thrown on a concert at the last minute, unless, of course they had told that person and just didn’t tell me so that the ambush would be most effective. I question all the reasons anything ever happened there and now nothing seems too crazy. Did the junior guy who denied that he was flicked in the balls really win that audition or was it a reward for good behavior? We’ll never know.

Even though my pension was not in jeopardy, I did in fact apply to retire in January of 2018 exactly one year before my 20-year mark or, as soon as it was possible. I got a new rater who said she cared about me and wanted to do right by me, yet when I had an anxiety attack after receiving an email from her concerning my future assignments, she never returned my husband’s calls. We spent many hours in the emergency room that night and, fyi, if you are unsure about what to do when you’re having an anxiety attack, you might just save yourself a trip to the ER because they can’t really do anything for you. The doc will ask “are you a danger to yourself or others” to which you reply “I don’t think so,” and then you have an option to wait there until the morning to see a therapist... or go home.

But that was then, a year where I cried every day that I went to work and some days when I didn’t. I couldn’t even tell you now when the last time I cried was—maybe that day of the previous blog post “Unexpected Heartbreak.” I am a different person, or rather, I am a person again, I am whole, I am myself and I like who I am.

If I were one to believe things happen for a reason guided by a higher power, I’d think God had really blessed me because of what I’ve been able to do getting out of the army at that exact time. When I left the army, I traveled a lot, playing my own music, telling my story and doing things I was unable to do before like taking a summer fellowship at Bang on a Can where I found my tribe. I also started school for a second masters degree in audio technology and all of these things open so many doors that wouldn’t be open if not for the army band, it’s financial support both in retirement pay and the GI Bill. Now, a short year and a half out of uniform, I’m seeing people in those very uniforms standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and I am filled with joy and relief that it isn’t me. I can protest, I can wear a mask, my body and life are no longer in their control. With the outbreak and continuing threat of COVID-19, travel is over and there are no Bang on a Can fellowships. I got everything I want and lived to tell the tale. I may not believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that any crisis can be an opportunity and I’m proud of what I have done with my opportunities and what I will continue to do thanks in no small part to the financial support of the army band. The best part of the job is right now and it is so sweet. Thank you.

And thank you, gentle readers for hearing me out. Now you can sleep soundly knowing that I got my happy ending.

*These greatest hits were enumerated in the blog post “A Confession.”