“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”—Dostoevski
I am frequently asked questions that reveal the fear that Americans feel about this war. They are afraid of not knowing what to say or do when they encounter a veteran. Similarly, they are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. They fear getting too close to something so terrifying and overwhelming—better to keep a distance and remain safe from the pain and loss. We put magnets on our cars and hope that someone is supporting our troops.
By educating the public about the consequences of combat stress and trauma, we can help to create a culture of acceptance and understanding—so important for these men, women and families coping with the consequences of war. By creating this culture of acceptance and respect, we can normalize the veteran’s experience and send the message that—unlike the reaction following the Vietnam War—our country stands ready to assist them upon their return.
“We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
For those of us interested in helping the men, women and families to heal from the psychological and spiritual injuries of war, we too must face our fears, of which there are many. We must face our fear of failure. We might not be up to the task of healing those who have experienced such trauma. Even if we are up to the task, we may not be able to save a veteran from his or her pain. We have limitations. For those of us in the civilian community, we must face the fear that we will not be able to understand the military culture—a culture that seems at times so impenetrable. For a mental health professional, this is the ultimate failure: the failure of empathy.
“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”—Rosa Parks
So what do we gain by facing these fears; by embracing them? We begin to create an environment within which men, women and families can understand what has happened to them. Understanding is the first step in healing. By tolerating our fears and the fears of others, we offer a model of hope, the possibility of trust, and an opportunity for growth.
“The cumulative affect of repeated disappointment and mistreatment resulted in the destruction of the basic capacity to trust.”
—Dr. Barbara Romberg, “Facing Fear,” from “Combat Stress: Understanding the Challenges, Preparing for the Return,” Smith College of Social Work Symposium, June 26–28, 2008
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AFRAID TO TRUST
The Story of Marine Corps Sergeants Kelly Meister and Cody Sepulvida
“After she was back, when we held hands I noticed that her right trigger finger would jerk like she was shooting off rounds.”
“She was the love of my life,” says Kelly Meister. “We were a military family in the truest sense.” Yet nineteen years after they met Kelly lives alone in Tombstone, Arizona while her former partner, Cody Sepulvida, continues her struggle with PTSD from tours of duty in the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. “My best hope is that I’ll be sitting at the Six Gun City bar and she’ll walk in.”
In August 1989 Kelly was a Corporal in the Marine Corps stationed in Okinawa, Japan, but participating in a three-week joint exercise in South Korea. “Uichi Focus Lens ’89” involved four branches of the service including Army and National Guard units from the states. “When I heard her voice I knew she was someone special,” Kelly Meister remembers. “I was shining my boots in the hallway of the barracks, and two soldiers passed by. One asked, ‘Are you a Marine?’ Without looking up I said, ‘Yup.’ ‘Well, why the Marines?’ I heard the voice ask. Then I heard this second voice say, ‘Because she’s tough.’ My heart started fluttering. I was sweating. I’d never felt that way in my life before. That one sentence changed my life.”
The two women got to know each other during the exercise, but it was a casual flirtation since Cody had a partner waiting for her at home. Cody had teased Kelly about wanting a hat like the one she wore. When she left, she swiped Kelly’s hat and left in its place, her name, address and phone number. They wouldn’t see each other again for eight years.
Kelly was the oldest of six children from a blended military family in Hamilton, Ohio. Her father was a career Army man and her mother was a nurse. She went to the University of Miami, Ohio for a year but dropped out to join the Marines. Assigned to military intelligence, she quickly achieved a top secret security clearance and rose in rank to Sergeant. While her friends called her “Mouse” because she was so short, 4 feet 10 inches, Kelly was an extrovert with lots of energy and a rock solid commitment to the Corps, even though she had to hide her sexual preferences. “In the USMC they had this running haha joke: ‘A female Marine is either looking for a husband or she’s a dyke’ and I would always say, ‘well I’m not looking for husband.’ That’s as close as I could come to admitting who I really was except when I was around other gay Marines.
