In 1996 Rachael and I were married. We had no money no job and really no where to call home. Our parents supported us but really didn't think we should get married. I did however enlisted in the Air Force. To be perfectly honest I needed a job and I did not want to work in the towns factory and get stuck there. I had already worked there two summers and it sucked. I So I was to leave three months after we were married for basic training.
Before I left for basic I looked for work. Although we had no rent (three church families let us house sit for them while they were on vacation for a month each) we still needed to eat. Rachael got a job and I pulled weeds for money and I drove with my uncle as a pilot driver for a trucking company. As I said before, Rachael could not hold down a job and within about 3-4weeks found a reason to quit. Nothing bad really happened during this time. She did have some lonely days but over all not bad.
After basic, I got orders to Japan. Rachael was scared but willing to go. After we got to Japan, (well I went first she had a problem with her passport, it got "lost in the system" and she arrived almost three months after I got there). Anyways, we started right away with traveling throughout Japan. We had a ton of fun. She got a job flipping burgers on base, again for a short time before she quit. Then, she went to work at the toy store on base. She quit there but for good reason. She was hand picked by the owner of a private school house off base, and with no degree, went to work as an English teacher. It was the perfect job. She got paid more than I did and it was under the table. She played board games, sang songs, etc. and worked about 20hrs per week. We had made a really good Japanese friend. I was working nights but because her hours were not far off of mine we were always together. We even played racquetball and basketball at 2 in the morning on my days off. Everything was going perfect.
Rachael and I really wanted to have kids but were not able to. We hadn't really tried to but never stopped it. After seeing a doctor Rachael was tested for STD and to have her "girl parts" checked out" and found that she had scare tissue from previous sexual contact. She had the scare tissue removed and was put on clomid (a fertility drug that I don't know how to spell) to help get her pregnant. Well we had a lot of fun trying since the doctor said we had to do it at least 10 days in a row during "calculated" times of the month. Again, everything was going great.
After three months of trying with no success, Rachael got a little discouraged. That's when the bombshell hit, and I mean bad. I came home one day with Rachael passed out and two empty bottles of Tylenol and...well I forget what she drank. I called 911 and got her to the hospital where she got her stomach pumped. Though they got it all out, her body had absorbed a lot. The doctors thought she was going to lose her liver. A few days in the hospital and she was released. For the next few months or so Rachael was in and out of the hospital for attempted suicide 4-5 times.
I have to back track a little...Getting back to the STD...I knew that we had only been with each other and I did not understand how she could have had an STD. She really didn't know how either. I started thinking of who she may have been with but that only lasted a short time. I thought about our wedding night and all the events up to then as well as looking back on some of the signs I may have missed. It kinda started making a little since. On our wedding night (we had a very cheesy honeymoon, it was the towns hotel. That was paid for by my cheap @$$ step dad) we decided to watch a movie, planet of the apes. Why that movie I don't know but that's what we watched. Anyways, that in some way, was a trigger. One of many bad nights to come. We didn't even have sex that night.
Anyways, Rachael started to have nightmares, pretty bad ones. I couldn't really make since of any of them. All I know is things were not right with her. I was having a really hard time understanding why she was trying to kill herself. And was this really happening again...and again...and again. So many times in a month, in two months, three. Did she really want to die? Was she crying out for help? Was she trying to escape something? Was she trying to forget? Something she was remembering? There were so many questions and I did not have a single answer for any of them. All I knew was she was trying to kill herself and I had nowhere to turn. I was overseas and had no family, a few friends but they didn't even know what to do. Still no Internet and doctors didn't have a "magic pill" to cure the problem. There was really only one thing I could do, and sometimes that is all it takes. That one thing I could do/did was just be there for her and support her. I never judged her or made her feel like she was any less of a person. I am a man and men are supposed to fix things when they are broken. My wife was broken and I could not fix her. I felt so horrible that I couldn't. Looking back on it I realized that I was fixing her. I walked with her and stood by her side until she was able to pull out of the funk she was in. When she did it again, I just did the same thing as before. Always, stay as strong as you can and know when to ask for help. That is something I am still learning to do.
We ended up leaving Japan. The base did not have the capability to take care of her so we were sent to the base of our choice. Because there was a few family members, we decided to go to Tacoma, WA. Before we would reach WA, we made a pit stop in Hawaii for medical treatment in one of the biggest military hospitals in the world.
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