why I was kicked out of the military

Hey beautiful!

It’s been awhile since I’ve made an #thekaridiaries post. But it’s 5am, I woke up non stop thinking about this and I need to let it out. Sorry, it might be a long one.

I’ve been confused about why someone would have the motive to do this for a long time. When people would ask me, “why would someone do something like that” I would never have a good answer because it doesn’t make sense that someone would drug a girls drink with anything other than date r@pe drugs. But it’s more common than you think and I’ll explain more about this later.

⚠️Trigger warning to any women struggling with SA, PTSD, or anxiety. ⚠️ I am going to recount an intimate story of what happened when someone drugged my drink, and a bit oversharing might be overwhelming for some of my readers. Anyone is welcome to read this out of educational purposes.

Joining the military was the best decision I ever made for Me. I was 17 years old, emancipated the year before and needed someone to support me enough till I was mature enough to figure out what I was passionate about and what I wanted to spend my life doing. I joined to work my way into a career. At first I wanted to work in the trauma unit, I joined as a Hospital Corpsman in hopes of going to school to be a Trauma Surgeon, but I quickly realized I should have just gone the Naval Academy route and started free college immediately. But I didn’t think I was mature enough for college quite yet. So enlisted it was.

I joined in the peak COVID times. December of 2020, so everything was new to me and new to them at the time too. Everyone struggled to be social at the time. I went to Corpsman A-school at Fort Sam Houston Joint Base San Antonio Texas. The way I began my military career is a bit shocking, and a little bit traumatic might I say. Let me explain, of course when you come out of boot camp you’ve been torn apart and partly built into someone completely different than who you’re used to. This isn’t something uncommon, everyone knows they try to “break” you in boot camp. I spent a 3 months in boot camp, including the month I had to spend in isolation beforehand for COVID precautions. My mind was extremely fragile after leaving. It’s so common for this to happen that people have named what I means when you’ve attached to someone after boot camp. The “A-School Boo”. I’ve talked about this before, in my last viral post, “secrets about my service I’ve never told anyone”. Basically saying how traumatic my A School Boo actually was to me. He turned out to be married, and was cheating on her with me and on me with other women when I wasn’t around. He had taken advantage of me and SA’d me when I was just freshly 18, he was 27. I of course never reported this because I felt like I put myself in the position to be taken advantage by him, I pursued a relationship with him, and I felt like I deserved it at the time. And this honestly changed the course of my military career from then on out.

I got stationed in San Diego, California shortly after I graduated A School in July of 2021. And instead of enjoying my placement, I was miserable getting past my A-school relationship for about 8-9 months. I could not get over him. I cried myself to sleep getting over him. And I was crazy about it. #embracevulnerability

Eventually I feel like I started to act out a lot around this time, I didn’t have any friends when I moved to San Diego, I was the youngest person at my command so no one really wanted to spend time with me or hang out outside of work. This is when I started to dress up really beautiful and just drive around the city to out in social situations, I’d sit at bars and talk to people, mostly men, and I’d put myself out there. I struggled a lot with anxiety with mostly men after what just happened, so I tried to force myself to go outside. Some people might say this was a risk, but as I thought, life before phones people genuinely used to go outside when they wanted social interaction. Not just turn to apps on their phones. so I still don’t see quite an issue with this.. it’s mainly just the part where I started to make poor self care decisions where it started to go from bad to worse for me. I struggled a lot with maintaining my anxiety. I would have frequent panic attacks being outside, but I tried to force myself to be out anyway. I listened to what my mind told me what it needed. And although I was afraid of being out in public, I told myself I would get through it anyway. I definitely regret not being more gentle with myself back then.

I met my 2 best friends at 19 at my command in San Diego, and they changed my life. They worked in the military with me, and I would’ve taken a bullet for either one of them. They were my sisters. We did everything together. We lived together in our apartment in San Diego, we ate together, wore each other’s clothes, and told each other every sentence that came across our minds. They helped me a lot with coming out of my shell. I dedicate most of my personality to them, honestly. I love them dearly still. Even though we all live in different states now.

