When I joined the Coast Guard it was for all the right reasons. I wanted to serve my country and help save lives. I had high and lofty ideas about fighting the very cartels that had driven my family out of Mexico.
I figured a military-trained Spanish linguist and college-educated journalist with more than five years of professional experience would have an excellent chance of helping the Coast Guard in the field of intelligence or as a public affairs officer.
I figured wrong.
When I got out of boot camp I was sent to a small boat station where I was required to become a watch stander. I had thirty days to teach myself everything I would need to know to do the job correctly. I was shown to rooms filled with manuals on our boats and missions and station's rules. I was told to find a qualified petty officer to sign off my personal qualifications manual when I had taught myself everything I needed to know. When I asked my fellow non-rates for help they would usually tell me to "go look it up" or "I forgot." When my qualification date passed and I was still not qualified I had to go on something called "port and report" where you come in to work everyday. I was also put to work on the boats and in the galley during my normal work days which made getting what needed to be done impossible. When I finally did get qualified my reward was to have to stand night and day watches.
We have petty officers at our Group who have been trained and have made rate to do the same job that I am doing here at the station. They also take our radio guard at night although we non rates are still required to have a night watch and carry radios and a phone around with us.
After becoming watch qualified, non rates at my station are required to get boat crew qualified. We have three months.
I was given a mentor to help me but early-on in my training process he was moved into another section and we were not able to meet regularly. My voiced concerns over this were dismissed and I had to search for qualified petty officers to help me with my sign-offs when I wasn't busy on my work days, scrubbing out the grease trap or the galley, cleaning the boats, cleaning the toilets, standing watch or any one of the million-and-something odd jobs that we non rates are given to keep us so busy that we don't have time to get qualified so we either have to come in on our off days or face port and report again where we come in every day. My home life was so hectic that coming in on my off days was impossible. Also, if you go over your qual dates you can get put on performance probation which makes you look like a worthless shithead and can mean your eventual dismissal from the Coast Guard for "failure to adapt." I was frequently reminded of this while I was training and it didn't help my moral.
The Commandant of the Coast Guard has a policy that says that persons of my rank can put their names on an "A-school" list after four months at their stations and with the approval of their command.
Therein lies the stink.
My command won't give their approval until persons of my rank get boat crew qualified. So even though I want to pursue a rate that has nothing to do with boats and even though my qualifications on said boat will expire after a couple of months of not keeping them maintained, I still have to invent 28-hour days for myself to get the job done. Then, I can put my name on a school list and begin the 6-12 month wait to go to my school and be trained to be as a petty officer.
When all of this begins to hit me I become very bitter that someone who is college educated with 5+ years of journalistic experience, prior service in military intel and fluent in Spanish would receive a six thousand dollar signing bonus for being college educated but that no one in the Coast Guard would take a closer look at my qualifications to see if I already had useful skills that could be currently serving this organization in its missions.
Instead, I lost rank by joining this service and was put in the bottom most level with all these fresh out o' highschool kids who don't yet know what they are good at or who they want to be when they grow up.
Unlike the other branches of the military, the Coast Guard does not send most recruits straight from boot camp to their specialized schools. They send them instead to boats, stations and command centers where they receive good, bad or otherwise training before they go on to a school to become whoever it is that they want to be for the Coast Guard.
Some lucky bastards get a guaranteed "A school" and do go from basic training to their specialty school, other lucky so and sos get sent to Groups, like our Group Humboldt Bay, where they do light grounds keeping and maintenance for four months and then get to put their names on the A-school list without having to worry about getting qualified on a vessel they will never set foot on again in their entire career.
One other option is called "striking" in which a non rate does the work on their own with a qualified petty officer to help them. By doing this they make a rate and become a petty officer themselves. (We are not allowed to do that at my station until we get boat crew qualified.) This is how a very intelligent acquaintance of mine was able to graduate from basic training two months after me, go to Group Humboldt Bay, strike a rate and make petty officer while I'm still trapped at the station waiting for my next check ride on the 47 and hoping that I pass so I can put my name on the damned "A-school" list and start the process of waiting 6 or so months to go to a school.
Do I feel demoralized? Oh, just a little bit.
Here was my day yesterday:
0600: Get up and get dressed at our station where I have weekend duty to go help my husband with the CG Yard Sale. (This was a lot of fun).
0950: Put on my uniform, leave my house to go help give tours of our 47 at a boating safety expo downtown. (This was also a lot of fun.)