Cody Sepulvida was also petite and tough as nails, a horsewoman from Tucson, Arizona. She joined the Arizona National Guard at age 18 in 1983, two years before 19-year-old Kelly would join the Marines. At the start of the Gulf War in January 1991 she was deployed to Saudi Arabia to the port city of Dhahran, a staging point for many of the soldiers as they waited for their gear to come in by ship. She was a mechanic, “able to tear down an engine and build it back up in minutes.”
They were barracked at the Khobar Towers, a sprawling high-rise apartment community that housed American, British and French military personnel assigned to the King Abdul Aziz Air Base, the main base used by American forces. Ordered to wear their NBC gear (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical protective clothing, including boots, gloves and mask) twenty-four hours a day, they sweltered, sweated and relieved themselves in their NBC suits for five days. As sirens screamed throughout the days warning of Scud missile attacks, Cody became increasingly anxious. Finally frustrated by the claustrophobic environment, the unit’s sergeant ordered his soldiers out of the building and on to the dock to await their equipment. The next day, the section of Khobar Towers where they had been living was obliterated by a Scud. Later during the same deployment the convoy she was in became lost during a blackout. The string of vehicles found themselves at sunrise, to their surprise and dismay, at the front line behind a tank brigade engaged in fierce battle.
While Cody was serving in the Gulf War Kelly was transitioning out of the Marines due to injuries to her left knee suffered during her service. She would complete her education at the University of Maryland, double majoring in criminology/criminal justice in 1995. Then in 1997, after a year of losing contact with Cody, Kelly tracked her down. “At the time I was working Child Support Enforcement in Florida, suspending the drivers’ licenses of people who couldn’t pay. I located Cody through a colleague who found her address via her driver’s license. We spoke at least once every day on the phone until I flew to Tucson to be with her for the holidays. We were totally head over heels about each other. Cody had just purchased a prefab house in Hereford outside of Tucson. It was pretty funny because all she had in it was two lawn chairs, a TV on an ice chest, and she was sleeping on a futon. In mid-December Cody flew back to Florida; I quit my job, and we loaded a U-haul with my furniture, drove back to Arizona and moved in together.”
They built a life for themselves. “We had this great three-bedroom house on four acres with two horses, four dogs and four cars. We had everything we wanted. From December 1997 to February 1999 our world was perfect. It was great. My mom says, ‘It was perfect; a Walt Disney thing.’” It was in February that Cody decided to join the Marine Corps. “Even though she’d experienced her ‘share of demons’ in the Gulf War, she was chomping at the bit to see action in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I was torn between worrying about her safety and understanding her desire to be a Marine, since I was one myself. But I loved Cody to death and we were very comfortable with me being her anchor, so to speak. I held down the home front while she took care of business.”
On February
6, 2003, Cody was deployed to Iraq as a SNCO (Staff Non-commissioned Officer) liaison between the military and civilian contractors who were ordering parts for the mechanics. She was armed with a laptop, which meant that she would work in a safe zone behind the battle scenes. But it wasn’t long before the need for truck drivers, particularly ones who were also trained as mechanics, overrode everything else, and Cody was reassigned to a Combat Support Sustainment Battalion, or “CSSB” unit. She found herself driving a “Dragon Wagon,” a flatbed truck assigned to haul ammunition for tanks. Twice when she was driving the convoy was ambushed by enemy fire.
The third time an ambush occurred the convoy retreated to a berm. With the boom of explosions shaking the earth around them, and after two previous ambushes, everyone was in a heightened state of alert. Without counting down from five to one before firing back, the gunnery sergeant screamed for everyone to take cover and fire their weapons. There was an exchange of heavy gunfire for several minutes before the radio burst forth with, “Cease fire! Cease fire! Friendly, friendly, friendly.” Cody had been firing on fellow soldiers. She never found out if she was personally responsible for any of those who were injured.
