This is a lightly edited version of a letter I wrote to my family when I was attending a program in Boston called Homebase. I highly recommend it btw. It isn’t meant for light reading and it is about as open and as personal as I’ve ever been in the last 20 years or so.

So, in a roundabout way, this is probably the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time. I’m practicing a crawl/walk/run skill we are learning, and I’ve chosen to talk about why I am the way I am now. Some people are finding crowds or other triggers challenging, but I’d rather challenge those at home. I apologize if any dark humor slips into what I write or if it’s jumbled. I’m trying to do this linearly, so it’s in some sort of order. The point is to get myself to the point where I can talk openly about it, especially with family members. I apologize if anything is too graphic, but what’s gone on is way more than I’ve ever said or even hinted at. If I’m honest, you guys know maybe 10% of my life from the day I left for boot camp until I got out.

At this point, I don’t remember dates for everything; some things blend together. But through retrospection, I see some things differently than I used to. In 2003, while on deployment, aside from just the length, operational tempo, and the nature of what was happening, there were some specific things I took home with me that I can’t forget. One affects me way more than the other.

One day, while preparing a plane for a later flight (we started powering on the plane and its equipment three hours before they flew), I was sitting in the cockpit in our aft hummer hole (behind the big island on the flight deck). Sometimes, when we had everything turned on, we’d just sit there in the cold air and watch the goings-on on deck. The launch cycle before mine was going, and cats 3/4 are right across from me, so that’s what I liked to watch. An EA-6B Prowler was launching from the cats, and everyone on deck watched as it took off, banked left, leveled off, and exploded. I can easily push this one down; all four crew members survived and were rescued. It’s just a reminder of a lot of things.

The other thing we did when the pilots and crew got to our plane was stand in specific spots to a) be where we could easily be seen/see the plane captain and b) guard the props. When the props on my plane were going, they were damn near invisible. We waved our arms or flashlights to make sure everyone knew because with the chaos on the deck, you don’t always hear the props. One particular day, we were in the forward hummer hole, a very confined space surrounded by bombs, other equipment, and the aircraft landing area. Due to where I stood, I was inches away from landing aircraft and a lot closer to the props than anyone wants to be. There are guys on the deck called blue shirts who put blocks around the aircraft and take them off, and they are notorious for not listening or taking shortcuts when they can. This kid, 18, decided to ignore me, push past me, and walk right through the spinning prop. In an instant, he was dead, I was covered in blood, and the side of the plane was red. I don’t remember much in the immediate aftermath, but ultimately, I went to shower, changed, and was back on deck for a different plane later that day. Some days, I can still taste that entire event.

My plane is big, especially on the flight deck. Normally, there are only certain places we fit and where they park us. Sometimes, they put us in odd places, and it sucks. One spot they put us is between elevators 1 and 2, an area normally occupied by F-18s, and inboard of those spots is another row of aircraft that end up blowing on you. Our plane captains stand in direct view of the pilots in front of the plane and control the startup of the plane and all of our checks. One day, when parked here, the plane captain was getting blown around, so I moved behind him and held him down so he could focus on his hand signals. The exhaust of F-18s blew at our heads, and the exhaust of an EA-6B pointed towards our feet. Stupidly, the two aircraft behind us were taxied out at the same time, which means the amount of exhaust/thrust goes up. When that happened, both the plane captain and I were rapidly blown through one of our propellers and only stopped when we got caught on our landing gear. We should be dead. I should have been human guts on the side of the plane like the other guy. Luckily, the pilot was paying attention, saw what was happening, and emergency-stopped the prop (which stops the prop from all movement in about 2 or so seconds and changes the pitch of the prop so it’s essentially sideways). I had a big bruise from getting whacked by the propeller blade, we were both scraped up and had torn clothes from the non-skid, but work was work, missions were missions. We stood up, moved back to our positions, restarted the engine, and launched the airplane.

As much as I loved my 2003 cruise, I hated it. I was pretty drunk every time we pulled into port. It numbed the feelings and all.

I’ve somewhat talked about losing my friend in 2007, but I don’t think I’ve fully explained it to anyone. I’ve even blocked out parts to myself that I hadn’t thought about until yesterday. I’m going to preface this by saying I was very, very, very good at my job, and I’m saying that to make later parts make sense, not because I’m a cocky asshole. Though I was back then. You may recall that when I transferred back to VA, I went to Florida and other places a lot, and following that, I would go out to sea for a week or so. All that was done for pilot training and qualifications—long hours and beat-up airplanes. In August of 2007, I didn’t go out to the boat portion of the quals. I got stuck back in Norfolk running things because my boss went on vacation.