In 2022 we went to a July 4th party on July 3rd, it was a Sunday. I didn’t know anyone there, one of my besties grew up in San Diego so she knew everyone there which didn’t make it even the tiniest bit underwhelming at all. I was extremely self conscious and anxious the entire time. Again, I was 19, and enlisted in the Navy so I shouldn’t have been there at all. But I tried really hard to get back to being social again. An hour or so in to the house party, I met a group of men downstairs toasting to drinks, one of which picked up a bit of interest in me. He asked if I was having fun, and I said I was a bit anxious. To which he replied he wanted to see me have fun. He wants to see everyone here have fun.. He passed me a drink and we did a small cheers with the group. This I think is where everything turned sideways for me. Instead of being loosened up by the alcohol, my anxiety got 100% worse. So much to the point I needed to go to the bathroom alone to take a breath. I looked up in the mirror and my lips were purple, I was shaking, and I felt a panic attack coming. This time I think just because I had panic attacks all the time from being out I knew what it was, but it was a lot worse than I knew I could handle and I needed my friends comfort. I walked out of the bathroom, glance over at the kitchen where the men I’ve just shared a drink with were chuckling at me. Either because they’ve done something or I’m just because self conscious about it, I don’t know. But I stumble out and meet one friend halfway up the stairs and tell her we should leave. She gathered up our 3rd and we left. Didn’t look back, it wasn’t up to us. If you asked me a year ago why do you think someone would put coke in my drink, I wouldn’t have had any type of explanation. I look back on this now, and I know exactly what kind of guy that was. Especially thinking about how he just wanted to see me have “fun”.

I’ve run into multiple men who act like that. They’re the type of men who want something, but won’t ask you directly for what they want. These are the most manipulative type of people truly. If there’s anyone you have to worry about, it’s them. They won’t give you rooofies because they don’t want to carry you outside. They want to loosen you up, get you feeling good, and make their move on you to convince you to hang out with them. That’s why they slip little stuff in your drinks. Little did he know, just because he wanted me to loosen up, I failed my drug urinalysis a few days later on July 7th.

I submitted an entire appeal, I wrote my own personal statement about my anxiety and how I mistook the effects of drugs for a panic attack. which I haven’t read my personal statement in years now, but I can imagine was just word vomit from a young girl who was deathly afraid of losing the only good thing that ever happened to her. It would honestly make me sick to read it again. My best friends wrote personal witness statements, to basically say they never saw me doing drugs and believe I wouldn’t do any drugs, but the board didn’t see that as actual evidence that I didn’t do drugs. I had character statements from people I worked with who vouched for me as a person the best they could, but no one truly knew what was going on with my anxiety so no one could really stand on what I was going through.

This was something I had to deeply process and understand. Why someone would do this. And how I would get through this.

I ended up getting a general under honorable discharge after fighting back against this for 9 months. I left with a fire under me. I was ashamed, everyone at the command knew what was going on, and everyone thought I genuinely did it. I was 20 years old. No idea where or what I was going to do. But I made steps and I did it anyway. Sometimes you’re so busy, you don’t have time to wonder how you’re doing things. You just do them. And that’s honestly how I’ve felt since getting out.

I’ll make another post later about my break up with the military and how I’ve come to process that so far, if you’re interested.

Thank you again for reading me, I feel like this is something I’ve wanted to get out for so long. It’s 7am now and I feel like I can finally go back to sleep. Or smoke a cigarette. I love you girls 💕

As always, if you’re struggling. If you need someone, please reach out to me. My DM is forever open to those who just wanna rant, get if off your chest, ask for advice, or need me to buy you a drink tonight. You’re not alone.

#deployment #unemployed #Lemon8Diary #unfiltered #MentalHealth #MILITARY