The entire time Cody was in Iraq Kelly slept during the day and monitored the television at night. “I wrote her every day. I sent her care packages, photographs of the animals, anything and everything I could think of to keep her morale up.” But Cody’s PTSD worsened and eight months later she returned home a changed woman. “After she was back, when we held hands I noticed that her right trigger finger would jerk like she was shooting off rounds.” When they went out for drinks at Six Gun City in Tombstone, “She’d tense up at the slightest noise. She hated having anyone standing or sitting anywhere. Every time they recreated Wild West gun fights (shooting blanks of course) she would freak out. She couldn’t sleep, and when she did she had nightmares and night sweats. She was jumpy, irritable and easily frustrated.”
While Kelly stayed in Hereford, Cody went back to Camp Pendleton where she’d been stationed before being deployed to Iraq for six months, then Okinawa for a year beginning in March 2004. Then in March of 2005 she went to Barstow, California. During all three deployments her PTSD kept getting worse, but she refused to tell anyone about her struggles. While stationed at Barstow, Cody became the second in command and the only female in the Marine Corps Mounted Color Guard. It was a dream assignment to the veteran horseback rider, and when her tour of duty was over in January 2007 Cody left the Marines rather than be deployed back to the war zone. But that summer, while Kelly was recovering from a right knee replacement, which had taken place the 24th of May, Cody had a major breakdown. The 4th of July evening fireworks display brought back memories of both wars, the Gulf and Iraq. Worse, the next night their house took a direct hit from lightning while they were sleeping. Cody fell apart, screaming and “clutching on to me for dear life.”
With the help of VA doctors, Kelly finally got Cody admitted to a three-week PTSD program at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tucson, but not before finances became a problem. During this time the Armed Forces Foundation stepped in and paid the mortgage on the house as well as some other past due bills. With only five in the session, the VA program promised to provide the intensive one-on-one therapy Cody needed. “The first week she must have called me 22 times a day. The second week she called to tell me about ‘this nursing assistant who is taking me out for walks to calm me down.’”
By the third week Cody had stopped calling entirely. Un beknownst to Kelly, the nursing assistant had befriended Cody and introduced her to drugs. “One time while she was in the program she called me and asked, ‘What would you do if I was taking a street drug?’ I said, ‘What are you thinking? We would lose it all, the house, the animals, our cars.’ And she said, ‘I just thought I’d ask.’” Kelly would later discover that Cody became addicted even before she left the hospital. It was only weeks from her discovery that Kelly would start an investigation against the nursing assistant which ended with the woman being fired from the VA hospital for having an elicit relationship with a patient.
When Kelly returned to the hospital for her left knee replacement in September she thought everything was back on an even keel, but on the 26th of that month Cody appeared in her rehab hospital room distraught, verging on hysteria. “She said she was going to kill herself; that she was going to leave. She caught me totally off guard. I didn’t have a clue.” Kelly checked herself out of the rehab hospital two hours later, concerned that Cody might harm herself with one of the three guns they kept at the house. When Kelly got home she found that Cody and her father had driven from Tucson to the house to get some of her belongings. Cody left the next day.
After a number of heated arguments during the month of October, the two separated permanently. In fact, Cody took out a protection order against Kelly. Kelly was philosophical. “No matter how strong your love is for each other or how long you’ve been together, when one partner goes off to war they come home in their own ‘mental world of hell.’ There are no doctors, no medicines, and no programs that can make them the same person they were before they left for war. What I learned was that miracles will never happen.”
But soon afterward Kelly became so depressed that she tried to kill herself by swallowing a handful of morphine pills. A neighbor got her to the hospital in time for them to pump her stomach. The next day she was given fifteen minutes to pack up her belongings and was then escorted out of Cody’s house by two policemen. She went to a neighbor’s house and tried to commit suicide a second time. “I was good friends with this older woman, Dorothy, who lived next door, so I went over there. While she was watching television I took a butcher knife and went out to my car. I wrote four notes: to my mother, my cousin, to Cody and one to Dorothy apologizing for taking her knife.” When Cody drove up to their house, Kelly confronted her and threatened to slit her wrists. Cody called the police and soon the neighborhood was swarming with law enforcement officers including a Swat team.
