Crazy Bitch

I'm late in getting this blog posted. I have been late all day. It was one of those days that the only thing that made me get out of bed was my son who came in to report he had not puked.  He had thrown up the day before so this was, indeed, good news.  So I pulled myself from the dream I was having about riding on the Amtrack and got out of bed. I don't know what has prompted this bout of melancholy. I suspect it had something to do with the fact I had military training this weekend. This usually brings my thoughts to Afghanistan and the year I spent there. My son was 2 years old when I left. I was one of a handful of female officers deploying with an Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

I quickly felt the effects of being deployed with infantrymen. At the time i was deployed, women could not hold combat job duties. Because we were unable to perform the jobs that were the crown jewel of the military, we were considered second-class Soldiers. Due to the fact we females were prohibited from holding many positions, the odds of a female being in a leadership position were severely crippled. For example, in the brigade i deployed with, four out of six battalion commander positions were men-only, combat positions.  This meant men had six chances to obtain a leadership role. Females had only two chances and those two positions were not reserved for females only. Rather, females had to compete against the entire pool of men, who already had four reserved positions, for the remaining two positions of leadership. This is an excellent example of institutionalized sexism.  This set of circumstances also achieved a desired result....very few female officers remained for 20 years of service. This reality, in turn, seemed to support the belief women were not cut out for military service. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy so to speak.  And so it was that females were considered substandard.

The failure to have a penis was quite offensive to some.  It didn't seem to matter that I was one of the few females who had passed air assault school and was fire support coordinator qualified--tasks that many men aren't capable of completing. What mattered was the one thing I could never change -my gender. The fact that I didn't behave as someone of my gender should only added insult to injury. There were Soldiers who wouldn't salute me because I was a female. If I called them out on it, I was told to calm down and to quit being emotional. I was referred to as a bitch nearly daily. My own supervisor reported I was "crazy." These words -crazy emotional and bitch- are classic terms used to disarm and undermine a self confident female. And they are used frequently, because, lets face it, they are extremely effective.

I thought there were plenty of men there who were crazier than I. There was the guy who took out his loaded weapon and put it to his head after his girlfriend broke up with him. There was the guy who had no shame in reporting he did not miss his wife and three kids "not one bit." There was the guy who told his girlfriend about fake missions he was going on when he was really sitting in an office. I had done nothing of the sort yet, I was the crazy bitch. For what? Stating my opinion? Standing up for myself? Not being weak enough? Not having sex with numerous men in a port-a-john? Caring about rules and regulations and the people we were killing?

I will never know exactly why I was treated the way I was. But I can tell you I left a part of myself over there.  I changed to survive. I became kinder, gentler, and shamefully weaker. I was overly pleasant and cheerful at all times. I felt like a housewife in the 1950s who was married to 2000 men. I kept my mouth shut and my head down. I stopped challenging the fact that I was an officer who enlisted men routinely ignored and disrespected. I ignored the comments about being a clucking hen when i went to find my girlfriends for a smoke.  I stopped standing up for what was right because when i did, I was deemed crazy and  emotional, which only made it easier to discount me as a Soldier. I'm not proud of this. But when faced with the situation I did the best I could to just get out with my mental health intact.

I took this new person back home with me. Some days, I want to go back there and look for the part of myself I have lost. I miss her.  She was a bad ass and often functioned with a scorched earth mentality. But even if I went back, I doubt I would find her. I like to think she became a part of some Afghan woman who needed the strength to take off her burqa and show her face to the warmth of the sun.

I have learned to live with this familiar stranger I have become. And it's not all bad. I probably needed to tone it down a bit and speaking one's mind isn't always the correct choice.  But I did admire the girl who wouldn't back down, who wouldn't give up, and was intent on showing the world that women could be just as good as men. It's ironic the very organization that I joined to foster this bad ass took her away from me.

I would like to get out because even though it has been three years since I returned from over there I still find myself struggling not to cry when I'm on my way home from drill. But I have four years to retirement and I'm trying to hang on. So for now, I accept that drill weekends make me sad and that I might not be able to get out of bed for a few days afterwards.  I'm grieving the loss of a person I used to like - that crazy bitch I used to be. If I were a man I suppose this would be called PTSD. But since I'm a female and not a real Soldier, I will chalk it up to just being a pussy.