Right before everyone left for the carrier, I was standing watch towards the end of the workday. One of the officers, Lt Cameron Hall, stopped by to make fun of me and chat for a while. He was a very good friend, even though officers were not supposed to hang out with enlisted and vice versa. We first met when in VA the first time, both transferred to California, and again transferred back to Virginia together. There are many things that caused the friendship, but nothing I’m really going to get into. He was an NFO, basically trained to operate all the electronics in the back of the airplane. During these quals, he just sat in the back of the plane on “fire watch.” Just a passenger.

The student pilots needed a certain amount of day traps on the carrier and a certain amount at night to qualify. Depending on the location of the carrier, the plane would come back to Norfolk for repair between the day/night periods and after the end of the night periods. Easier for us to fix them on shore than on the boat. Much of what I worked on controlled whether the plane could safely fly or not. I also had a lot of power to say the plane was safe or not, and my decisions could only be overridden by whoever was assigned aircraft commander/pilot in charge for that particular flight. That alone is a tremendous amount of responsibility for anyone. That also caused me to act in multiple positions. I was a work center supervisor, an aircraft inspector, and if I wasn’t acting as an inspector, I still acted as a mechanic. I was not supposed to be both mechanic and inspector.

We had recently restored an airplane, side number 620, to flight condition, a project I was in charge of because it was mostly my equipment that was keeping it from flying. It was a problem child, but it passed its check flight. So it ended up out on the boat for this training cycle. Between day/night cycles, it returned with four other aircraft, all broken for one thing or another. A lot of them were mine. There wasn’t enough time to fix everything, but everything needed to be fixed, so I was all over the place and, in particular, on 620 working on an ongoing instrument problem they’d been dealing with all day. During the day, they could fly with the problem; at night, those instruments were required. I ended up working on it and fixing it myself due to the complexity of the problem and the time involved. I also unofficially inspected my own work. The young sailor working for me just signed where I told him to and handed me tools when I needed them.

Everything was ready in time, the crews left for the boat on time, and we sat down in our shops to waste time until they returned. An hour or so after they left, supervisors got called out into the hangar, and our controller told us we lost a plane in the water. That was all we knew. That alone triggers a bunch of protocols that need to be followed, and we automatically went into autopilot doing what needed to be done. By the next morning (I was going on an 18-19 hour day at this point), we learned what plane it was and who was on it. My friend Cameron was in the back. They hadn’t found any survivors yet and wouldn’t. They’d find two bodies and a helmet with a head in it. The latter being all that was found of my friend.

Because of the accident investigation, both as someone who worked on the plane prior to the crash and as a subject matter expert on many of the aircraft systems, I was asked many questions and had to explain how so much stuff worked over the next couple of days. No time to deal with anything. I tried the provided “grief groups,” but just got pissed off at people. Avoided a lot. While the investigation was ongoing, I had a very good idea of what happened based on what was being asked. Luck would have it, I had leave already scheduled, and I came home. Not sure if you recall how I was. I don’t. I know I mentioned things.

This next part is very hard. Not sure you are going to want to read it, but it’s here. A couple of days after getting back to Virginia and having unofficially learned what had happened, I took a bunch of painkillers I had and intended on not being alive anymore. But I luckily woke up the next day. The plane launched off the ship, started to climb, and the indications of a particular gauge said they weren’t climbing. So the student pilot pulled back the stick to increase the rate of climb. The plane stalled. Due to the altitude they were at, there was no chance of recovery, and they crashed into the water after 20 seconds. The gauge that malfunctioned was the same gauge I was working on before it left for the boat. A whole lot of what messes me up is stuck in thinking I caused it all, even though I know for a fact I didn’t, and the accident investigation even says so. Eventually, I just got back to work. Did what I did and moved on. And I drank a lot.

While that was pretty much the end of the traumatic stuff, I am going to add one last thing. I ended up on deployment in 2010 because I was pulled from a different set of orders by the command I ended up at, a term called “needs of the Navy.” I was wanted, and strings were pulled to get me. The squadron was deployed before I transferred, and I joined them out to sea. Right before I transferred, they had an aircraft crash due to an engine fire and lost a pilot. Right before I transferred, I was stuck answering more airplane questions by the investigation team (they operated out of the command I was still at), and when I got to the ship, I was handed the task of dealing with their crash and ensuing investigation because I was fresh and not connected with the crew. Honestly, when this happened, I was done with the Navy. I was done with everything. Having to deal with all of that again was too much. This is the exact and only reason I chose to leave the Navy when I did, regardless of any lie I might have told about it.