Kelly ended up at a Veterans’ hospital in Phoenix on the psychiatric ward. Meanwhile Cody was preparing to sell the house. “On Veterans Day, ironically enough, I heard she was going to have a moving sale. I called her from her sister’s house and I said, ‘Cody if you sell any of my stuff there’s going to be hell to pay.’ She sold all my stuff anyway, except for my camera.” The next time Kelly saw Cody was in court on March 4, 2008. “We both had to appear in court because of a phone call I made. One stupid phone call got me six months probation and a $1,100 fine. When I saw her I couldn’t believe how thin she was. She must have gone from 112 to 90 pounds. She was smoking nonstop. She’d never smoked before. She came up to me in the hallway and said, ‘Hi, how are you? Do you want to step outside while I smoke?’ She initiated the conversation. She acted like nothing was wrong. She smoked four cigarettes in that ten minute period.”
Kelly saw Cody for the last time on May 5th. “I ran into her at the VA hospital. She looked even worse than she did in March, and Cody was always beautifully dressed, a real stickler for neat and clean. She wouldn’t look at me; just hung her head in shame, so much so that she almost ran into a light pole.” There was one more phone call. “On May 17th Cody called to tell me that she had to put one of our chocolate labs down. She said,’ I had to put Dakota down’ and I said, ‘Why are you calling me? I’m on probation. Now I have to call my probation officer.’ Those were my last words to her.”
Today, Kelly doesn’t want to get back with Cody. She lives with one of the couple’s dogs, a Blue Queensland Heeler named Durango Kid in Tombstone where she staffs the Desert Eagle Trading Post, a high-end jewelry store. “The reason I chose Tombstone is that Cody loved it here. She’ll know where to find me if she ever needs me.”
If Kelly had once piece of advice to give others it would be: “When you come home be brave enough to admit to your family, your command, but most of all to yourself that you need ‘mental’ help. There is nothing weak in asking for help. Ther
e is no shame in admitting that you saw ugly things and that you need to get them off your chest. Holding it in will not only destroy you, but will destroy everything and everyone around you that you have ever loved. You are an American fighting man or woman, and no one can beat you down. You will be in the fight of your life with PTSD and only you can win that fight. Fight those demons and fight them hard. In the end you and only you are in control of your life. Semper Fi and watch your sixes.”
MEDALS
SSGT Cody L. Sepulvida, USMC:
US Army Citations: Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal (3 stars), Army Service Medal, South West Asia Service Medal, Army Overseas Service Ribbon, Kuwait Liberation Medal, Saudi Arabia Medal, 3 Certificates of Achievement.
Marine Corps Citations: Good Conduct Medal (2 stars), Navy Combat Action Ribbon, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (2 stars), National Defense Services Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Presidential Unit Citation Ribbon, Golden Wrench Mechanic Award, Certificate of Commendation, 4 Rifle Expert Badges, Pistol Sharpshooter Badge.
SGT Kelly J. Meister, USMC:
Certificate of Appreciation, 3 Letters of Appreciation, Good Conduct Medal (2 stars), National Defense Service Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, Rifle Marksmanship Badge.
40
THE ROAD BACK TO SELF
It’s the Journey, Not the Destination
By David Carroll, PhD
In 2003 the President’s New Freedom Commission Report on Mental Health in America began with a bold vision: "A future when everyone with a mental illness will recover." Within our lifetime we are seeing the achievement of the promise of transforming mental health care in America. There has been a radical change in our understanding of mental illness and the outcomes of mental health services. I have seen this firsthand in my work with veterans who suffer from mental illnesses, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Hidden Battles on Unseen Fronts Page 25