1150: Relieve one of my shipmates at the knot tying booth at the expo. ( I had fun with this one too).
1330: Rush home to return the car to my husband and return to the 47 to be part of the crew that takes her back to the station.
1400: Return to station, cram a chicken sandwich down my throat and begin cleaning the filthy dishes left for me in the galley.
1500: SAR alarm is sounded and we rush to the dry rooms to change into our gear and get underway for a surfer in distress near the North Jetty.
1505: Underway for rescue
1510: 47 crew told to stand down because surfer had made it to shore and was being helped by a BLM Ranger.
1630: Began clean-ups in the galley.
1700: Called to relieve the watch so they could eat and told I would be taking the night watch.
1930: Relieved the watch.
2200: Called downstairs to help review hand-written logs that were issued to watch standers as a form of punishment for having too many misspellings in the computer logs.
2315: Woken up from sleeper room to re-check and re-sign hand-written logs.
2330: Awoken by the load sounds of "competitive, sudden death ping pong" going on on the floor below the sleeper room.
Midnight- 0430: Awoken various times by loud radio traffic between outbound fisherman and the dredge working in the bar channel.
0500: Wake up to start a fresh day of watch and work. Becuase it is Sunday, everyone else is allowed to sleep in until 7a.m.
0730: Relieved from the watch to go eat breakfast. Told by the cook that there were things I had not cleaned up in the kitchen the day before. I informed the cook that I had not been the cleanup person the day before.
0800: Called into the training office to be blessed out for telling the cook the mess was not my fault. After explaining that I was worn out and overwhelmed from only 3 hours of sleep the night before, I was told to go relax somewhere. Fifteen minutes after laying down in my bunk I am called to be on the boat crew for the second day of the boating safety expo.
0930: We get underway to the expo while our other boat goes out for a case.
0945: We arrive at the expo and stay for an hour and a half or so giving tours. I try not to fall asleep.
1215: We arrive at the station and eat lunch. I have the afternoon watch that goes until 5:30 p.m. I talk to one of our petty officers and tell him how tired and stressed out I feel. He assures me he will talk to our command.
1240: I take the watch.
1740: I am relieved from the watch and I go eat dinner.
1830: A fellow non-rate and I begin cleaning the galley. He has to leave to do something with the SAR case folders and I finish the work by myself.
2031: I take down the flags.
2100: I check through the logs with the other watch standers and I am allowed to go to bed.
2230: I go to sleep after running all of my problems through my mind over and over again and trying to figure out how I am going to deal with them. Exhaustion finally wins.
Now here is where things start to get complicated. Most of the other non rates are young single kids who can do whatever the hell they want when they are not at work. There are currently two other non rates who have wives and a child a piece. Neither of them have spouses who are from a foriegn country and who have gone into culture shock and deep depression like mine has.
While they go off to enjoy their freedoms I go home and either lock myself in my room so I can get caught up on lost sleep or I get into fights and overreact to things my family has done because I carried my work stress home with me.
I lost control of myself the other day and slapped my daughter in the face. I hit her so hard that she got a black eye. I will never forget the look on her face after I did that. It spoke of betrayal.
Oh my sweet, innocent child how I have failed you.
I told my chief at work about it and I also spoke with A's teacher. I told them I had never done anything like that before and I was going to try to get help. I appoligized to A and told her I loved her very much. She forgave me and seems to love me unconditionally which still blows my mind.
Talking to anyone at work in my same situation or someone who was once in it usually meets with the words "We all go through that" or "I had it so much worse when I was in your rank" or "You joined the Coast Guard, what did you think was going to happen?"- this last pearl of wisdom from a single guy with no dependents who is free to party and have hobbies and socialize and do whatever with his off days.
This type of sophistry infuriates me because I joined the army too and it was nothing like this, and also it is being assumed that I could foresee the downward spiral of my husband before I ever joined the Coast Guard.
Whereas most of these people leave their stressful job at the station and go home to relax, unwind and catch up on lost sleep, I get to deal with the following:
My spouse refuses to get a job.
He leaves issue unhandled so that I have to come home and fix everything.
I found him free English language classes that he has been attending for the last 10 months but he refuses to speak English with me or anyone else. Consequently, his English sucks.
He puts Julian to bed with a bottle. Julian is two years old and doing this could rot out his baby teeth. He will leave me in the middle of the night to go and sleep next to Julian in the big bed that is beside Julian's baby bed.
