I Spent My 20th Birthday in a Hospital Bed

I spent my 20th birthday in a hospital bed.

Why?

I had just completed my first few days of Coast Guard boot camp. It was tough. As you can probably imagine it was made up of a lot of screaming, working your body to the extreme, and trying to not fall asleep from the lack of sleep. I was feeling confident, like I could take it on and that it wouldn’t be a problem. To say the least I was wrong.

Over the course of my life I have gone through many traumatic events. At the age of six my father had a surgery on his back for an old injury from his time spent in the military. The surgeon hit my fathers spinal cord and paralyzed him for two weeks. Now, thankfully, my father recovered from his paralysis, but had to learn how to walk again, take copious amounts of pain killers too stave off the pain that made it so hard to function, and learn how to live with the nerve damage in his legs. At the age of 14 I had the misfortune of having to go through a school shooting and my parents divorce at exactly almost the same time. A year later a month after my 15th birthday my sister passed away from unknown reasons, and I blamed myself for not being there to do anything. These three events are not the only traumatic events I’ve had to live through, but I would put them down as some of the most defining periods of time in my life.

For these events I never truly found a reliable/healthy outlet to be able to vent my emotions out too. I never worked out, rarely looked for a therapist, or when I did find a therapist I would quickly make an excuse not go through with said therapy. Instead I ate and gained weight, isolated my emotions from my friends and family, and probably did one drug too many. This was a pattern I committed myself to through high school and it did me a great deal of harm.

After high school I committed to a semester of college. I despised it and didn’t do very well. When school ended for the semester I started working a lot and found a great deal of happiness in always being busy. During that time a family friend started a Start Up Company, and I desperately wanted to work for him. Eventually I got a job with him. I did just about everything there was to do for his company and even though I committed so much time and effort, in the end I ended up getting the short end of the stick. No equity in the company, even though I was the first employee and absolutely terrible pay. In a way I felt destroyed. Was I good enough? What could I have done better? In the end I quit because I didn’t feel valued for my contributions to the strides that the company was making.

I was at a point in time when I felt utterly lost, so I decided to join the United States Coast Guard. I wanted to save lives and do good on this earth while giving back to my country. When I signed the paperwork to join up I felt so proud of myself. I felt good. I was doing something bigger than myself. I was going to help people! Little did I know what was going to happen to me when I finally arrived at bootcamp.

In the summer leading up to my ship out date I worked for my old summer camp. I reconnected with people and I hadn’t seen in a long time and had a lot of fun. I also did my fair share of traveling and having a blast doing that as well. I barely gave any thought to how my mental state would faire once I got to bootcamp.

On September 25, 2018 we drove through the gates at 10PM into the United States Coast Guard Boot Camp. The Instructors boarded the bus and the screaming ensued. 15 seconds to get off the bus and to grab our bags, all the while being screamed at. I thought to myself that it wasn’t all that bad. That if this was the worst they could do, well I wouldn’t have any problems.

Over the next three days we learned where our place was. We were at the bottom of the food chain. There was no room for arguing or goofing around. If you did that you were done. At the end of the three days we met our actual drill instructors who would be leading our company. Five of the most intimidating people you can imagine. They took the previous drill instructors levels from a one to a five. Even with all that I still felt confident.

On our first Saturday something felt off. From the moment we woke up I felt that something wasn’t right although I couldn’t quite place it. After noon chow I started to fell queasy. I soon started dry heaving and feeling very ill, I couldn’t figure out why. So I promptly requested medical attention. All hell broke loose. My instructor lost his shit on me. To say the least that was the straw that broke the camels back. Somehow I ended up in the back of the room dry heaving and being told by the rest of my company to go outside if I was going to throw up. I stumbled outside and started dry heaving in the grass.

The ambulance pulled up and I promptly lost it. The paramedics took me into the ambulance and put me on oxygen because I was hyperventilating and just losing my mind. On the ride to the hospital I can remember thinking to myself 'I’m done for.' This is how it all ends for me. I have never been so low in my life. What am I going to do now?

So I ended up the hospital in the psych ward. I spent several hours there before eventually being released back to the care facility located on the base, on which the boot camp was located where I spent the next three days under watch. During those three days I had my birthday. Nobody was there to wish me a happy birthday since I had no contact with my family, just me myself and I. What a horrible way to enter your second decade of life.

Something changed in me, however, that day I turned twenty. I learned that I would need to seek help in some form or another because from what I was able to learn was that my breakdown was caused by the all the trauma that had built up in me overtime. All the negative emotions that I had never dealt with. It was all of that coming out because it had come to a peak because of all stress that I was enduring. I also came to realize that I wouldn’t be able to go back in. It was over for me, even though I desperately wanted to go back. So I decided this is the defining moment of my life. I could choose to let this destroy me or I could learn from my previous mistakes and to work hard to make a better life for myself because the military wasn’t going to work. So I chose to learn and to grow as devastated as I was about my downfall.

The week after I returned home I enrolled in a wilderness therapy camp and spent eight weeks in the Rocky Mountains in the middle of winter. Spending time sleeping in tarps, carving my own spoon out of wood to be able to eat, and bushwhacking in the middle of blizzards. It was there that I learned important coping skills, to be able to deal with myself when I feel like I am going to have issue again, to be able to express my emotions to others, and how to live my life as normally as possible. It was truly a transformative experience.

After my time there ended I came home and got straight back to work. I found three jobs and started real estate school. Over a period of five months I completed school and started working on obtaining my license. I also moved on to a singular job of selling cars, as well as starting to build my very own clothing brand. I’ve also been in the gym almost every single day of the last three months, and I can honestly say I am in the best shape of my life. I’m in a great place and I couldn’t be happier with where I am in life.

So why did I decide to share my story? It’s because I don’t want people people to go through the same hardships I have and end up in the hospital bed because of it. Go and see that therapist, go to the gym, or talk to that friend who wants to make sure you're okay. There are so many outlets for you to be able to vent your emotion in a healthy manner, rather than bottling it up within. Because if you do bottle it up, it will explode. So please listen to what I have to say. You are so much more than you can imagine and you are absolutely incredible. Get the help that you need. It is always available.