He treats my daughter like the proverbial red headed step child. She is verbally abused and put down by him. I suspect he is venting his own frustrations out on her. If my daughter did have a little bit of self esteem to begin with she certainly doesn't have it now.
Although I have tried to correct how he treats A and Julian, I don't live with my family for half the month so, as soon as I'm not there, he goes back to doing what he has always done with them.
He ignores my birthday, Christmas, and Mother's day. He says he forgets.
He has gained a lot of weight and refuses to go to the gym where we have a free membership and I have already paid for child care there for Julian. He said he wanted to try "Body for Life" so I bought him the book and it is currently gathering dust on the bookshelf. He also said he wanted Hydroxicut (which is really expensive) so I bought him some and he took a couple of pills before putting them away and saying he had a cold and couldn't take anymore.
Before we ever left Mexico I asked him to think about what he wanted to do in the U.S. and to be sure he was okay with leaving in the first place. He said he didn't know what he wanted to do but that getting out of Mexico was the best thing for our family. After moving here he has continued his "I don't know what I want to do," line which has gotten very irritating since 1) He has had full legal rights to work since February and 2)He had a huge abscessed tooth that will cost $1,800 to fix and will leave me with a $900 balance to pay after our insurance has paid their part. So he needs to help me because there is no way in hell I can pay for that one by myself. Not only that but there could be other unseen events that will cost us a small fortune and also, the man needs to get off his ass and do something.
Now Kelly, you say, aren't you being a little harsh?
Look people, I am currently the single mother of three children. One of them happens to be a 40-year old grown man.
I have struggled under a tremendous amount of stress at work and had to swallow my pride and get used to being the lowest of the low who everyone shits on. I have dealt with an overwhelming immigration system so my husband could stay in the country and not get deported back to Mexico. I have also continued to come home and try to "build my man up."
I have reassured him that I know how it feels to go from one country where you a well-educated and respected to another where you are out of your element and have to face starting all over again. I did, after all, go live in Mexico as a pregnant housewife and I had to go out and force myself to use Spanish and continue learning the language. I even got a part time job there to help out at home, all the while raising our little baby boy.
When we moved here I constantly reassured Juan that he was a smart, hardworking man who could do and be anything he wanted in this country.
I tried to get him access to the Hispanic communities here but he wasn't interested.
I got him enrolled in free English classes, he refuses to use English with me or anyone else.
I called the Stanford School of Law to find out what it would take for him to get a law degree here. I bought him an LSAT study guide. It's currently gathering dust beside the "Body for Life" book. He lamented that he "didn't have thousands of dollars lying around to pay for school." I told him (for the thousand and something odd time)that unlike Mexico, this country offers financial aid and, as an added bonus, he can get scholarships for being a minority. That's right dear, in this country they give you money just for being brown.
I have also gently reminded him that there are illegal immigrants who came into this country with less benefits and connections than he, as a legal immigrant, and that they were able to get jobs and support their families.
The man I married was smart, educated and hard working. The man I now live with is fat, lazy, depressed and constantly indulging in pitty parties for himself. He has seen me struggling at work and has done nothing to help me at home. He thinks only of himself and his own feelings and now I am too worn out and depressed myself to go on trying to build him up and be the puppet master who does everything for him. When I confront him or stand up to him, he threatens to go back to Mexico and take Julian with him.
My needs and desires are ignored or dismissed both at work and at home.
I'm tired of trying to make people understand me or help me.
I am one more incident away from the mother of all breakdowns and then I'll be worthless to everyone, even myself.
Juan can go back to Mexico and fuck off for all I care.
The Coast Guard should either send me to another location where I can day work until I have sorted out my issues at home or cut me free so I can fix what's left of my family life. Instead their stance has been "adapt or get out." Very well then, let me out.
Neither party can claim ignorance as to what is going on with me. They simply don't care.
I have scheduled an appointment to be evaluated by a psychiatrist in hopes that his words to my chain of command will be respected since mine have been ignored, dismissed and in general, hold no validity.
To those of you who have read this far, I congratulate you on your stamina. I also want to assure you that I have no current plans to harm myself or others. Having said that, don't be surprised if I shave my head and start partying with Paris Hilton with no panties on or hanging out with Middle Eastern men who are trying to exploit me.
This all seems strangely familiar.
